Research | Namil KIM

Selected Published Papers

2025

How does artificial intelligence improve human decision-making? Evidence from the AI-powered Go program

Sukwoong Choi, Hyo Kang, Namil Kim*, and Junsik Kim

Strategic Management Journal (UTD24, FT50), 2025
- Award: Winner for the Best Interdisciplinary Paper Award Strategic Human Capital in the SMS 2021
- Media Cover: MIT IDE Blog, State of AI Report 2021, The Chosun Ilbo (Leading Korean Daily Newspaper)
- Presented: 2021 NBER Economics of Artificial Intelligence Conference; 2021 MIT IDE Fall Seminar; 2021 Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Business Analytics; 2022 3rd AI and Strategy Consortium; 2022 IP and Innovation (IPI) Seminar; 2022 Wharton Technology and Innovation Conference; 2022 the 1st Wharton/Columbia Management, Analytics, and Data (MAD) Conference
Abstract URL

We study how humans learn from artificial intelligence (AI), leveraging an introduction of an AI-powered Go program (APG) that unexpectedly outperformed the best professional player. We compare the move quality of professional players to APG’s superior solutions around its public release. Our analysis of 749,190 moves demonstrates significant improvements in players’ move quality, especially in the early stages of the game where uncertainty is highest. This improvement was accompanied by a higher alignment with AI’s suggestions and a decreased number and magnitude of errors. Young players show greater improvement, suggesting potential inequality in learning from AI. Further, while players of all skill levels benefit, less skilled players gain higher marginal benefits. These findings have implications for managers seeking to adopt and utilize AI in their organizations.

2024

Connecting the dots between democracy and innovation: The mediating role of economic freedom and press freedom

Hyungseok Yoon, Christopher Boudreaux, and Namil Kim*

Research Policy (FT50), 2024
Abstract URL

Prior studies examining the democracy-innovation relationship have reported mixed results. To resolve this tension, our framework grounded in information processing and institutional theory proposes two mechanisms through which democracy influences innovation—pro-market institutions and information processing. Our analysis reveals that democracy indirectly affects innovation primarily through information processing rather than pro-market institutions. While gradually or increasingly democratizing states tend to focus on adopting pro-market systems without considering information freedom (e.g., lifting censorship), our results underscore the importance of information processing for strengthening the democracy-innovation relationship. Our study extends the literature on national innovation rates by shedding light on the information processing implications of democratic institutions.
Climate impact, institutional context, and national climate change adaptation IP protection rates

Hyungseok Yoon*, Peter Tashman, Mirko Benischke, Jonathan Doh, and Namil Kim

Journal of Business Venturing (FT50), 2024
Abstract URL

We study how the physical effects of climate change motivate entrepreneurs to develop and protect climate change adaptation (CCA) intellectual property (IP) in heterogeneous ways across countries. Integrating the sustainable entrepreneurship literature with the attention-based view, we show that country-level climate impact redirects managerial attention to the disruptive potential of climate change and spurs the sector into action to pursue and protect CCA-related IP. We also find that strong intellectual-property rights regulations and environmental movements in countries strengthen this effect. Our results extend the sustainable entrepreneurship literature by showing how the geography of climate impact explains how CCA IP protection efforts are distributed globally.

2022

Industrial Leadership Changes without Technological Discontinuity: Modularization, Institution-Led Market Discontinuity, and Market Development Strategy

Kiho Kwak, and Namil Kim*

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2022
Abstract URL

Previous studies on changes in industrial leadership, called “catch-up cycles,” focused on the critical role of technological disruption in the efforts by latecomers to forge ahead. However, we have recently witnessed leadership changes even in technologically mature sectors, such as industrial equipment, without technological discontinuity. To investigate changes in industrial leadership in these sectors, we propose a conceptual framework that emphasizes the role of modularization as a technology ladder for latecomers to narrow the technological gap with the frontier, institution-led market discontinuity by governments, and latecomers’ market development strategies. With this framework, we analyzed successive leadership changes in the Chinese excavator market, from Japan to Korea in the early and mid-2000s and from Korea to China after 2010. We advance our understanding of the catch-up phenomenon in business and society by describing the implications involved in latecomers’ leadership in mature sectors from a “non-Schumpeterian” perspective.
International alliance formations: The role of brokerage in technology competition networks

Sukwoong Choi, Wonjoon Kim, and Namil Kim*

Journal of Business Research, 2022
Abstract URL

International strategic alliances (ISAs) are an important strategic tool for local firms, and management scholars have long been interested in determining their drivers, such as brokerage positions, using social network theory. However, the different types of brokerage positions in competition networks have been underexplored. To fill this knowledge gap, we theorize that the information benefits of a brokerage position in competition networks are constrained, and this may significantly influence the alliance formation of a firm. In studying the U.S. telecommunications equipment manufacturing industry, we observe that as firms enter brokerage positions in competition networks, ISAs, particularly upstream ISAs, become more likely to form. Our findings imply that the properties of competition networks motivate local firms to search for external resources to decipher the codification or tacitness of information access from competitors.

2020

Concentrate or disperse? The relationship between major customer concentration and supplier profitability and the moderating role of insider ownership

Kiho Kwak, and Namil Kim*

Journal of Business Research, 2020
Abstract URL

Suppliers are concerned about the extent of customer concentration, which creates supplier’s operating efficiency (benefit) as well as major customer’s bargaining power (cost). When these suppliers are SMEs with resource deficiency, they are more concerned with how to balance this trade-off. Regarding the problem, we study the relationship between customer concentration and supplier profitability and the moderating role of insider ownership, the fraction of equity owned by firm’s insiders, on the relationship. We find that concentration by major customers has a U-shaped relationship with supplier profitability, and this relationship is attenuated as insider ownership increases. This implies that insider ownership can attenuate the bargaining power of major customers and strengthen the operating efficiency of suppliers. Our findings provide relevant evidence on the costs and benefits of concentration by major customers as well as theorize the moderating role of insider ownership from the perspectives of interest alignment and collaborative relationship marketing.

2018

Do your social media lead you to make social deal purchases? Consumer-generated social referrals for sales via social commerce

Namil Kim, and Wonjoon Kim*

International Journal of Information Management, 2018
Abstract URL

The advent of social commerce has resulted in a new business model for e-commerce. Although studies on this business model have increased over time, they have paid less attention to its core business model: consumer-generated social influence on sales on a social commerce site. Therefore, in this paper, we examine the effect on sales of social sharing, such as Facebook “likes” and Twitter tweets, which generate social influence, using data from major social commerce companies. We find that consumer-generated social referrals regarding deals significantly boost sales in social commerce. When we examine deals involved in national sales, this finding holds only for Facebook but not for tweets. These findings have the implication for managers that not all social referrals are meaningful in increasing sales for their business.
A cross-national study of knowledge, government intervention, and innovative nascent entrepreneurship

Hyungseok David Yoon*, Namil Kim, Bernard Buisson, and Fred Phillips

Journal of Business Research, 2018
- Media Cover: Harvard Business Review (French)
Abstract URL

Which kind of government intervention is needed to transform scientific and technological knowledge into innovative nascent entrepreneurship? We answer this question by drawing upon the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship and institutional theory. We empirically examined the moderating effect of government intervention on the relation between knowledge and innovative nascent entrepreneurship with cross-country panel data on 47 countries from 2002 to 2012. Our results first show that a smaller government sector is required to transform technological knowledge into innovative nascent entrepreneurship. In addition, we found that a larger government sector and more regulation of credit, labor, and business increase the transformation of scientific knowledge into innovative nascent entrepreneurship. We contribute to understanding the role of government in transforming scientific and technological knowledge into innovative nascent entrepreneurship.
The effect of patent protection on firms’ market value: the case of the renewable energy sector

Daehyun Kim, Namil Kim, and Wonjoon Kim*

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2018
Abstract URL

In the renewable energy industry, technology development requires a large initial investment by firms and takes a long time. Thus, protecting patents in this industry has become an increasingly important issue in maintaining a company’s value. In this study, we examine how patent protection affects firms’ market value by analyzing the listed companies in South Korea in the renewable energy sector over a 35-year period (from 1980 to 2014). We find that simple patent counts are not a strong measure for explaining a firm’s financial success in this industry, whereas indices that represent a firm’s ability to protect patents (backward citation and patent family) positively and significantly affect the firm’s market value. This study suggests that patent protection is an important factor for companies in improving their economic value in the renewable energy sector.

2015

Dynamic patterns of industry convergence: Evidence from a large amount of unstructured data

Namil Kim, Hyeokseong Lee, Wonjoon Kim*, Hyunjong Lee, and Jong Hwan Suh

Research Policy (FT50), 2015
Abstract URL

Because of the accelerated life cycle in technology and correspondingly rapid technological saturation in markets, firms are not only accelerating the rate of technological innovation but also expanding the scope of their products or services by combining product or service features of other markets, which eventually leads to industry convergence. However, despite the significant impact of industry convergence on the economy, our understanding of the phenomenon is still limited because previous studies explored only a few cases and come largely from the technological perspective. Therefore, it is still questionable whether industry convergence is a general phenomenon that is prevalent across entire industries. In this paper, we analyze the phenomenon in entire U.S. industries, focusing on its trends and patterns. To do so, we conduct a co-occurrence-based analysis of text mining for a large volume of unstructured data – 2 million newspaper articles from 1989 to 2012 – and suggest using an industry convergence (IC) index based on normalized pointwise mutual information (PMI). We find that overall industry convergence is increasing over time. Moreover, the rate of the increase has been greater within industry than between industries at a given industry level. However, when we cluster the dynamic patterns of industry convergence among industry pairs, the patterns are mixed, and, while some industry groups are converging over time, others are stationary. These findings suggest that significant transformation is under way in the economy, but this phenomenon is not yet prevalent across entire industries. In addition, this study provides a method for anticipating the future direction of industry convergence.

Working Papers

current

How Digital Platforms Affect Local Entrepreneurial Activities: Evidence from the Staggered Entry of Craigslist

Daehyun Kim, Yongwook Paik, and Namil Kim*

Conditionally accepted at Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal (FT50)
Abstract URL

Access to markets is critical for entrepreneurial success, yet many face significant barriers. This study argues that digital platforms functioning as peer-to-peer marketplaces can facilitate entrepreneurial activity by improving market access for new ventures. Using the staggered entry of Craigslist into various markets, we find that Craigslist’s entry increased local entrepreneurial activities, especially in low-income regions. Moreover, individuals from lower-income households, as well as Black and immigrant communities, were more likely to create new ventures following Craigslist’s entry. Firms founded after Craigslist’s entry were also smaller in size, potentially reflecting more efficient management, and primarily operated in B2C rather than B2B sectors. This study highlights how multisided platforms can empower individuals with limited market access and resources, ultimately democratizing entrepreneurship in the digital age.
Anti-Labor Environments and Employee Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Right-To-Work Laws

Daehyun Kim, Namil Kim*, and Haemin Dennis Park

Second revision invited (FT50)

Work-in-progress

Correct authoring will be determined later

current

The Dual Edges of AI: Advancing Knowledge While Reducing Diversity

Sukwoong Choi, Hyo Kang, Namil Kim*, and Junsik Kim
- Award: Finalist for the Best Paper of the 2023 Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST)
- Presented: 2022 Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Business Analytics
How Does AI Improve Human Collaboration and Performance? Evidence from AI-powered X-ray Triage in University Hospitals

Sukwoong Choi, Namil Kim, and Hyo Kang

Data Collection After Passing IRB Review
- Grant: Co-principal investigator, USC Marshall Institute for Outlier Research in Business Grant Program, “How Does AI Improve Human Decision-Making and Performance? Evidence from AI-powered X-ray Triage in University Hospitals” (with Hyo Kang and Sukwoong Choi) (2022-2023) ($19,400)