Nominating Committee - President Kim nominated the following members to serve as the members of the nominating committee (NC) this year:

Eligibility: Memebers must be either lifetime members, or annual members in both 2005 and 2006 to vote and/or to be nominated for any position. The annual membership dues for 2006 must have been received by the Treasurer by July 25, 2006.

Time Table: The NC plans to announce its selection of cadidates on or before July 30, 2006. Alternative candidates may be submitted to the NC by 3% or more of eligible members within 10 days of the NC's announcement. Ballots will be mailed out to eligible voters a few days after the closing of nomination process. Ballots must be returned and received by the teller(s) within 30 days of mailing ballots.

If you have any suggestions or recommendations, please contact the chair of the NC, Professor Hong Y. Park, hyp@svsu.edu, by July 25, 2006.

The current Advisory Board will nominate candidate(s) for an at-large position of the Advisory Board to replace Professor Kwan S. Kim, whose term expires this year. Please send your suggestions by July 25, 2006, to the chair of the AB, Professor Soo Bin Park at Carelon University, sbpark@ccs.carleton.ca.

The KAEA is soliciting nominations for the Maekyung-KAEA Economist Award. Please send a letter of nomination with supporting materials to the award committee chair:

E-mail submission is preferred. Deadline for submission is September 20, 2006. Please refer to the AWARD page for a detailed description of the award and the nomination procedure.

The KAEA is soliciting nominations for the KAEA Young Scholar Award. Please send a letter of nomination with supporting materials to the award committee chair:

E-mail submission is preferred. Deadline for submission is August 20, 2006. Please refer to the AWARD page for a detailed description of the award and the nomination procedure.

The KAEA has a limited amount of fund to support the trip of Korean graduate students in economics to the ASSA meeting in Chicago next January.

Eligibility - The student must be a Ph.D. candidate in economics at a university in the U.S. or in Canada, expects to graduate by August, 2007, and must actively participate in the job market in the U.S. or in Canada. The student must not be fully funded by any other source of fund. The student must be a junior member of the KAEA by the time of application (click on the membership site for the information).

To apply - Send your name, e-mail address, telephone number, name of your university and field of specialty to Professor Semoon Chang at schang@usouthal.edu.

Please indicate if you wish the KAEA to make your name available to Korea's research and academic organizations that recruit Korean students working toward a Ph.D. degree.

The annual meeting of the Southern Economic Association (SEA) will be held in Charleston Place Hotel, Charleston, South Carolina, November 18-21 (Saturday through Tuesday), 2006. Professor Semoon Chang took over the task of organizing the KAEA sessions from Professor Hak Y. Kim who injured himself. The two academic sessions for the KAEA are

Session I - Issues on the East Asian Economy

Chair: Yoonbai Kim, University of Kentucky

Presenters:

Discussants:

Session II - Public Sector Issues

Chair: Semoon Chang, University of South Alabama

Presenters

Discussants:

The academic sessions of the KAEA at the ASSA meeting in Chicago in January 5-7, 2007, is posted at ASSA/KAEA Program.

The joint session with the AEA is organized by President Kim. The other two sessions are organized by Executive Secretary General Sunghyun Kim out of 18 papers which were submitted/invited. One session is on empirical labor economics and the other is on macroeconomic issues. Information about the Business Meeting, Reception, Guest Speakers, etc., will be added as they become avialable.

KAEA Workshop( on June 28)

In addition to three regular sessions, the KAEA plans to hold one or two WORKSHOPS at the Chicago ASSA meeting depending on the number of submitted papers. Following the same format as last year's workshops at the Boston meeting, the workshops will be held on Sunday morning (10-12) right after the panel discussion session. Please note that these are not official ASSA-sponsored sessions and thus will not be advertised in the ASSA program book. These workshops are intended to increase the interaction and exchange of ideas among the workshop participants working on various issues related to Korea.

Guidelines for Paper Submission: Completed papers should be submitted through e-mail only to Sunghyun.kim@tufts.edu. Submission deadline is September 15, 2006. To be selected for the workshop program, a participant's KAEA annual membership fee must be paid for years 2005 and 2006.

The Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI) is pleased to announce the initiation of "KEI Special Reports" -- a monthly academic paper and follow-on discussion of topical issues related to the Korean Peninsula.

KEI intends to commission 9-10 papers per year on original subjects of current interest to serious Korea watchers. Papers must be written exclusively for KEI and not have previously appeared in publication. Papers should be approximately 4,000 - 5,000 words in length. KEI will edit and distribute the finished paper as a KEI Special Report to over 2,000 government officials, think tank experts, and scholars around the United States and the world.. The annual collection of KEI Special Reports will be collated and published in a single volume by KEI.

Authors of papers selected by KEI for the KEI Special Report series will receive an honorarium of $2000. KEI will arrange a mutually convenient date for authors to participate in a discussion program of their selected paper at KEI conference facilities in Washington, DC, preferably during the month the paper is published by KEI. Travel and accommodation expenses will be provided by KEI for the discussion program.

Interested authors need to provide the following information by September 15, 2006:

KEI will select the chosen paper topics by October 4, 2006, with the expectation that the chosen authors will complete their first draft and transmit it to KEI by November 10, 2006.

After scheduling the Fall Quarter's KEI Special Report, KEI will repeat the call for Academic Papers later in the year for the first quarter of 2007.

Responses should be sent to Scott Rembrandt, KEI Director of Academic Affairs at SR@keia.org. Authors will be notified as quickly as possible once their proposed topic as been selected.

The 3rd BOK/KAEA conference was held on August 11, 2006 at the BOK Main Conference Room, Bank of Korea, Seoul, Korea, with the theme of "Efficiency of the Korean Banking Industry in a Changing Environment." In his opening speech, the KAEA President, Professor Suk Hi Kim, expressed the gratitude of KAEA to the BOK and the Institute for Monetary and Economic Research for making this conference successful for three consecutive years. In reply, Dr. Hae Wang Chung, the BOK Assistant Governor and the Director General, Institute for Monetary and Economic Research of BOK, welcomed the KAEA members and paper presenters on behalf of Mr. Seongtae Lee, the BOK Governor, who was out of town on that day and promised to continue cooperation with the KAEA in joint research and conference in the future.

Three papers were presented by two KAEA members, Prof. Kang Hoon Park and Prof. Sang-Hyop Lee, and one BOK member, Dr. Hyung Kwon Jeong. Kang Hoon Park studied efficiency, productivity and profitability of Korean banks for the period of 1992-2002 and reported that the Korean banking industry experienced productivity growth, brought about primarily by technical progress that offset declines in efficiency. The results on productivity growth are consistent with the trend of profitability. Sang-Hyop Lee reported the finding from the Japanese banking experience that a significant positive relation exhibited between bank risk and ownership concentration especially when the capital ratio requirement significantly decreased and deposit insurance significantly decreased. Hyung Kwon Jeong analyzed the effect of financial conglomeration on the efficiency of Korean banking industry and found strong evidence that M&As lead to an increase in revenue and profitability, but that there is no clear-cut evidence of M&As leading to an increase in cost efficiency. About 50 people attended the conference.

After the conference, the dinner was hosted by Dr. Hae Wang Chung, the BOK Assistant Governor and the Director General, Institute for Monetary and Economic Research of BOK. The KAEA President, Prof. Suk Hi Kim, invited Dr. Chung to the panel discussion at the ASSA meetings, January, 2007. Because of Dr. Chung's another commitment, Dr. Myung Kee Kim, the Deputy Director General accepted the invitation to the panel discussion in place of Dr. Chung.

Pictures taken at the reception and conference - Click on the SlideShow

The 12th International Conference jointly organized by the KEA and KAEA was successfully held on August 9-10 at the Hoam Faculty House at Seoul National University. We, the Executive Committee of the KAEA, would like to express sincere gratitude to the organizers of this wonderful conference. The main theme of the conference was "Prosperity for All: Policy Choices for an Open Economy; Values & Strategies." A welcome reception was held on the evening of August 8th hosted by the President of the KEA, Professor Un-Chan Chung of SNU. About forty scholars from Korea and the US attended the reception and a number of past and current presidents of the KEA and KAEA offered welcome remarks.

The main program began with an opening ceremony on August 9th. President of the KEA, Professor Un-Chan Chung, and the President of the KAEA, Professor Suk Hi Kim, delivered opening speeches. Professor Jisoon Lee (SNU), Chair of the Organizing Committee for the conference, presented a brief progress report.

The plenary session on the first day was on "Prosperity for all: policy choices for an open economy," and keynote speeches were delivered by Professor Yung-Chul Park (SNU) on transmission channels of monetary policy in Korea and Professor Choongsoo Kim (Kyunghee University) on liberalization policies and the future of Korean economy. Professor Chae Woong Lee (Sungkyunkwan University) and Dr. Soo-Gil Young (National Strategy Institute) discussed these papers. Notably, the session prompted lively debates on government policies on real estate in Korea, and benefits and costs of the Korea-US FTA.

On the second day, the plenary session was on "Prosperity for all: values and strategies." Professor Byeong Hae Sohn (Kyungpook National University) made the keynote speech on Confucian values and East Asian economic integration. Next, Professor Sung-Hee Jwa (SNU) spoke about Korea's economic development: review of the last 50 years and future prospects. Professors Chang Nam Kim (Donga University) and Suck-kyo Ahn (Hanyang University) discussed these papers. Timely issues on topics such as growth and distribution policies in Korea were discussed in this session.

In total, members of the KEA and KAEA presented more than sixty papers during the contributed sessions. The topics were quite diverse and included micro, macro, international, econometrics and finance. In particular, for the first time in the history of this international conference, non-Korean participants from all over the world including Japan, England, Spain, and Australia, took part in the presentations during the contributed sessions. A detailed list of the participants and papers from the KAEA is available at the KEA program on this webpage. On both days, lunch and dinner were hosted by leaders in economic policies in Korea: Seongtae Lee (Governor of Bank of Korea), Chong Oh Lee (Chairman of the National Research Council for Economics, Humanities and Social Sciences), Okyu Kwon (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Economy), and Chung Won Kang (President of Kookmin Bank).

Pictures taken at the reception and conference - Click on the SlideShow

The KDI/KAEA annual conference was held on August 8, 2006 at the KDI conference room. Twelve members of the KAEA paricipated in the conference. Dr. Sang-Dal Shim at KDI said that he had a hard time to find proper discussants for the conference because many people were on their summer vacation. He hoped future conferences to be held in July. The president of the KDI, Dr. Jung Taik Hyun, gave a nice reception on August 7. You can see the prictures taken at the reception by clicking on the SlideShow.

The KIF/KAEA/KAFA annual conference was held on May 25th, 2006 at the KIF building in Seoul. This year's symposium focused on two main research themes: (a) the recent trends in the banking industry and (b) capital markets under financial convergence era.

The first topic on banking industry was presented by two KAEA members, Professor Y. Jeon on the United States banking experience and Professor K. Park (in place of Professor Min who was not able to attend) on the Korean banking practice. Specifically, the first paper examined whether deregulation in the U.S. banking industry, such as interstate and intrastate deregulation, has affected bank new-charter (birth), failure (death), and merger (marriage) rates during the 1980s and 1990s after controlling for bank performance and state economic activity. The second paper indicated that the Korean banking industry has become increasingly concentrated in the process of restructuring and mergers/acquisitions since the Asian financial crisis, but the increased concentration has not lessened competition.

The second topic on capital markets was presented by a research fellow at the KIF and two KAFA members. Dr K. Kang from the KIF discussed how to enhance the functioning of financial intermediation in Korea, particularly introducing synthetic collateralized debt obligations in order to share the risk between bank and capital markets. The second speaker Professor S. Chung from the KAFA addressed hedge funds' idiosyncratic risk and performance, which may prevent rational investors from holding the market portfolio. Furthermore, he addressed an issue related to the risk management performed by institutional investors in hedge funds. The last speaker, Professor Y. Park from the KAFA outlined smart money, which is a private equity in the partial acquisitions market. His research results indicate that the economic effects of activist private equities are economically meaningful and comparable in magnitude to strategic benefits of corporate purchases.

The conference was an excellent opportunity for U.S. academics and Korean practitioners and researchers to share valuable knowledge about the financial and banking industries. The KIF president proposed reviewing more recent developments in the financial realm as a theme for the next year's symposium. Note that starting this year, the conference has been moved from December to May to avoid busy holiday season trips.

You can see the prictures taken at the conference by clicking on the SlideShow

On May 19, a day-long conference on North Korean economy, "North Korea - Economic Perspectives and International Cooperation" was held in Seoul National Univerity, co-hosted by Graduate School of Public Administration of Seoul National University, Korean American Economic Association and Hanns Seidel Foundation Korea.

The conference, consisted of three rounds of three open lectures and discussion session after each round provided a discussion table for a broad range of topics in relation to the economic perspectives on North Korea from potential and desirable economic reform in North Korea, economic aid to North Korea, to IT and industrial cooperation with the North. Understanding the economic growth in North Korea is in the interest of the world community, the lecturers included professors and economists from South Korea, Germany, and the United States.

In the opening remark, Dr. Seliger, one of the hosts of today's conference challenged the audience by asking fundamental questions on the aid to North Korea, by saying we must think about how the aid to North Korea can trigger change, help the people in need and influence the North Korean regime. Yet he stated, "Unconditional aid is not understandable neither as an economist nor as a German, speaking from the German experience."

As a foreshadow of the day's discussions, the remark insinuated that the thought of aid or economic cooperation with North Korea is in itself a difficult but a real issue, and the lectures of the day did not hesitate to address the problems regarding assisting North Korea and induce economic cooperation from the North Korean side.

Semoon Chang, professor of economics, University of South Alabama, after listing North Korea's past deed which directly called for the US economic sanctions against itself such as hijacking and money laundering, simply described North Korea as "lucky", saying that such acts have been enough to cause war. Chang continued by explaining how North Korea poses a threat to U.S. national security. "North Korea's policies in the past have crossed the paths of many U.S. laws that automatically invoked economic sanctions like a puzzled animal stepping on the hunter's traps," said Chang.

While Chang's shared a pessimistic view that "it is not clear how (members of the six-party talks) can afford not to find solutions to the latest nuclear crisis that may end up being the last chance for peace without incurring huge human and economic costs from its failure," other lectures presented technically difficult but possible actions that can be taken to assist North Korean economy.

Professor Joachim Ahrens of Private University of Applied Sciences Gottingen argued for the need for transitional institutions and viewed the unification as something that would come along in the result of long-term process of market enhancing governance. Professor Kim Suk of University of Mercy-Detroit also shared his view of the necessity of doing business with North Korea and foresaw "the strained relationship between the US and North Korea under the Bush leadership is unlikely to change Pyongyang's open-door policy in the long-run."

The second session was followed by addressing specific economic issues and evaluating various attempts by North Korea such as the North Korean July Economic Reform and its implication by Nam Sung Wook of Korea University and IT cooperation with North Korea by Park Sung Jo of Free University Berlin.

You can see the prictures taken at the conference by clicking on the SlideShow