This thesis is aimed to guide ocean-going companies to reasonable decisions and to increase the competitiveness of Korean shipping industry by clarifying the determinants of political costs of ocean-going companies, which only depend for the enormous amount of money to introduce the operating fixed assets, or the vessels, upon the supporting policy from the government or the loan from the related financial institutions.
In this study, the political costs of the shipping industry were measured with the corporation tax, as explicit taxes shown on the financial state- ments, and with tax, public imports and donation as implicit taxes, divided by total sales profit.
As independent variables of the political costs, 5 elements were settled such as company size(sales, total assets and market share), debit ratio, capital concentration ratio, profitability(operating profit) and marine risk(sales fluctuation). To verify the relations and the effect level between dependent variables and political costs, the Multiple Regression Analysis Model was applied using SPSS statistical pack- age(8.0). Because the relations between dependent variables, if any, can affect the result of the model, the hypothesis was verified concerning Multicolinearity.
The result of the analysis shows significantly positive relations between size variables and political cost of shipping industry. Moreover, debt ratio and profitability were proved significant related with political costs of shipping industry.
These can be understood that the big company, which hold large vessel numbers, have high debt ratio and the large business have high profitability with the consideration of policy such as planned shipbuilding system fund.
This study indicates that the hypothesis of size is verified, that political costs and size variables have positive relations because shipping industry has much higher debt ratio and marine risks in its nature than any other industry, and the development and maintainment of the business are closely connected to the political matter. Under WTO system, however, Korean shipping industry is considered to continue restructuring and the rationalization of management to survive keen competition of the world shipping market.
It is the limitation in this study that this study can not be free from the influence of biasness of sample distribution since the study analyzed only the financial statements in 1999 of the 29 ocean-going companies accor- ding to the Multiple Regression Analysis Model. Therefore, when it concerns to the limitation of this thesis, further studies need either to be subdivided on time series or to be compared with other industries.