Professor, PSPS at Yeungnam University
Republic of Korea
I study how people and firms that are shut out of formal finance can be brought back in — and what it costs the institutions that try.
My work began in asset pricing, asking how risk becomes price in capital markets. Two moves into practice changed the question. At the Daegu-Gyeongbuk Development Institute I worked on local public finance; at the Korea Federation of Credit Guarantee Foundations I worked on the risk side of small-business credit guarantees. Since then I have been asking a different question: not how risk is priced, but who ends up bearing it.
Over sixteen years that question has moved across three settings — micro-enterprise policy finance and credit guarantee schemes, community financial institutions and financial inclusion, and most recently the international transfer of cooperative finance institutions. The through-line is information asymmetry, and the recurring finding is that the same policy produces opposite results in different places.
At PSPS I teach microfinance, financial cooperatives, and research methods to civil servants and development practitioners from Asia, Africa, and Central Asia.
FIND-BRIDGE — Financial Inclusion and Development: Building Resilient and Inclusive Development through Global Engagement
Research Interests
Credit Guarantee Systems
How much guarantee supply a public scheme can sustain, and what determines its fiscal limit. My work identifies the subrogation (default payout) rate — not the size of the endowment — as the binding constraint, and finds that steady, adequate supply outperforms counter-cyclical flexibility.
Financial Inclusion and Community Finance
Measuring inclusion at the sub-national level and linking it to institutional performance. Using a twelve-year panel of Korean municipalities, I find that inclusion and efficiency are not in conflict — and that branch closure improves efficiency in the capital region while damaging both inclusion and efficiency outside it.
Credit Assessment and Alternative Data
Whether non-financial information can extend credit to thin-file borrowers. Unstructured non-financial data adds little beyond bureau scores; structured commercial-district data improves prediction, especially in the low-score range.
Cooperative Finance and Development
Placing Korean community finance within the global lineage of cooperative banking — Raiffeisen, its failed transplants, and the Korean case — and asking what transfers across borders and what does not.
Selected Publications
Comparative Study on Management Efficiency and Financial Inclusion of Korean Community Credit Cooperatives by Region, Korean Journal of Business Administration, 36(1), 2023.
Effects of Overseas Remittances on Economic Growth of South-East Asian Countries, Journal of Trade Credit and Insurance, 24(1), 2023 (with Munkhgerel Bayarmagnai and Jongha Lee).
The Effect of Branch Reduction of Community Financial Institutions on Regional Financial Inclusion and Management Efficiency, Journal of Regional Development, 54(3), 2022.
A Study on Financial Inclusion of Korean Community Credit Cooperatives by Region, Korean Business Education Review, 37(6), 2022 (with Soonhong Park).
Differential Impacts of COVID-19 on the Self-Employed, Asia Pacific Journal of Small Business, 44(2), 2022 (with Jongwook Lee and Namsoo Cha).
Idiosyncratic Volatility, Conditional Liquidity, and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns, Asia-Pacific Journal of Business, 12(1), 2021 (with Sungsoon Cho and Soonhong Park).
The Effect of Unexpected Minimum Wage Shocks on Employment by Industry and Job Characteristics, Journal of Industrial Economics and Business, 33(4), 2020 (with Sangsoo Lim and Jongha Lee).
Growth Option, Uncertainty, and R&D Investment, Journal of Corporate and Innovation Studies, 43(1), 2020 (with Seungwook Jang).
Does Non-Financial Information Matter in Credit Scoring of Micro-Enterprises?, Korean Journal of Management Consulting, 16(2), 2016 (with Mansoo Kang and Hyungtak Lee).
Improving the Efficiency of Policy Funds for Micro-Enterprises, Asia Pacific Journal of Small Business, 35(4), 2013.
Current Work
PSPS Alumni Panel (PAP) — A ten-year longitudinal panel tracking institutional implementation in development finance, financial inclusion, and cooperatives across sixteen countries, through PSPS alumni working as front-line practitioners. Existing sources (Global Findex, IMF FAS, OECD DAC CRS) measure whether institutions exist; PAP measures whether they work. Design stage.
Korean Community Finance in the Global Cooperative Lineage — A reference study placing Korean village credit cooperatives (est. 1963) within the Raiffeisen tradition, alongside the documented transplant failures in Ireland and Bengal. In preparation.
Optimal Leverage of Credit Guarantee Schemes — Extending domestic work on guarantee capacity to international comparison. Commissioned research for the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund and the Korea Technology Finance Corporation, 2024.
Contact
Office Park Chung Hee School of Policy and Saemaul, Yeungnam University
280 Daehak-ro, Gyeongsan, Gyeongbuk 38541, Republic of Korea
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Inquiries about collaboration, advisory work, and invited talks are welcome by email.