This paper documents how economies in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region have integrated financially with the rest of the world since the 1990s.
... See More + First, the region is increasingly more connected with itself and with other economies. Although economies in the North capture the bulk of the region's investments, EAP's connectivity with the South has grown relatively faster. Second, the largest economies in the region (China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore) account for most of EAP's cross-border investments. Third, compared with the other South regions, EAP displays a higher level of intraregional and outward investments, reflecting the region's role as a net capital exporter. The differences with South regions are persistent over time. Although EAP lags behind as a destination of foreign investments, inflows to developing EAP economies are comparable to those to other South regions. Fourth, EAP's financial integration is related to its international trade patterns.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7772 JUL 27, 2016
This volume a collaborative work between the World Bank’ Global Governance Practice and a team of researchers working with the Korean Development Institute is dedicated to the proposition that there is much that can be learned from a careful and nuanced assessment of Korea’s experience with e-governance.
... See More + It seeks to draw lessons both from the large reservoir of experience as to what has worked, as well as the more limited and isolated examples of what has not. In particular, it seeks to achieve two objectives. The first is to accurately understand, capture and distill the key dimensions of Korea’s e-governance experience so that it can be properly understood and appreciated. Towards this end, some of the world’s leading experts on Korea’s e-governance experience have been engaged in its preparation, and their conclusions have been carefully vetted and reviewed by other leading scholars of the role of IT systems within government. The goal is to avoid flip generalizations or characterizations, such as political will is important or it is important to embed e-governance within a broader strategy to develop a domestic IT industry, but to truly understand the complex interplay between differing political, economic and bureaucratic interests and how they shaped decisions about developing the technological and human infrastructure that would support Korea’s successful thrust to be the world’s leading nation in this area. The second is to ponder the lessons learned and what did and did not work from Korea’s experience for other developing countries seeking to strengthen the role of information technology within their public sectors.
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Publication 106581 JUL 05, 2016
Karippacheril, Tina George; Kim, Soonhee; Beschel Jr, Robert P. (Editor); Choi, Changyong (Editor)Disclosed
This paper reviews the Republic of Korea's experience with electronic tax invoices for its value-added tax regime from the perspectives of tax policy makers and administrators.
... See More + The paper evaluates Korea's implementation of electronic tax invoicing and analyzes its effect on tax compliance through enhanced transparency of business transactions and taxpayer services. First implemented in 2011, mandatory electronic tax invoicing has been credited with lowering tax compliance costs and raising the transparency of business transactions. Effective policy design and implementation have contributed to the country's success with electronic tax invoicing. Measured in transaction value, the electronic tax invoice adoption rate reached 99.8 percent in the first year and rose to 99.9 percent by 2013, compared with 15 percent before electronic tax invoicing became mandatory. According to a survey of taxpayers and tax practitioners in Korea that was conducted as part of this research study, 69.4 percent of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that mandatory electronic tax invoicing has contributed to curbing value-added tax evasion by raising transaction transparency, and 72.9 percent agreed or strongly agreed that it has improved taxpayer service by facilitating the convenience of tax filing or automating the issuance of invoices. The review of Korea's experiences gives credence to the contention that well-planned and well-executed compulsory electronic tax invoices can materially enhance tax compliance through significant institutional and perceptual changes in tax administration.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7592 MAR 07, 2016
Korea Issue no. 10: Since the late 1970s and the introduction of modern information technology (IT) in the justice sector, the development and implementation of IT solutions has become one of most important tools utilized by judiciaries for providing more efficient and effective services and improving court performance.
... See More + Providing IT solutions such as e-filing, for example, reduces litigant cost and increases access to court services where many functions can be done by the click of a mouse. This note outlines the approach taken by the Korean judiciary in developing, implementing, and successfully leveraging IT solutions for the benefit of the justice sector and its users.
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Water security and water quality affect numerous economic sectors and areas: agriculture, energy, disaster management, and others. Countries need balanced and integrated approaches that are economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable.
... See More + Threats related to climate change have added to the complexity, and to the importance, of water resource management. Korea’s integrated water resources management approach since the 1990s reflects the country’s “green” climate-resilient development path. The Korean Green Growth Trust Fund’s (KGGTF) 3rd “Knowledge Note”, Promoting Green Growth through Water Resources Management: the Case of Republic of Korea, outlines key responses to Korea’s water resource challenges. The report highlights the Korean Government’s “Four Major River Restoration Project (4MRRP)”, a multi-purpose, green-growth infrastructure initiative. Involving five ministries and 78 local authorities in a comprehensive and integrated approach, the Note showcases lessons from 4MRRP for other countries to learn from Korea’s experience overcoming institutional, legislative, governance, technical and financial hurdles.
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Working Paper 102687 JAN 01, 2016
Ishiwatari,Mikio; Wataya,Eiko; Shin, Taesun; Kim, Daeil; Song, Jiseon; Kim, SeyiDisclosed
This economy profile for Doing Business 2016 presents the 11 Doing Business indicators for Korea, Republic of. To allow for useful comparison, the profile also provides data for other selected economies (comparator economies) for each indicator.
... See More + Doing Business 2016 is the 13th edition in a series of annual reports measuring the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business; for 2015 Korea, Republic of ranks 4. A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 189 economies from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and over time. Doing Business sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations. It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 11 areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and labor market regulation. The data in this report are current as of June 1, 2015 (except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover the period from January to December 2014).
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This country data report summarizes the data from the worldwide governance indicators (WGI) project for Korea Republic. The WGI report six aggregate governance indicators for over 200 countries and territories over the period 1996-2014, covering: (i) voice and accountability, (ii) political stability and absence of violence and terrorism, (iii) government effectiveness, (iv) regulatory quality, (v) rule of law, and (vi) control of corruption.
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Megacities in developing countries suffer from serious traffic congestion, high levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and heavy air pollution.
... See More + These urban areas face a stark dilemma: economic expansion attracts more people and vehicles; but the resulting traffic and pollution hinder further growth while reducing the quality of life for their citizens. Not long ago, Seoul faced a similar conundrum. Choked with pollution and traffic jams, it changed course and helped Korea make a historic transition to green urban transport. It shifted from supply-side policies focused on expanding roadways and metro lines to green demand-side policies focused on creating transit-oriented cities. Today, Seoul boasts a passenger-trip share for metro and bus of more than 60 percent. Energy consumption in Korea’s road sector is lower than in other countries with similar gross domestic product (GDP). Congestion costs have been decreasing, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the transport sector have been kept under control. This path breaking transition was founded on multimodal solutions integrated by information and communication technology (ICT) in a context of strong political leadership and public financing.
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This note lays out the rationale for including land administration quality index in the standard ‘registering property’ indicator by doing business and discusses initial evidence from the global sample, showing that many countries, including some that have performed well on Doing Business’s traditional ranking, have a long way to go to establish a system of land administration that is reliable and transparent, achieves sufficient coverage, and minimizes disputes.
... See More + The cases in this brochure document that by smartly deploying new technology, countries can make progress in this direction irrespective of their initial income level. Continued monitoring and learning from experience at all levels had an important role in facilitating such progress. Doing Business will contribute to this agenda by elevating the profile of land governance, tracking countries’ performance with respect to land administration quality index, and fostering global exchange and learning from good performers.
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To achieve the new national development vision, Korean leadership took a strategic approach in which the government played an active role, similar to the visionary approach used to achieve rapid economic development in the 1960s and 1970s.
... See More + The government established a legal framework on low carbon and green growth, set up a governance structure to implement green growth initiatives systematically, and established fiscal policies and budget resources to support the initiatives firmly. The purpose of this note is primarily to explain why Korea adopted a green growth strategy as a new national development paradigm and how it was implemented by the government. Section one gives overview; section two illustrates why green growth was a necessity in Korea; section three describes how green growth was implemented by the Korean government, particularly with respect to institutional arrangements and fiscal adjustments for green growth; section four presents the key outcomes thus far; and section five identifies lessons that can be applied in other countries.
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This paper uses a three-step Bayesian cross-entropy estimation approach in an environment of noisy and scarce data to estimate behavioral parameters for a computable general equilibrium model.
... See More + The estimation also measures how labor-augmenting productivity and other structural parameters in the model may have shifted over time to contribute to the generation of historically observed changes in the economic arrangement. In this approach, the parameters in a computable general equilibrium model are treated as fixed but unobserved, represented as prior mean values with prior error mass functions. Estimation of the parameters involves using an information-theoretic Bayesian approach to exploit additional information in the form of new data from a series of social accounting matrices, which are assumed were measured with error. The estimation procedure is "efficient" in the sense that it uses all available information and makes no assumptions about unavailable information. As illustration, the methodology is applied to estimate the parameters of a computable general equilibrium model using alternative data sets for the Republic of Korea and Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7174 JAN 01, 2015
Korea experienced a financial crisis in the late 1990s, which it overcame successfully. The rich experiences gained in handling past crises have helped in the establishment of a broad crisis management framework in Korea.
... See More + The successful management of the 1997 financial crisis is reported to have been guided by the following principles: (i) bold and decisive measures are required to regain market confidence, rather than incremental ones; (ii) though Government will take the lead in crisis management initiatives, private capital should be encouraged to fully participate in the process; (iii) bank recapitalization and creation of a bad bank are not mutually exclusive options; the crisis management measures should be politically acceptable and have built-in exit strategies with clear time-frames; (iv) moral hazard should be minimized; and (v) all forms of financial protectionism must be rejected. Korea responded to the 2008 global financial crisis with certain policy measures that helped the Korean financial and real sectors to weather the immediate effects of the global crisis. These included policy and financial support to stabilize the money, securities, and bond markets, to extend financial support to corporate and financial entities, and to support small and medium enterprise (SME) and micro finance sectors. The authorities introduced a series of measures to contain the stress in Mutual Savings Banks (MSBs) during 2011 and 2012 and turned them around. The stress in MSBs was largely due to an extensive industry-wide exposure to troubled real estate project financing as well as shareholder and management misconduct.4 Faced with sector-wide stress and declining depositor confidence the financial sector regulatory agencies jointly announced new mitigating measures for the MSB sector.
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This report discusses the remarks delivered by Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank. He discusses that Ebola continues to represent a serious threat, not only in terms of human lives, especially in the three most affected countries - Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra, but to the regional and global economies as well.
... See More + To promote inclusive growth, the World Bank Group works to facilitate the diffusion of knowledge and support countries in investing in the productivity and skills of their people. Taking on new challenges, solving problems creatively, and working across different backgrounds and cultures, will be important tasks for the vast majority of human beings in the 21st century.
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This economy profile for Doing Business 2015 presents the 11 Doing Business indicators for Korea, Rep. To allow for useful comparison, the profile also provides data for other selected economies (comparator economies) for each indicator.
... See More + Doing Business 2015 is the 12th edition in a series of annual reports measuring the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business; for 2015 Korea, Rep ranks 5. A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 189 economies from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and over time. Doing Business measures regulations affecting 11 areas of the life of a business known as indicators. Ten of these areas are included in this year's ranking on the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also measures labor market regulation, which is not included in this year's ranking. The data in this report are current as of June 1, 2014 (except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover the period from January to December 2013).
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This report contains the assessments of the Bank of Korea (BOK)-Wire and Korea Exchange (KRX) Central Counterparty (CCP) based on the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS) - International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMI).
... See More + The assessment was undertaken in the context of the International Monetary Fund's Financial Sector Assessment Program to the Republic of Korea in April and July 2013. The objective of the assessment has been to identify potential risks related to the FMIs that may affect financial stability. The scope of the assessment includes two main FMIs as well as the authorities in Korea responsible for regulation, supervision, and oversight of FMIs. The BOK-Wire and the KRX CCP are assessed against all relevant principles of the PFMI. The authorities, being the BOK, the Financial Services Committee, and the Financial Supervisory Service, are assessed using the responsibilities for authorities of FMIs. This report provides introduction; methodology and information used for the assessment; overview of the payment, clearing, and settlement landscape; and key findings follow up for the BOK-Wire ; key findings and follow-up for the KRX-CCP; key findings and follow up for authorities; recommendations for the BOK-Wire ; recommendations for the KRX-CCP; and recommendations for authorities.
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This assessment of the current state of the implementation of the Basel core principles for effective banking supervision (BCP) in the Republic of Korea has been completed as part of a financial sector assessment program (FSAP) update undertaken by the international monetary fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) during 2013.
... See More + It reflects the regulatory and supervisory framework in place as of the date of the completion of the assessment. An assessment of the effectiveness of banking supervision requires a review of the legal framework, and detailed examination of the policies and practices of the institution(s) responsible for banking regulation and supervision. In line with the BCP methodology, the assessment focused on the financial services commission - financial supervisory authority (FSC-FSS). This FSAP provides introduction; information and methodology used for assessment; institutional and macroeconomic setting and market structure - overview; preconditions for effective banking supervision; summary compliance with the Basel core principles; and detailed assessment.
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An assessment of the level of implementation of the IOSCO Objectives and Principles of Securities Regulation (IOSCO Principles) was conducted in the Republic of Korea (Korea) from April 3 to 19, 2013 as part of the IMF-World Bank Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP).
... See More + The assessment was made by Eija Holttinen, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, IMF, and Andrea Corcoran, an external expert working for the World Bank. The previous IOSCO assessment of Korea was conducted in 2001-02 before the first IOSCO Assessment Methodology had been developed. From the perspective of the IOSCO Principles, this is therefore effectively a first assessment. Hence, comparisons with the prior assessment are discouraged since the process has since been refined to promote consistency and has become progressively more rigorous. The assessment was based on: (i) a self-assessment and additional written responses prepared by the authorities; (ii) reviews of the relevant legislation and regulations; (iii) meetings with the management and staff of the FSC, SFC, FSS, Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MOSF), Bank of Korea (BOK), Seoul Central District Public Prosecutors Office; and (iv) meetings with SROs and market participants, including the KRX, Korea Securities Depository (KSD), KOFIA, KICPA, Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry, banks, securities companies, fund managers, issuers, credit rating agencies, audit firms and local lawyers specialized in securities markets law.
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Korea has learned valuable lessons applicable to sustainable economic development through its journey from low-income country in the 1960s to one of the most dynamic economies in the world.
... See More + Once plagued by air pollution and high energy imports, Korea positioned its program of resource management and climate change as an opportunity for socially inclusive economic growth. Projects implemented across sectors in Korea, urban planning, transport, ICT, water and waste management, carbon financing, and others, are not only reducing greenhouse gases (GHG), they are also promoting broad prosperity while making Korea more resilient to both economic shocks and natural disasters. Korea’s interest in promoting green growth does not stop at its own borders. Established in 2011, the USD $40-million four year KGGTF’s over-arching goal is to share knowledge and lessons based on their experiences and to build green growth planning capacity in WBG client countries. The KGGTF finances green growth programs, projects, and knowledge activities in partnership with the World Bank Group (WBG), the Korean Green Growth Partnership (KGGP).
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This report summarizes the findings of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) Update for South Korea undertaken in April 2013 by a joint IMF-World Bank team.
... See More + This first mission assessed the observance of selected international standards and codes, and initiated discussions on a broad range of financial sector stability issues. In the case of each of the sector assessments new methodologies adopted since the global financial crisis were employed. A second mission in July 2013 completed its review, documented its assessment in a draft Aide-Memoire, and reviewed with the authorities the Aide-Memoire as well as draft technical notes covering a range of topics. The objectives of the FSAP were to review developments in the financial sector since the initial 2003 FSAP and in light of the lessons from the global financial crisis, assess and formulate recommendations related to financial stability and the financial sector oversight framework. This report presents main findings and recommendations.
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Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) 89403 JUN 01, 2014