The shrinking middle: exploring the nexus between information and communication technology, growth, and inequality

To implement specific actions to respond to challenges accompanied by technological advances, it is essential to realize the foreseen future at different levels. This study aims to generate the forecasts of different prospects of different industries, labor market, and households, depending on the pervasiveness of the information and communication (ICT) software (SW) in production. For the analysis, we propose a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that explicitly incorporates diverse impact channels induced by ICT SW investments. Our simulation results suggest that the development of ICT SW technology can bring about both opportunities and challenges in the economic system. The results also show that advancements in ICT SW can aggravate inequalities within the economic system, while driving higher economic growth effects by accelerating the polarization of the labor market and wages/income distributions. Accordingly, our results suggest that policymakers should formulate tailored policy options to mitigate structural problems and widen income disparities driven by ICT-specific technological advances to achieve economic inclusiveness

Managing Growing Pains for the Sustainable Growth of Organizations: Evidence from the Growth Pathways and Strategic Choices of Korean Firms

Life-cycle literature suggests that business organizations evolve in consistent and predictable manners, implying that organizational structures and strategies evolve as firms move through growth stages. The sustainable growth of firms involves successful transitions between growth stages through managing different types of organizational growing pains and maintaining sustainable competitive positions, suggesting shifts in the strategic orientation of the firms as the firms grow. Based on this approach, this study proposes a holistic framework to account for linkages between determinants of a firm’s growing pains and key areas of organizational development, based on a synthesis of qualitative and quantitative findings. From statistical analyses, Korean firms are found to have proceeded through distinct stages of growing pains as they reached organizational sizes as follows: 20, 100, 300, and 500 million USD in sales revenue. Furthermore, qualitative findings suggest that business strategies evolve to deal with different types of growing pains in life-cycle stages from the systemization of management system to the revitalization process. Our results expect to provide extensive knowledge on the role of strategic management to deal with firm’s growing pains, considering both internal and external factors governing organizations. Furthermore, this study expects to provide an insightful and practical framework for managing organizational growing pains and transitions required to build sustainably successful organizations

Managing Growing Pains for the Sustainable Growth of Organizations: Evidence from the Growth Pathways and Strategic Choices of Korean Firms

Life-cycle literature suggests that business organizations evolve in consistent and predictable manners, implying that organizational structures and strategies evolve as firms move through growth stages. The sustainable growth of firms involves successful transitions between growth stages through managing different types of organizational growing pains and maintaining sustainable competitive positions, suggesting shifts in the strategic orientation of the firms as the firms grow. Based on this approach, this study proposes a holistic framework to account for linkages between determinants of a firm’s growing pains and key areas of organizational development, based on a synthesis of qualitative and quantitative findings. From statistical analyses, Korean firms are found to have proceeded through distinct stages of growing pains as they reached organizational sizes as follows: 20, 100, 300, and 500 million USD in sales revenue. Furthermore, qualitative findings suggest that business strategies evolve to deal with different types of growing pains in life-cycle stages from the systemization of management system to the revitalization process. Our results expect to provide extensive knowledge on the role of strategic management to deal with firm’s growing pains, considering both internal and external factors governing organizations. Furthermore, this study expects to provide an insightful and practical framework for managing organizational growing pains and transitions required to build sustainably successful organizations

Efficiency versus equality: Comparing design options for indirect emissions accounting in the Korean emissions trading scheme

The Korean emissions trading scheme (ETS) has one special characteristic that makes it different from other schemes, such as the EU ETS. While the other schemes consider only direct emissions from fossil fuels, the Korean ETS also regulates indirect emissions arising from the consumption of electricity. The problem of double counting arises under this setting, in which emissions from the power sector can be accounted for twice, when electricity is produced and consumed. This study aims to compare design options on indirect emissions accounting for the Korean ETS using a computable general equilibrium model. Four scenarios are generated for options accounting for direct and/or indirect emissions and are evaluated in terms of efficiency and equality. The result shows that the ETS operates most efficiently when only direct emissions are considered. However, the option that includes both direct and indirect emissions produces a competent result in terms of equality by spreading the economic burden of emissions reduction among industries. We conclude that this option can be an alternative to meet the key purposes of the Korean ETS

Driving Forces of CO2 Emissions in Emerging Countries: LMDI Decomposition Analysis on China and India’s Residential Sector

The main objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the key drivers behind changes of CO2 emissions in the residential sectors of the emerging economies, China and India. For the analysis, we investigate to what extent changes in residential emissions are due to changes in energy emissions coefficients, energy consumption structure, energy intensity, household income, and population size. We decompose the changes in residential CO2 emissions in China and India into these five contributing factors from 1990 to 2011 by applying the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method. Our results show that the increase in per capita income level was the biggest contributor to the increase of residential CO2 emissions, while the energy intensity effect had the largest effect on CO2 emissions reduction in residential sectors in both countries. This implies that investments for energy savings, technological improvements, and energy efficiency policies were effective in mitigating CO2 emissions. Our results also depict that the change in CO2 emission coefficients for fuels which include both direct and indirect emission coefficients slowed down the increase of residential emissions. Finally, our results demonstrate that changes in the population and energy consumption structure drove the increase in CO2 emissions