Economic inequality remains a persistent and widely studied issue in the social sciences. South Korea provides a striking example where the top 23 business groups, controlled by ultra-wealthy, family-owned conglomerates (chaebols), have maintained significant economic persistence and resisted...

In this article, I assess conglomerates in Chile have affected product market competition. The analysis starts with a review of the efficiency and rent-seeking for the existence of conglomerates. The prima facie evidence fails to find efficiency reasons for the existence of conglomerates in...

This study examines the impact of the geopolitical risk (GPR) on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activities of South Korean business groups. Our empirical results indicate that GPR is positively associated with the ESG activities of South Korean firms, and this relationship is...

Competition increases productivity boosting innovation and economic growth. Competition fosters cost reductions, innovation and promotes productivity growth. This paper reviews global and regional trends on conglomeration in digital markets, especially through mergers and acquisitions. In recent...

This study examines the relationship between corporate governance (CG) and agency costs using Korean market data, particularly for chaebol firms. The final sample includes 660 firm-year observations between 2016 and 2020 for Korean non-financial firms listed on the Korean Composite Stock Price...

The chapter is organized as follows. The section “The Business Structure of Financial Conglomerates” provides an overarching discussion on the corporate structure of financial conglomerates along with some data on these institutions. The section “The Drivers of Financial Conglomerates”...

This paper examines the impact of business group affiliation on the performance and corporate policies of Korean listed firms over the period 2007–2019. This study proposes a novel approach to observe heterogeneity in the affiliation effects. Overall, we conclude that business group...

We exploit the rich data of business groups in China and identify sell-side analysts following multiple listed firms within a business group (BG analysts). For a group firm, we find that BG analysts issue more accurate forecasts than non-BG analysts. Such an effect is more pronounced when the...

Using a unique dataset of Korean firms, we demonstrate that the effects of public listing on trade credit demand are heterogeneous between chaebol and non-chaebol firms. While we find a significant negative relationship between public listing and trade credit demand for non-chaebol firms, we do...

This paper examines the effect of Japanese corporate groupings, keiretsu, on the informativeness of earnings. Keiretsu firms maintain close financial and personal ties through cross-shareholding, credit holding, interlocking corporate directorates, and various business transactions. We propose...

Since the crypto winter began in early 2022, several market crashes and institutional collapses of crypto intermediaries, particularly Three Arrows Capital and, recently FTX—have ravaged the innovative financial ecosystem. Among global regulators, the major discourse is no longer the full...

In the present time, corporate restructuring has become an important component in the overall decisions of the company. Reorganization of a company’s operations that could be either financial or operational is called corporate restructuring. A company proposes to restructure its structure for...

Conglomeration has traditionally been prevalent in Asia, a trend that is currently exacerbated by the characteristics of digital markets. While conglomerates offer important benefits, from economies of scale and diversification to the development of new products, they can also have a negative...

The datafication of digital reality and the diffusion of increasingly powerful AI systems have transformed the context within which diversification takes place, resulting in new realities for firms and necessitating new organizational capabilities. Building on their own field research and the...

1. Introduction -- Part I: Korean Specialties -- 2. Chaebol Antitrust Policy in Korea -- 3. SMEs Antitrust Policy in Korea -- Part II: Conventional Competition Policies -- 4. Market Dominance Abuse Regulation in Korea -- 5. Merger Regulation in Korea -- 6. Cartel Regulation in Korea -- 7....

We show that industrial ownership structures, such as keiretsu groupings in Japan, may significantly impact firms' incentives to engage in FDI. While the previous literature has mainly focused on the cost of capital advantages enjoyed by keiretsu firms, this paper examines two relatively...

In this study, we find evidence of tunneling in mergers among affiliated firms that belong to Korean business groups. Using a recent sample of Korean mergers during the 2000–2020 period, we find that control-motivated mergers to enhance the controlling family’s control over the business...

Conglomerate merger control went out of fashion in the United States and the European Union several decades ago. Both jurisdictions embraced the premise that non-horizontal mergers should normally be considered benign because exclusionary theories of harm are economically implausible, and...

A network/search view of international trade in differentiated products is proposed. It is shown that this view can explain the importance of ethnic and extended family ties in trade, the success of diversified trading intermediaries such as Japan's sogo shosha, and the ubiquity of government...

The definitions of banking, and particularly the definition aggrandized under the Banking Act, were drafted in so a rigid manner that they failed to possess futuristic qualities and foresight in light of the greatly and ever evolving field of finance. An analysis of these definitions indeed...

After facilitating the rise of streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon by licensing them high-quality content, America’s leading media conglomerates have radically changed course. They are increasingly implementing a new partial disintermediation strategy, which limits the licensing of...