회사정리의 경제적 효율성에 관한 연구 - 외환위기 기간을 중심으로 -

This paper concerns the economic efficiency of corporate reorganization, which has become one of the most important issues during the Korean economic crisis of 1997 and 1998. The empirical analysis was also conducted with the data of the KSE(Korean Stock Exchange) -listed companies which filed for the court-receivership. Most existing literature did not pay much attention to the dynamic and the systemic nature of the bankruptcy. The judicial discretion was not the main theme of their discusses. This paper integrated these topics into the super-bankruptcy principle and used them to explain the empirical observations. Existing economic and finance literature emphasizes the following three kinds of inefficiency of the corporate bankruptcy system: first, many of the unviable firms are not liquidated; second, it takes too long to complete the bankruptcy procedure; third, the bankruptcy judges lack expertise. Thus, the immediate implications are as follows: first, we should tighten the acceptance or the approval requirements; second, the reorganization should be processed more quickly; third, the bankruptcy law or rule should allow less judicial discretion. However, this view point is not appropriate in the systemic distress such as the East Asian Economic Crisis. In that case, the demand for the judicial and managerial resources will be increased sharply and the bankruptcy determination has significant macroeconomic consequences. Stiglitz(2002) recommended that the super-bankruptcy rule is appropriate for the systemic distress. Super-bankruptcy rule is needed when the ordinary bankruptcy law is not proper for resolving the systemic distress. This paper examines the economic efficiency of the corporate reorganization regime in Korea, using the data of the KSE-listed companies that applied for court receivership from 1991 to 2002. The analysis was conducted by dividing the sample period into 3 sub-periods: 1991 to 1996(Period I), 1997 to 1998(Period II), and 1999 to 2002(Period III). The main empirical observations are as follows: (1) sharp increase of the corporate filings during period II; (2) large scale revision of the bankruptcy related laws around period II; (3) remarkable decrease of the bankruptcy period(from filing to approval) since period II; (4) distinct increase of the (reorganization plan) approval rate since period II. To explain the empirical observations, two alternative hypotheses were made: (1) Good-firm Effect: the speedy acceptance of the bankruptcy application and the approval of the reorganization plan resulted from the fact that many good firms went bankrupt because of the macroeconomic shock; (2) Delayed Failure: the speedy acceptance and the approval resulted in delayed failure. The conclusions are as follow. First, a large number of legal reorganizations were promptly completed during the crisis period because many good firms went bankrupt due to the macroeconomic shocks. In the post-crisis period, however, some of the accepted applications turned out to be delayed failures. Second, many firms went bankrupt simultaneously and thus the judicial bankruptcy system was overloaded and the rapid process was unavoidable. The heavy tendency towards acceptances was also unavoidable to prevent the massive liquidation and the resulting economic shocks. Third, not only the reform of the court receivership law, but also the judicial discretion had critical effects on the speed of the legal procedure. The pattern of the decision of the Seoul Court is systematically different from that of the other courts. We interpreted these results as the importance of the judicial discretion in the Korean corporate reorganization regime. Fourth, the law reform which tightened the extent of the judicial discretion might impede the efficiency because it could jeopardize quality of the court decision and deter the flexible measure to deal with the systemic bankruptcy.