Stock Market Liquidity And Dividend Policy In Korean Corporations

The liquidity hypothesis predicts a negative relationship between stock liquidity and dividend payout propensity, i.e., a firm will decide to pay dividends to compensate for the liquidity demand of investors. This study comprehensively examines whether the liquidity hypothesis applies to the sample of Korean firms listed in the KOSPI and KOSDAQ markets. The main results of this paper are as follows. First, the dividend policy in Korean firms does not support the liquidity hypothesis, contradictory to the existing empirical studies. Next, the explanatory power of the liquidity hypothesis is even weaker for the KOSDAQ market, inconsistent with international evidence. Finally, even when we focus on the firm-year observations with non-negligible dividend payments, the liquidity hypothesis does not explain the dividend policy of Korean firms either. Our findings significantly contribute to the literature by robustly confirming the very limited role of the liquidity hypothesis for Korean financial markets. 

Determination of Refrigerant Path Number for Fin-tube Condenser Considering Heat Transfer Performance and Pumping Power

Fin-tube heat exchangers are widely used in air-conditioners and heat pumps, which are constructed with a lot of tubes. Refrigerant circuit of heat exchanger with numerous pipe can be constructed by many methods. Refrigerant circuit design is usually determined designer’s experience and case by case test without guides. The number of path affects largely on heat exchanger performance. In this paper, design methodology for optimum number of path is suggested by relating convective thermal resistance and pumping power. Suggested methodology is described through an example and verified by various refrigerant circuit simulation results

Three Essays in Corporate Finance

This dissertation consists of three essays on corporate finance. In the first chapter, I investigate how a liquidity cost associated with debt- `debt servicing cost' affects a firm's capital structure policy. In contrast to the standard capital structure theory prediction that builds on a trade-off between interest tax shields and expected bankruptcy costs, public firms use debt quite conservatively. To address this well known debt conservatism puzzle (Graham 2000), I argue that servicing debt drains valuable liquidity for a financially constrained firm and hence endogenously creates `debt servicing costs,' which have received little attention in the literature. To examine the influence of debt servicing costs on capital structure choices, I develop and estimate a dynamic corporate finance model with interest tax shields, liquidity management, investment, external debt and equity financing costs, and capital adjustment costs. By using the marginal value of liquidity as a natural measure of the debt servicing costs, I find that (1) an increase in financial leverage results in higher debt servicing costs, even with risk-free debt. (2) a smaller firm tends to experience greater debt servicing costs because of its endogenously large investment demands; and (3) in the majority of cases, equity proceeds are used for cash retention as well as capital expenditure, especially when a firm faces large current and future investment needs. In addition, I quantitatively show that large debt servicing costs are closely associated with low leverage and frequent equity financing by analyzing the role of fixed operating costs and convex capital adjustment costs. In the second chapter, I empirically support the theoretical debt servicing costs analysis of the previous chapter. I firstly examine the structural estimation method used for the calibration of my model in the first chapter. The statistical property of the simulated method of moments estimator and detailed identification scheme for the calibration are investigated in the first half of this chapter. Then I cross-sectionally confirm the validity of debt servicing costs predictions on capital structure choices. I study how each firm's convex capital adjustment costs, operating leverage, profit volatility, and future investment needs influence capital structure policies. Consistent with the debt servicing costs predictions, firms with higher convex capital adjustment costs, higher operating leverage, higher profit volatility and larger future investment demands show lower leverage ratios and more frequent equity financing activities. These findings shed new lights on pervasively conservative debt policy in U.S. public firms. A higher profitability observed in large future investment demands firms also suggests the importance of debt servicing costs consideration in resolving the puzzling negative correlation between profitability and leverage ratios. In the third chapter, I examine how macroeconomic conditions affect the cyclical variations in capital structure policies. As in the financial crisis of 2008, economic contractions affect a firm's profitability, investments and external financing conditions altogether. To address the effects of these simultaneous changes on capital structure dynamics, I develop and estimate a dynamic trade-off model with investment, payouts, and liquidity policies with macroeconomic profitability and financing shocks. Investment dynamics and a higher value of liquidity of economic downturn are pivotal in capital structure dynamics; the former drives the issuance of debt and equity, and the latter leads to active debt retirements and conservative debt issues in upturns. My model yields the following main results: (1) Equity issues are pro-cyclical, and concentrated for small, low profit, and large investment demand firms in earlier stage of economic upturns. (2) Payouts peak in later stages of upturns and co-move positively with equity issues; (3) Debt policies move counter-cyclically, and leverage ratios after debt issuance and retirement are even higher during economic downturns. My comparative static analysis predicts pro-cyclical debt policy for financially constrained firms, and pervasively conservative use of debt for firms expecting financial market shutdowns, a sharp profitability drop, or a longer stay in economic downturns

Three-way Translocation of MLL/MLLT3, t(1;9;11)(p34.2;p22;q23), in a Pediatric Case of Acute Myeloid Leukemia

The chromosome band 11q23 is a common target region of chromosomal translocation in different types of leukemia, including infantile leukemia and therapy-related leukemia. The target gene at 11q23, MLL, is disrupted by the translocation and becomes fused to various translocation partners. We report a case of AML with a rare 3-way translocation involving chromosomes 1, 9, and 11: t(1;9;11)(p34.2;p22;q23). A 3-yr-old Korean girl presented with a 5-day history of fever. A diagnosis of AML was made on the basis of the morphological evaluation and immunophenotyping of bone marrow specimens. Flow cytometric immunophenotyping showed blasts positive for myeloid lineage markers and aberrant CD19 expression. Karyotypic analysis showed 46,XX,t(1;9;11)(p34.2;p22;q23) in 19 of the 20 cells analyzed. This abnormality was involved in MLL/MLLT3 rearrangement, which was confirmed by qualitative multiplex reverse transcription-PCR and interphase FISH. She achieved morphological and cytogenetic remission after 1 month of chemotherapy and remained event-free for 6 months. Four cases of t(1;9;11)(v;p22;q23) have been reported previously in a series that included cases with other 11q23 abnormalities, making it difficult to determine the distinctive clinical features associated with this abnormality. To our knowledge, this is the first description of t(1;9;11) with clinical and laboratory data, including the data for the involved genes, MLL/MLLT3

Retrieval of total precipitable water from Himawari-8 AHI data: A comparison of random forest, extreme gradient boosting, and deep neural network

Total precipitable water (TPW), a column of water vapor content in the atmosphere, provides information on the spatial distribution of moisture. The high-resolution TPW, together with atmospheric stability indices such as convective available potential energy (CAPE), is an effective indicator of severe weather phenomena in the pre-convective atmospheric condition. With the advent of high performing imaging instrument onboard geostationary satellites such as Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) onboard Himawari-8 of Japan and Advanced Meteorological Imager (AMI) onboard GeoKompsat-2A of Korea, it is expected that unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution data (e.g., AMI plans to provide 2 km resolution data at every 2 min over the northeast part of East Asia) will be provided. To derive TPW from such high-resolution data in a timely fashion, an efficient algorithm is highly required. Here, machine learning approaches-random forest (RF), extreme gradient boosting (XGB), and deep neural network (DNN)-are assessed for the TPW retrieved from AHI over the clear sky in Northeast Asia area. For the training dataset, the nine infrared brightness temperatures (BT) of AHI (BT8 to 16 centered at 6.2, 6.9, 7.3, 8.6, 9.6, 10.4, 11.2, 12.4, and 13.3 ??m, respectively), six dual channel differences and observation conditions such as time, latitude, longitude, and satellite zenith angle for two years (September 2016 to August 2018) are used. The corresponding TPW is prepared by integrating the water vapor profiles from InterimEuropean Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Re-Analysis data (ERA-Interim). The algorithm performances are assessed using the ERA-Interim and radiosonde observations (RAOB) as the reference data. The results show that the DNN model performs better than RF and XGB with a correlation coefficient of 0.96, a mean bias of 0.90 mm, and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 4.65 mm when compared to the ERA-Interim. Similarly, DNN results in a correlation coefficient of 0.95, a mean bias of 1.25 mm, and an RMSE of 5.03 mm when compared to RAOB. Contributing variables to retrieve the TPW in each model and the spatial and temporal analysis of the retrieved TPW are carefully examined and discussed. ?? 2019 by the authors