YoungGak Kim

Has the Management Quality in Korean Firms Caught Up with That in Japanese Firms? An Empirical Study Using Interview Surveys

Bloom and Van Reenen (Quarterly Journal of Economics 122:1351–1408, 2007) show that differences in management practices are related to productivity differences at the firm level. In this paper we conducted a similar interview surveys on management practices in Japanese and Korean firms in 2008 and 2012. We find that overall management scores as an average of organizational and human resource management scores in Japan are higher than those in Korea. However, the second survey shows that the gap in management scores between two countries has shrunken over time. In addition, average management quality in Korean large firms has surpassed that in Japanese large firms, which are consistent with the literature comparing big businesses in Korea and Japan. This study also compares additional aspects of the management style, such as speed in decision-making and the role of various communication channels, which are not done in the previous literatures.

Product market efficiencies and TFP: a comparative study of Japanese and Korean firms: Exploring the Causes and Remedies of Japanization

Ito and Kim use a large-scale dataset to examine differences in allocative efficiency between Japanese and Korean firms from 1995 to 2008. They measure the firm-level distortions in terms of total factor productivity, output and capital, employing the Hsieh and Klenow approach. They find that distortion measures are more dispersed in Korea than in Japan. As a result, neither economy has improved allocative efficiency, which is lower for Korea than for Japan. Low productivity firms in both economies tend to overproduce, suggesting that resources are not moved from low productivity firms to high productivity firms. Improvement in resource allocation is an urgent policy issue for both countries in order to realize the efficient level of output, given that both countries are highly likely to face serious labor shortages in the near future due to population decline and aging.

Impact of Demographic Change Upon the Sustainability of Fiscal Policy

This paper analyzes the impact of demographic change on the sustainability of fiscal policy. Firstly, we study the main causes of the deterioration of Japanese government fiscal conditions from the demographic point of view. Next, we investigate the impact of Korean population aging on the long-term fiscal conditions using the method of the forward looking measure of Generational Accounting. Most of the deterioration in the fiscal situation of the Japanese government since 1990 can be explained by an increase in social security costs related with population aging and a decrease in tax revenue caused by lackluster economy. Considering the rapid population aging, Korean government’s fiscal condition, evaluated to be very sound currently, could also deteriorate soon without counteracting preemptively. The results of Korean Generational Accounting show that the social security related expenditures are main drives for the deterioration of long-term fiscal condition. In addition, as shown by the case of Japan, the effect of the decreased tax revenue could be greater than that of increased expenditure. The policy for improving the tax revenue through economic growth is also very important for the sustainability of government finance.