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Conferences in 2008
(July 22, 2008)
Reports on KDI/KAEA Conerence by Sunghyun Kim
The 6th KDI-KAEA Conference was held on July 8th at the KDI Main conference Hall. The title of the conference was "Enhancing Productivity and Sustaining Growth," and there were six sessions: (1) Exchange rate and current account, (2) R&D and school quality, (3) Corporate governance, (4) Pay inequality and living standard of the lowest group, (5) Macro-economy, and (6) Macroeconomic policy analysis. Nine members of the KAEA presented their papers and two members participated as discussants.
Dr. Shim Sang Dal of the KDI worked as an organizer on the KDI side and produced an excellent program. Average quality of presented papers and participation rates were much better than previous years. Selected papers presented at the conference will be published at the Korea Development Review. KDI is working hard to put this journal in the SSCI journal list. President Hyun Jung Taek of the KDI hosted reception and lunch for the participants.
Pictures of KDI and BOK conferences.
Reports on KIF/KAEA/KAFA Conference by Kang H. Park
The KIF/KAEA/KAFA annual conference was held on May 26th, 2008 at the Korea Federation of Banks building in Seoul. This year's symposium focused on New Trends in the Banking Industry and Capital Markets and Their Impacts. Two KAEA members, two KAFA members and one KIF member made presentations in the symposium.
The first topic on banking industry was presented by two KAEA members, Professor K. Park on the Korean banking efficiency and competition, and Professor Y. Park on small business loans in the US, and one KAFA member, Professor H. Yi on merger of non-depository financial firms by banks in the U.S. The first paper by Professor K. Park examined the effects of mergers, acquisitions and consolidation on efficiency an competition in the Korean banking sector and concluded that an increase in market concentration has not improved bank efficiency and has not changed the overall level of bank competition although it has a positive effect on the level of the average interest margin. The second paper by Professor H. Yi focused on the reasons for banks' decision to acquire non-depository financial firms, and his findings indicated that acquiring bank managers' claims over the benefits of non-bank acquisitions is a manifestation of an agency problem. The third paper by Professor Y. Park studied how bank competition affects the amount of credit supplied to small businesses and reported that not only are the banks in concentrated markets more likely to turn down a small business loan application, but also the average size of small business loans is smaller than in a competitive market.
The second session on capital markets consisted of two papers, one paper presented by a KAFA member, Professor B. Lee, and another paper presented by a research fellow at the KIF, Dr. J. Song. Professor B. Lee investigated the dynamic relations among national economic growth, economic disparity and financial disparity in China and found that both provincial financial disparity and, to a lesser degree, economic disparity have a negative effect on national economic growth. Dr. J. Song studied the effects of frequent turbulences in the US stock market and short-term debt markets on Korean financial markets and found that, even though a long run relationships between U.S. and Korean financial markets are similar qualitatively, the magnitude of the effect of U.S. stock prices on Korean stock prices have been increased considerably after the subprime mortgage crisis.
Reports on BOK/KAEA Conference by Bang Nam Jeon
The 5th BOK/KAEA conference was held on July 10, 2008, at the BOK Main Conference Room, Bank of Korea, Seoul, Korea. Dr. Kyung-Soo Kim, BOK Deputy Governor and Director General of the Institute for Monetary and Economic Research (IMER) of BOK, welcomed the KAEA members and paper presenters and hoped for a continued cooperation with the KAEA in joint research and conferences in the future. Prof. Joon Park, President of KAEA, also gave opening remarks for the Conference.
Three papers were presented by two KAEA members, Prof. Bang Nam Jeon and Prof. Ky-hyang Yuhn, and one BOK member, Dr. Hyung-kwon Jeong. Prof. Jeon's paper examined the empirical and policy implications of a recently increasing foreign bank penetration on the transmission of monetary policy in emerging economies of Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe using bank-level data. Prof. Yuhn's paper investigated the puzzling relationship between stock returns and expected inflation, the so-called return-inflation paradox, using quarterly data for 16 countries and reported that the positive or negative relationship between the two variables depends on inflation volatility. Dr. Jeong examined an optimal financing model for small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) in Korea and provided various policy options for the improvement of the preferential loan system designed to support the SMEs in Korea.
After the conference, Director General Kyung-Soo Kim of the IMER of BOK hosted dinner for the participants.
See the entire BOK/KAEA PROGRAM.
Reports on WEAI/KAEA Conference by Young-Kyu Moh
(August 20, 2008)
The 83rd Annual Conference of the Western Economic Association International (WEAI) was held June 29 - July 3, 2008 at the Sheraton Waikiki, HI, USA. The Korea-America Economic Association (KAEA) organized 3 academic sessions jointly with Korean Economic Association (KEA) at the WEAI conference: (1) Trade, FDI, and Financial Integration, (2) Real Exchange Rates and Consumption and (3) Industrial Policy and Structure.
For special event, the KAEA organized sessions for Korean junior economists at the WEAI conference and it was a huge success. Junior participants expressed great appreciation for our effort to help them and asked continuation of this event. KAEA selected 14 participants and offered 4 sessions for the Korean graduate students. The graduate students sessions were: (4) Econometric Theory I, (5) East Asian Financial Market, (6) Econometric Theory II, and (7) Topics in IO and Regional Growth. We are very pleased to support future generations of Korean economists by providing graduate students opportunities to present their papers in one of the well-recognized international conferences and wish to continue this event.
KAEA hosted dinner on June 29 and 11 members of KAEA and KEA enjoyed cool breeze and great time in Hawaii.
Reports on KEA/KAEA Conference by Sunghyun Kim
(September 2, 2008)
The 13th International Conference jointly organized by the KEA and KAEA was successfully held on August 12-13 at the Dasan Hall of Economics, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU). We, the Executive Committee of the KAEA, would like to express sincere gratitude to the organizers of this wonderful conference, especially KEA President Jong Won Lee and the program committee chair, Sung Tai Kim. The main theme of the conference was "Leap-off Strategy for Global Korea." Total 24 members from the KAEA participated in the conference (originally, 25 papers were selected but one person could not make the trip). Over the two days, the conference featured 24 academic sessions on various topics including micro, macro, international, econometrics and finance. Some sessions featured graduate students to give them opportunities to present papers in international conferences.
Conference was very successful in three aspects: (1) Quality of papers and participants at this year's conference (from both KEA and KAEA) was much better than previous years, (2) It was a truly international conference with participants from US, UK, Japan, Australia, etc. In particular, among 24 KAEA participants, 7 of them are from outside of US, (3) KAEA provided two (bonus) sessions that attracted many KEA and KAEA members (details below).
A welcome reception was held on the evening of August 11th hosted by the President of the KEA. More than forty people attended the reception. The opening ceremony started with speeches by President of the KEA, Jong Won Lee, and the President-elect of the KAEA, Yoonbai Kim (current President Joon Park could not participate due to personal matters), and Vice President (also President-elect) of Japanese Economic Association, Masahisa Fujita. There were three plenary sessions including two sessions on "climate change, resources and energy issues for global Korea," organized by Korea Energy Economic Institute and Korea LPG Association. The third session was on "regional economic cooperation in Northeast Asia for global Korea," organized by Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. A special session was held on the first day: Prime Minister Seung-Soo Han gave a special speech on "Climate change regime and green growth for global Korea." President of SKKU hosted lunch on the first day and two dinners were hosted by main donors of the conference (Korea LPG Association and Korea Energy Economics Institute).
On the second day, KAEA hosted lunch for all participants and offered two brown bag seminars. Topic of the first seminar was "Are there shortcuts to publication in international journals?" and four distinguished KAEA members lead the discussion: Yongsung Chang (Rochester), Jinill Kim (FRB), Sokbae Lee (UCL, UK) and Donghoon Lee (NY Fed). More than forty KEA and KAEA members enjoyed this seminar. The second seminar was on "Successful application strategy for studying abroad." And three KAEA members lead the discussion: Sunghyun Kim (Suffolk), Choong Shik Kang (IMF) and YongSeok Shin (Washington Univ at St. Louis). Many graduate and undergraduate students participated in this seminar.
A detailed list of the participants and papers are available at the KEA homepage http://www.kea.ne.kr/renewal/main/main.php.
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