Given the growing importance of climate technology and its early stage of industrial development, the Korean government has supported climate-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through various policy measures, including credit guarantees. Although the extant literature argues that government financial support plays an important role in the growth of high-tech firms, research has been limited on the impacts of government financial support on company growth in the context of the climate-related industry. Using a sample of 582 climate-tech SMEs in Korea, this study explores the moderating effects of credit guarantees on the relationship between patents and firms’ sales growth as well as their direct effects on growth. This study found that credit guarantees and patent registration have positive effects on the increase in sales volume. Additionally, credit guarantees appear to weaken the relationship between patent registration and the sales growth rate. Based on these findings, we propose that, to develop the climate-technology industry, the voluntary innovation efforts of enterprises should be encouraged and credit guarantees should be provided for SMEs. In terms of managerial interventions, the government should especially avoid providing excessive benefits.

Purpose: Much of existing research has attempted to explain Asian Growth Paradox through formal institution – role of the government or rule of law. Therefore, this paper attempts to empirically explain the paradox with informal institution including interaction between informal and formal institutions. Two interrelated research questions summarize this research. First, how can we capture the relationship between informal and formal institutions? Then, how is that relationship different for Asian Paradox states vs non-paradox states?Design/methodology/approach: To capture the relationship between informal and formal institutions, we use Helmke and Levitsky (2004)'s framework to categorize the interaction as complementing, competing, substituting and accommodating. We perform cross-sectional regression analysis for more than 130 countries.Findings: We find that the developed, developing and the Asian Paradox states display different patterns of interaction between informal and formal institutions. However, we also find that the interaction effect has a limited value explaining growth for most of these countries, suggesting that Helmke and Levitsky (2004)'s framework has limitations. Finally, we challenge the notion of Asian Paradox states, as countries outside of Asia also qualify as the Paradox states.Originality/value: Not much empirical effort has examined how different relationships between informal and formal institutions can explain growth internationally across countries. We show that different institutional patterns explain growth across the Paradox states and non-Paradox states.

Since social trust plays an important role in the economic and social development of society, much attention has been paid to the determinants of social trust. However, prior studies have shown ambivalent results. This study focuses on the role of information communication technology (ICT) in enhancing social trust. Using two-way fixed effects panel data analysis, this article examines the effects of two types of ICT infrastructure – mobile cellular capacity and fixed internet capacity – on social trust for more than 120 countries from 2000 to 2010 for the fixed internet capacity and 1990 to 2010 for the mobile cellular capacity. Our main results show that mobile cellular capacity displays a statistically robust and positive effect while fixed internet capacity shows negative effect on social trust, with robustness checks confirming the main results. Our analysis implies that for countries desiring to enhance social trust, increasing mobile cellular capacity is critical.