- KIEP presents the JEAI Award for Excellence 2015 to Prof. E. Young Song at Sogang University. 

  The Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP) has selected the paper “Trade Finance and Trade Collapse during the Global Financial Crisis: Evidence from the Republic of Korea,” authored by Prof. E. Young Song of Sogang University for the JEAI Award for Excellence 2015. 

  As a quarterly journal published by KIEP, the Journal of East Asian Economic Integration (JEAI) presents an Award for Excellence annually for the purposes of building stronger theoretical foundations for and advancement of interdisciplinary research on international economics. The winner of the Award is offered a prize of KRW 5,000,000.

  The 2015 Award for Excellence Selection Committee, composed of six members, reviewed 16 papers published between 2014 and 2015. The committee applied four criteria of excellence for selection: academic contribution, originality, logical clarity, and policy implications. Although two other papers were honorably mentioned, the majority of committee members recommended Professor Songs paper for nomination; especially on the grounds that it reflects the peculiarities of the Korean economic structure well, providing important policy implications, and that the level of academic discourse between the reviewers and the author shows greater intellectual depth than in other cases.

  Professor Songs paper is an empirical analysis of the effect of trade finance on trade, using Korean firm level data during the global financial crisis. The paper finds that the reduction of trade finance has not affected export performance of Korean firms in general. However, the paper finds that small exporters dependent on cross-border payables have suffered heavily from the crisis. The paper suggests that firm size heterogeneity could be a medium factor determining the relationship between various financial instruments and export growth, which has important policy implications for industrial policy in Korea. The paper therefore has made an important contribution to the literature by providing new empirical results for the question that had remained unanswered hitherto regarding the role of financial constraint in trade.

  The award ceremony for the two authors was held on 2915th MarchJanuary, 2016 at Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP).