This project introduces the recent development of the Chinese VC industry. One characteristics of the Chinese VC market is that both cross-border VCs and local VCs play significant roles. The two types of VCs show clear difference in terms of invested sectors and geographic regions. This paper provides a literature review to address some mechanisms leading to the divergence. It also documents two mechanisms not addressed in the extant literature through interviews with local investors and startups: the rigidity of a typical startup’s fund structure and the types of limited partners of VCs explain why the divergence takes place in the first place and why the dissimilarity is likely to persist. The simple empirical analysis shows that cross-border VCs are more likely to invest in market-oriented high-tech sectors and regions with relatively well-established market institutions, while local VCs tend to invest in fields and regions of the nation’s strategic focus.

Bartram, Brown, and Stulz (2016) report a strong positive correlation between systematic and idiosyncratic stock return volatilities and suggest heterogeneous firm-level responses to market wide shock may be an underlying driver. We test the hypothesis using Korean stock market data by including additional factors that reflect the macroeconomic conditions to the single factor model used in Bartram, Brown, and Stulz. Even though the correlation decreases by about 25% from 0.85 to 0.64 with additional factors, a substantial positive correlation still remains. In addition, we cannot find evidence that a high correlation industry experiences more volatile corporate sector dynamics in terms of changes in firm ranking and market share.

In the present study, I examine how group-level positive affect (GPA) may interact with a leader’s emotional intelligence (EI) to generate important group outcomes, such as group-level perception of affective fit and group-level organizational citizenship behavior (GOCB). A moderated mediation model was tested by using the data of 293 employees nested in 66 work groups. Research findings show that the indirect effect of GPA on GOCB through the group-level perception of affective fit is stronger when leader EI is low than when leader EI is high. These results highlight the substituting role of leader EI in the relationship between GPA and affective fit perception. The current analysis reveals potential complementary functions of GPA and leader EI in explaining subsequent group processes and performance.

This study examines the relations between internal labor markets and organizational innovation. From the knowledge-based view, we hypothesize that ILMs will be positively associated with organizational innovation by encouraging employees to share and integrate their knowledge. We also attempt to uncover potential moderating effects of environmental dynamism by focusing on its influence on knowledge stock and flow under ILMs. The empirical results from a sample of 205 firms show that ILMs have an overall positive influence on organizational innovation. However, the positive effect is more pronounced as environmental dynamism increases.

Using a sample of US firms for the period 2000-2011, we examine whether organized labor in audit client firms affects auditor decisions such as audit fees and going-concern qualifications. We find that labor unionization is associated with higher audit fees and a higher likelihood of going-concern qualifications but shorter audit report lags, and the results on audit fees are stronger in the case of strikes. These results suggest that the presence of labor union(s) in a client firm constitutes a non-trivial risk element to auditors, which cannot be mitigated by additional audit effort.

New liquidity measure, based on trading volume induced by order flow as in Pastor and Stambaugh (2002) but estimated with turnover rather than with absolute level of dollar volume, is introduced and analyzed in this paper. Aggregate liquidity measures are found to well track the history of market liquidity problems. However, market price of liquidity risk, estimated as a coefficient of liquidity shock, does not show any systematic timeseries behavior so we could not find the variables which have significant explanatory power for liquidity risk premium.

Using two sets of survey data collected in Korea and the United States respectively, this study demonstrated that the model that integrated the value-attitude-behavior hierarchy chain and the theory of planned behavior had the highest fit with both sets of the data than other models of consumers’ environmental attitudes and eco-friendly product purchase intentions. The findings also showed that incorporating the effects of various types of perceived values of eco-friendly products (e.g., environmental, functional, and economic values) into the model did not improve the model fit, although products’ environmental value had significant interaction effects with some of the non-environmental values.

This paper examines the determinants and the consequences of congruence between the CEO and other executives focusing on the role of previously-built school and regional ties. Using a sample of 2,129 firmyears from 2003 to 2006 for all firms listed on the Korea Stock Exchange, we find that executives are more likely to share the same school or regional background as the CEO when the firm is small, foreign ownership is low, or the CEO is a family member of the controlling shareholder. We also find that such congruence increases firm value when the firm is young and foreign ownership is large, but decreases firm value in firms tightly controlled by family member CEOs through large voting rights. These results suggest that congruence within the top management may facilitate communication when the nature of information being transmitted is “soft,” but may aggravate agency problems when CEOs are entrenched.

This study evaluates the implications of regretful choices at the group level and suggests that regretful choices in the market may underlie the formation of hierarchy, i.e., a collectivity, which may not mitigate the hazards of transactions but serve to absorb personal emotions, i.e., regrets associated with market transactions. In so doing, this study seeks to identify the role of personal emotion in the theory of the firm vis-a-vis calculative trust that is arguably granted to the impersonal firm.

This study examines the relation between labor union strength and conditional accounting conservatism. We argue that labor unions can have an increasing or decreasing effect on conditional conservatism due to considerations associated with layoffs and job security of union members. Using Basu’s (1997) asymmetric timeliness framework and multiple measures of union strength, we find that labor union strength leads to less conditional conservatism, even after controlling for known determinants of conditional conservatism. Our results are robust to endogeneity tests as well as a battery of other sensitivity tests. We further demonstrate that the negative relation likely results from unions’ ability to reduce the likelihood of layoffs. Overall, we provide fresh evidence about the impact of a key nonfinancial stakeholder, namely labor unions, on an important property of earnings.