Advances in the corporate finance literature: a survey of recent studies on Korea

The purpose of this paper is to provide a survey of recent studies on Korean firms’ financial policies and their interactions with financial markets, and suggest directions for future research.

The authors review the finance research on Korean firms and markets, focusing on the articles published in the last 20 years.

This survey of the recent Korean finance literature covers the research on the capital structure and the distinct financing behaviors of chaebol-affiliated firms and independent firms; the factors affecting the costs of capital and firms’ preferences for capital budgeting methods; raising capital through public and private equity issuance; corporate governance and the market for corporate control; payout policies; and bank-firm relationship. The authors suggest a number of future research directions that may lead to significant contributions to the literature.

This paper provides the first comprehensive review of the post-crisis corporate finance literature in Korea.