Purpose : This study examines The impact of human resource investment in internal control on stock price crash risk. Effective internal control ensures that information provided is complete and accurate, financial statements are reliable. By overseeing management, internal control systems can reduce agency costs between management and outside parties. In Korea, firms have to disclose information about internal control systems. The working experience of human resources in internal control systems is also provided for interested parties. If a firm hires more experienced internal control personnel, it can better facilitate the disclosure of information. Prior studies reported that information asymmetry between managers and investors increases future stock price crash risk. Therefore, the longer working experience internal control personnel have, the lower probability stock crashes have. Research design, data and methodology : This study analyzed the association between the working experience of internal control personnel and crash risk using regression analysis on KOSPI listed companies for fiscal years 2016 through 2017. The sample consists of 1 ,034 firm-years of non-financial firms whose fiscal year end on December 31. Career spanning data of internal control personnel was collected from internal control reports. The professionalism(IC_EXP) was measured as the logarithm of the average working experience of internal control personnel in months. Negative conditional skewness(NSKEW) and down-to-up volatility (DUVOL) are used to measure firm-specific crash risk. Both measures are based on firm-specific weekly returns derived from the expanded market model. Results : We find that work experience in internal control environment is negatively related to stock price crashes. Specifically, skewness(NSKEW) and volatility (DUVOL) are reduced when firms have longer tenure of human resources in internal control division. The results imply that firms with experienced internal control personnel are less likely to experience stock price crashes. Conclusions : Stock price crashes occur when investors realize that stock prices have been inflated due to information asymmetry. There is a learning effect when internal control processes are done repetitively. Thus, firms with more experienced internal control personnel could manage their internal control more effectively. The results of this study suggest that firms could decrease information asymmetry by investing in human resources for their internal control system.

Corporate social responsibility is a self-regulating business model that helps a firm be socially accountable to the public. By practicing corporate social responsibility, firms can be conscious of the kind of impact they are having on all aspects of society, including economic, social, and environmental. Corporate social responsibility activities are not directly linked to increasing corporate performance and corporate value, but rather involve spending expenses. Based on these facts, this study verifies whether the effects of corporate social responsibility activities differ depending on the firm's situation. Research design, data and methodology: This study analyzed the effect of market competition on corporate social responsibility activities using logistic regression analysis on listed companies in the KOSPI and KOSDAQ for fiscal years 2014 through 2016. In this study, market competition was measured using the Herfindahl-Herschman Index(HHI). Higher HHI value can be interpreted as a lower degree of market competition. We also measured corporate social responsibility activities using the KEJI Index published by the Korea Economic Justice Institute (KEJI). If a firm-year is included in the top 200 companies of the KEJI Index, it is classified as a good corporate social responsibility activity firm. Results: We find that companies in less competitive market were not included in the KEJI Index. This result indicates that firms in the market with lower market competition perform less corporate social responsibility activities that incur costs. An additional analysis showed that there was a significant negative relationship between the market competition and the corporate social responsibility activity scores published by the KEJI Index. These result adds robustness to the result of the hypothesis that firms that have a monopolistic place in the market practice passive corporate social responsibility activities. Conclusions: The results show that managers of a firm in the lower market competition have a lower incentive to use limited resources for projects that are not directly related to revenue. The results of this study imply that corporate social responsibility activities vary according to the position of the business. Therefore, this study suggests that market investors should consider the degree of competition in the market when they evaluate corporate social responsibility activities.

Purpose – Prior studies reported that the opacity of information caused stock price crash. If managers fail to disclose unfavorable information about the firm over a long period of time, the stock price is overvalued compared to its original value. If the accumulated information reaches a critical point and spreads quickly to the market, the stock price plunges. Information management by management's disclosure policy can cause information uncertainty, which will lead to a plunge in stock prices in the future. Thus, this study aims at examining the impact of disclosure quality on crash risk by focusing on the unfaithful disclosure firms. Research design, data, and methodology – This study covers firms listed on KOSPI and KOSDAQ from 2004 to 2013. Firms excluded from the sample are non-December firms, capital-eroding firms, and financial firms. The financial data used in the research was extracted from the KIS-Value and TS2000 database. Unfaithful disclosure firm designation data was collected from the Korea Exchange’s electronic disclosure system (kind.krx.co.kr). Stock crash is measured as a dummy variable that equals one if a firm experiences at least one crash week over the fiscal year, and zero otherwise. Results – Empirical results as to the relation between unfaithful disclosure corporation designation and stock price crashes are as follows: There was a significant positive association between unfaithful disclosure corporation designation and stock price crash. This result supports the hypothesis that firms that have previously exhibited unfaithful disclosure behavior are more likely to suffer stock price plunges due to information asymmetry. Second, stock price crashes due to unfaithful disclosures are more likely to occur in Chaebol firms. Conclusions – While previous studies used estimates as a proxy for information opacity, this study used an objective measure such as unfaithful disclosure corporation designation. The designation by Korea Exchange is an objective evidence that the firm attempted to conceal and distort information in the previous year. The results of this study suggest that capital market investors need to investigate firms' disclosure behaviors.

Purpose – This paper examines the effect of related party transactions on crash firm-specific stock price crash risk. Ownership of a typical Korean conglomerate is concentrated in a single family. In those entities, management and board positions are often filled by family members. Therefore, a dominant shareholder can benefit from related party transactions. In Korea, firms have to report related party transactions in financial statement footnotes. However, those are not disclosed in detail. The more related party transactions are the greater information risk. Thus, companies with related party transactions are likely to experience stock price crashes. Research design, data, and methodology – 2,598 firm-year observations are used for the main analysis. Those samples are from TS2000 database from 2009 to 2013, and the database covers KOSPI-listed firms in Korea. The proxy for related party transactions (RTP) is calculated by dividing total transactions to the related-party by total sales. A dummy variable is used as a dependent variable (CRASH) in the regression model. Logistic regression is used to explain the relationship between related party transactions and crash risk. Then, the sample was separated into two groups; tunneling firms and propping firms. The relation between related party transactions and crash risk variances with features of the transaction were investigated. Results – Using a sample of KOSPI-listed firms in TS2000 database for the period of 2009–2013, I find that stock price crash risk increases as the trade volume of related-party transactions increases. Specifically, I find that the coefficient of RPT is significantly positive, supporting the prediction. In addition, this relationship is strong and robust in tunneling firms. Conclusions – The results report that firms with related party transactions are more likely to experience stock price crashes. The results mean that related party transactions increase the possibility of future stock price crashes by enlarging information asymmetry between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders. In case of tunneling, it could be seen that related party transactions are positively associated with stock crash risk. The result implies that the characteristic of the transaction influences crash risk. This study is related to a literature that investigates the effect of related party transactions on the stock market.