방위산업의 적정 이윤율에 관한 연구

The defense industry, which is one of the regulated industries, is not determined by the law of supply and demand, but determined by the third party. It is possible to lead to market failure due to information asymmetry, so that the rate of profit is the key for the defense industry. As far as we found, no real attempts or progress were made on the research after 2004, and the trend of average return on operating profitability decreased in the last four years. Furthermore, the defense firms’ average profitability is 4.53% in 2012 and 2.33% in 2013 respectively. Those figures are below the average return of ordinary listed firms which is 5.13% in 2012 and 5.25% in 2013. Theoretically, an adequate profitability of defense industry is based on the weighted average cost of capital. Considering benchmark returns of oversea’s defense firms, it is required to improve profitability level by 3.9% to 6.6%. This is expected to require about 316.4billion ∼ 535.5billion won additional budget for 2012. Overall, considering the constraints of the government’s budget, it is required to be gradually progressed in operating margin improvement. As the same as international defense firms did, It is appropriate that loosing the excess of the actual costs incurred limited scope of accreditation and applying the expected pricing method which is used only with reasonable causes.