한국 금융시장의 국제화과정에서 기관투자가의 역할에 관한 연구

A study on the role of investment trusts in the Korean financial market

This study aims to empirically analyze the role of security investment trusts in the Korean financial market. The findings of this study are summarized as follows. First, investment trusts were established in the 1970s when the capital market was not yet stabilized and considered as the medium of transferring small investments into a major source of capital. Moreover, as investment trusts have over fifty percent of the listed bonds in Korea, they have contributed a great deal in establishing a bond market as a major source of capital for firms. Second, to evaluate investment trusts’ role in the secondary market, the effect of the government’s stabilizing policy and the trading behavior of the institutional investors have been analyzed. Although, the direct market interventions of the government did not have great influence, they did slightly reverse the downward trend of stock prices. Third, to assess the role of investment trusts in the process of the financial market liberalization, opening policies of the Korean capital market and the experiences of the other major countries were reviewed. Also the performance of investment trusts, exclusively for foreign investors, and foreigners’ country funds have been compared. The result shows that no signigicant difference exits in the performance of the two kinds of fund. The gradual opening policies of the Korean financial market through investment trusts seemed to be successful. The findings of this study support the followings. It is necessary to develop various institutional investors to make the bond market active. As many problems are found in the government’s direct intervention, alternative government policies are demanded.