The color-forming ability of amino acids with thiosulfinate in crushed garlic was investigated. We developed reaction systems for generating pure blue pigments using extracted thiosulfinate from crushed garlic and onion and all 22 amino acids. Each amino acid was reacted with thiosulfinate solution and was then incubated at 60• C for 3 h to generate pigments. Unknown blue pigments, responsible for discoloration in crushed garlic cloves (Allium sativum L.), were separated and tentatively characterized using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and a diode array detector ranging between 200 and 700 nm. Blue pigment solutions exhibited 2 maximal absorbance peaks at 440 nm and 580 nm, corresponding to yellow and blue, respectively, with different retention times. Our findings indicated that green discoloration is created by the combination of yellow and blue pigments. Eight naturally occurring blue pigments were separated from discolored garlic extracts using HPLC at 580 nm. This suggests that garlic discoloration is not caused by only 1 blue pigment, as reported earlier, but by as many as 8 pigments. Overall, free amino acids that formed blue pigment when reacted with thiosulfinate were glycine, arginine, lysine, serine, alanine, aspartic acid, asparagine, glutamic acid, and tyrosine. Arginine, asparagine, and glutamine had spectra that were more similar to naturally greened garlic extract.

Greening in crushed garlic cloves increases with increasing GGT expression at low temperature, while alliinase expression is not affected.

This study examines the effectiveness of accounting conservatism in monitoring and controlling managers’ decision-making regarding opportunistic investment. We find that accounting conservatism is negatively associated with over-investment. This suggests that conservative accounting policies serve as an efficient monitoring and controlling mechanism for opportunistic investment decisions. We also find a stronger negative association between accounting conservatism and over-investment in firms with low managerial ownership and low ownership by foreign investors. The results of our analysis imply that the impact of timely loss recognition on over-investment is more significant in firms with high agency problems and weaker monitoring ability, and that this factor complements other governance mechanisms, thereby helping to control managers’ myopic investment decisions. We provide evidence for a role of financial disclosure in mitigating managers’ opportunistic over-investment decisions. Though managers’ over-investment decisions are motivated by private gain, which reduces firm performance and compromises investors’ welfare, limited research exists on the role of financial information in alleviating such behavior. We suggest that timely loss recognition in financial statements can serve as an effective monitoring mechanism to aid in control of managers’ myopic over-investment.

This paper examines chaebol firms' overinvestment practices before and after a financial crisis in Korea. In comparison to non-chaebol firms, chaebol firms significantly reduced overinvestment after the Asian financial crisis. Also, chaebol firms were less inclined to engage in earnings management for overinvestment after the financial crisis. The results suggest that governance and financial reforms focusing on chaebol firms and emphasizing long-term firm value after the crisis discouraged chaebol firms' overinvestment practices, bringing about a sharp rebound in their business performance.

This study examines whether related-party transactions (RPTs) impact the value of firms’ cash holdings. Using a 2011–2018 sample of Korean public firms, we find that greater RPTs lead to lower cash holdings value. In particular, this decline is more pronounced in Korean chaebol firms than in non-chaebol firms. Our findings suggest that a unique and complex corporate governance structure of chaebol firms makes it difficult for outside investors to monitor firms’ internal cash management decisions, resulting in a negative valuation of cash holdings. This study contributes to the extant literature by providing additional evidence that RPTs in chaebol firms with severe agency problems may lower the value of cash holdings.