We examine two policy questions: (i) which SMEs are participating in and are
accepted for a policy loan program?; (ii) what are the private and social returns
of policy loans for the approved firms? To correct probable ion bias arising
from using only firms accepted for a policy loan program, Heckman-type of a ion
model is estimated by using large sample financial statement data collected. Our
adoption equation shows that the government authority is conservative when approving
policy loan beneficiary. It is likely to approve firms with more experienced firms
and higher net profits, while smaller in assets. However, the lender as a benevolent
social planner does not significantly approve SMEs in financial difficulty associated
with low liquidity and high debt ratio. After controlling for characteristics of approved
SMEs, we figured out that policy loans do have positive effects on improving net
profits and sales for SMEs. But the effect of policy loans on the employment is not
prompt. We also found that public financial support for SMEs are more effective
for the improvement of sales and net profits of bigger and experienced business than
the smaller and younger companies. Whereas, although it is not prompt with the
investment, the employment effect is larger for the younger companies and SMEs
on its early development stage. The general belief that policy loans help attract liquidity
of SMEs and thereby improve their private and social returns should be corrected.
We suggest that government policy measures are not necessarily to be conservative,
but should be very specific to correct corresponding types of market failures.

Generally, internet shopping is known to provide lower prices compared to offline
stores because of the reduction of transaction costs by disintermediation and competition
of price among online-retailers by rapid spread and acquisition of information. So,
the purpose of this study is to positively prove the hypothesis that the growth of
internet shopping affects a drop in consumer prices. This study has been used data
provided by National Statistical Office: monthly sales data of internet shopping, monthly
consumer price index (CPI) and CPIs for 51 commodities which are categorized by
the purpose of expenditure, and monthly price data of Dubai crude oil. And this
study has been employed the Vector Autoregression model (VAR) with these data
guaranteed stationary by unit root tests in order to prove above-mentioned hypothesis.
According to the results of analysis, the growth of internet shopping has contributed
to decline the consumer price. If sales of internet shopping increase by 10% in a
year, then consumer prices will decrease by 0.08% in a year. Also, the prices related
commodities having high trading proportions by internet shopping channel have been
negatively affected by the growth of internet shopping. Therefore, it is necessary to
various policy efforts to develop the industry of internet shopping based on the fact
that internet shopping has partially contributed to drop in consumer prices.

Ever since Flamholtz and Randle (2000) propose the importance of managing growing
pains which cause a fatal problem to the fast growing firms, the topic of growing
pains have been explored in various contexts. Growing pains are blamed as an important
factor which makes many successful venture firms that have grown rapidly at their
early stage, and disappear suddenly after undergoing an abrupt internal challenge.
There has been some empirical research on this topic, but limited. Causes of growing
pains have only been limited to the personal-level variables, mainly entrepreneur
himself. We believe that organizational level and leadership style also contribute to
the growing pains. In this paper, we extended research on this phenomenon and
empirically prove the negative impact of growing pains on firm performance and
also suggest other causes of growing pains, using data collected from Korean high-growth
venture firms. Contrary to the conventional belief, individual level factor of leadership
style is found to have no significant effect on growing pains, while organization level
factor, culture, has. Out of dimensions in organizational culture, task, role, and person
oriented cultures are found to have negative relationship with growing pains of Korean
venture firms, whereas power oriented culture has augmented growing pains. This
result shows the importance of building a proper corporate culture, even from the
early stage.

We examine the association between the proportion of outside directors on the
board and the extent of tax avoidance for KOSDAQ-listed firms. As the majority
of KOSDAQ-listed firms are financially constrained, small and medium enterprises,
it is highly likely that these firms will satisfy only the minimum legal requirements
in assigning outside directors to the board. However, some firms exceed the minimum
legal requirements (i.e., one-fourth of the total number of directors). As the proportion
of outside directors increases, tax avoidance may decrease due to more effective monitoring
of the CEO. Therefore, we expect the degree of tax avoidance to decreases as
the proportion of outside directors increases. Moreover, we examine this relation
to differ by management ownership. If the manager is also a major shareholder,
as opposed to a hired professional CEO, they are more likely to avoid or restrict
outside directors’ monitoring.
From a sample of KOSDAQ-listed firms, this study finds that as the proportion
of outside directors is negatively related to the degree of tax avoidance. This finding
shows that the monitoring role of outside directors is influential with respect to tax
avoidance behavior. However, the relation is weaker for firms where the management
is also the owner. This suggests that owner-managers may restrict the monitoring
activities of outside directors.
This study has two contributions. First, this study shows that outside directors
can decrease the agency cost between the managers and shareholders in terms of
tax avoidance. Second, this study infers that the monitoring effect of outside directors
can be influenced by the type of management.

Using the data from initial public offerings (IPO) on the KOSDAQ Market of Korea
from 2003 to 2008, we examine the effect of controlling ownership and employee
ownership on the returns of IPO stocks. Initial returns of IPO stocks are positively
associated with controlling ownership, indicating that investors tend to be compensated
for their concern of the controlling party’s entrenchment effect. Initial returns are
positively associated with employee ownership when the largest individual (family)
shareholder’s ownership is not high enough to completely control the firm. The result
suggests that investors are also compensated for the risk of alliance between the
largest individual (family) shareholder and employees. One-year post-IPO stock returns
are negatively associated with controlling ownership and positively associated with
employee ownership. The results indicate that during the one-year aftermarket period
high controlling ownership is considered to increase conflict between controlling shareholders
and general shareholders while high employee ownership is considered to
enhance worker motivation and so to align the interest of employees with that of
general shareholders. On the date of IPO, however, we fail to find evidence of the
latter.