Jong-Seo Choi

Corporate social responsibility and corporate financial performance: Evidence from Korea

This paper studies the empirical relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance in Korea using a sample of 1222 firm-years during 2002—2008. We measure corporate social responsibility by both an equal-weighted CSR index and a stakeholder-weighted CSR index suggested by Akpinar et al. (2008). Corporate financial performance is measured by return on equity, return on assets, and Tobin’s Q. We find a positive and significant relationship between corporate financial performance and the stakeholder-weighted CSR index, but not the equal-weighted CSR index. This finding is robust to alternative model specifications and several additional tests, providing evidence in support of instrumental stakeholder theory.

Testing for linear and nonlinear granger causality in the stock price-volume relation: Korean evidence

In this paper, linear and non-linear Granger causality tests are used to examine the dynamic relationship between daily Korean stock returns and trading volume. We find evidence of significant bidirectional linear and non-linear causality between these two series. ARCH-type models are used to examine whether the non-linear causal relations can be explained by stock returns and volume serving as proxies for information flow in the stochastic process generating volume and stock returns respectively.

An Empirical Investigation of the Extensiveness of Stand-Alone Environmental Reporting in South Korea

In contrast to most other countries, South Koreas Ministry of Environment has been providing substantial guidance for corporate stand-alone environmental reporting. Motivated by the existence of such support, we investigate the extensiveness of environmental disclosure for a sample of South Korean firms. Results show higher disclosure scores than those reported in other studies using the same scale. Further, South Korean disclosure is more extensive than that of a matched sample of comparable US companies. While conceding that disclosure extensiveness is not necessarily associated with higher quality, our results suggest authoritative guidance for stand-alone reporting may improve corporate environmental disclosure practices.

An exploration of corporate environmental reporting in Korea following financial crisis

This short paper explores environmental disclosure by Korean companies and changes therein over a recent seven-year period. Although Korean disclosure has been reported on previously (see, for example, SEAJ 18(1) 1998) there are a number of factors which may make its further exploration of wider interest – not least of which is the “Asian Financial Crisis” of 1997 and the impact that this had on corporate reporting. Korean Financial Accounting Standards 1996 (article 90, clause 21) require audited firms to disclose inter alia environment related information in the notes to the financial reports. These categories of information disclosure are: