Byung S. Min

Corporate governance reform: the case of Korea

ABSTRACT Due partly to the expectations of foreign investors, the reform of corporate governance following the 1997 financial crisis has largely been in line with the Anglo-American outsider model at the expense of Koreas traditional insider model. The increased role of the (equity) market vis-à-vis banks and shareholder activism, NGOs and foreign investors has helped to constrain ‘tunnelling’ by controlling shareholders. While the complicated ownership structures have yet to be resolved, the governance paradigm of chaebols has gradually changed from one dominated by family or controlling shareholders to a system in which the power of professional managers and monitoring of markets have increased substantially.

How does leverage affect R&D intensity and how does R&D intensity impact on firm value in South Korea?

ABSTRACT We examine how leverage affects corporate research and development (R&D) intensity, as well as examine the impact of R&D on firm value in South Korea, a country in which corporate-funded R&D intensity is one of the highest in the world. Among our main results, we find that growth opportunities have a positive effect on R&D intensity, while leverage has a negative effect on R&D intensity. When leverage is at an extremely high level, the relationship between growth opportunities and R&D intensity turns from positive to negative. Using instrumental variables, we find that R&D generates an increase in firm value.

Determinants of board size in an emerging market

Drawing largely upon the selective adaptation paradigm, the resource dependence literature, and the capture argument, we examine determinants of board size using panel data set of Korean‐listed companies that have experienced dramatic changes in their governance system following the 1997 Asian crisis and regulatory reforms. Observing that the firms compliance with statutory requirements reflects a strategic choice, our results also investigate the idea that the determinants of board size differ between firms actively and passively adapting to regulatory reforms. For actively adaptive firms, board size increases along with firm complexity but it varies inversely with the power of controlling shareholders (CSHs). In contrast, the roles of complexity and CSHs are not significant but seniority‐based promotion is an important factor to increase the size for the passive firms. Our results suggest that determinants of board size differ depending on corporate strategies to comply with statutory requirements in an emerging market where family business is dominant and corporate governance system has substantially changed.

Effects of Board Reforms on Capital Structure and Corporate Growth Strategy

Debt-ridden corporate growth and increased vulnerability was one of the causes of the 1997 financial crisis in Korea. Introduction of outside director system has been the core part of the corporate reforms following the crisis. Our estimation using instruments obtained from a natural experiment illustrates that outside monitoring has (i) improved capital structure of firms even when we control for the leverage regulation effect (ii) enhanced compliance with leverage regulation and thus reduce business risks and (iii) reduced excessive growth and excessive investment more consistently for top 10 largest chaebol than stand-alone firms and smaller sized chaebol affiliates. Our results shed some lights on why existing studies report the positive effect of outsiders on firm value.