Munseob Lee
Associate Professor of Economics, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy
Director, Korea-Pacific Program
Research Fields: Macroeconomics, Economic Growth, Development Economics
Email: munseoblee@ucsd.edu (or munseob@gmail.com)
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Research
Working Papers:
The Plant-Level View of an Industrial Policy: The Korean Heavy Industry Drive of 1973 (with Minho Kim and Yongseok Shin)
Minority Inflation, Unemployment, and Monetary Policy (with Claudia Macaluso and Felipe Schwartzman)
Land Reform, Agricultural Productivity, and Human Capital Accumulation (with Minki Kim)
Bias in the PCE Price Index (with David Argente and Chang-Tai Hsieh)
Government Purchases and Firm Growth, revise and resubmit at American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
Studying Economic Black Holes: Lessons from North Korea (with Stephan Haggard and Kyoochul Kim), in preparation for World Development
Publications:
[12] Does Turnover Inhibit Specialization? Evidence from a Skill Survey in Peru, American Economic Review: Insights, Vol. 7, No. 1, March 2025, pp.56-70, with Andrea Atencio-De-Leon and Claudia Macaluso.
[11] Allocation of Female Talent and Cross-Country Productivity Differences, Economic Journal, Volume 134, Issue 664, November 2024, pp. 3333–3359.
[10] The US Structural Transformation and Regional Convergence: Racial Heterogeneity, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Volume 39, Issue 6, September/October 2024, pp.1172-1179, with Minki Kim.
[9] The Plant-Level View of Korea's Growth Miracle and Slowdown, Canadian Journal of Economics, Volume 57, Issue 3, August 2024, pp.704-725, with Yongseok Shin.
[8] The Life Cycle of Products: Evidence and Implications, Journal of Political Economy, Volume 132, Number 2, February 2024, pp.337-390 (lead article), with David Argente and Sara Moreira.
Press: LSE Business Review, UC San Diego Today
[7] Measuring the Cost of Living in Mexico and the United States, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Vol. 15, No. 3, July 2023, pp.43-63, with David Argente and Chang-Tai Hsieh.
[6] Regional Redistribution through SBA Guaranteed Loan Programs, Journal of Corporate Finance, Volume 78, February 2023, Article 102344, with Churn Ken Lee.
[5] Do Resource Windfalls Improve Standard of Living in sub-Saharan African Countries?, Applied Economics, Volume 55, Issue 9, 2023, pp.944-962, with Cheikh Anta Gueye.
[4] The Cost of Privacy: Welfare Effects of the Disclosure of COVID-19 Cases, Review of Economics and Statistics, Volume 104, Issue 1, January 2022, pp.176-186, with David Argente and Chang-Tai Hsieh.
Press: KPBS (audio), New York Times, Washington Post, Fast Company, UC Newsroom
[3] COVID-19, Commuting Flows, and Air Quality, Journal of Asian Economics, Volume 77, December 2021, Article 101374, with Rachel Finerman.
[2] Cost of Living Inequality during the Great Recession, Journal of the European Economic Association, Volume 19, Issue 2, April 2021, pp.913-952, with David Argente.
Press: Philadelphia Inquirer, Speech by Governor Lael Brainard, Biden-Harris Economic Blueprint
[1] Innovation and Product Reallocation in the Great Recession, Journal of Monetary Economics, Volume 93, January 2018, pp.1-20 (lead article), with David Argente and Sara Moreira.
Book Chapters:
[1] High-Skill Immigration, Innovation, and Creative Destruction, In: The Roles of Immigrants and Foreign Students in US Science, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. University of Chicago Press, February 2020, pp.73-98, with Gaurav Khanna
Press: CBS 8, Fox 5, San Diego Union Tribune, Dice Insights, Bloomberg, UC Newsroom
Federal Reserve Bank Policy Notes:
[4] Understanding the Lack of Skill Specialization in Peru, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Economic Brief, No. 24-29, August 2024, with Andrea Atencio De Leon and Claudia Macaluso.
[3] Do Black Households Face Higher and More Volatile Inflation?, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Economic Brief, No. 22-25, July 2022.
Press: ABC 10 (video), WPFW (audio), NBC 7, Fox 5, KPBS, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Newsweek, UC Newsroom
[2] Cost of Living Inequality beyond the Great Recession, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Presentation Brief, April 2022, with David Argente.
Press: CNN Business
[1] Price Volatility Faced by Black and White Households, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Presentation Brief, April 2022, with Claudia Macaluso and Felipe Schwartzman.
Press: Wall Street Journal, CNN, NBC News, Defender
Book Reviews:
[1] Shrimp to Whale: South Korea from the Forgotten War to K-Pop, Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 83, Issue 2, May 2024, pp.482-483.
Teaching
2024-25: Macroeconomics of Development (PhD, syllabus), Fiscal and Monetary Policy (Master), The Korean Economy (Master), Capstone Seminar in International Studies (Undergraduate)
Summer School Lecture at University of Chicago Stone Center, "Cost of Living Inequality", July 2024, Part 1 Slides, Part 2 Slides
Awards
2024 KAEA Young Scholar Award, The Korea-America Economic Association (KAEA)
2023 Sherman Family Korea Emerging Scholar Lecture Award, The Korea Society
2023 Honorable Mention for Advanced Elective Course, Graduate Faculty Teaching Award, UC San Diego Department of Economics
2023 Faculty Career Development Program, UC San Diego
recognizing and rewarding individuals who have promoted diversity and equal opportunity
PhD Students (dissertation committee member in economics otherwise noted)
2025: Meenakshi Balakrishna (quantitative marketing), Molly Shatto (Congressional Budget Office)
2024: Edoardo Briganti (Bank of Canada), Junyuan Chen (UC San Diego post-doc), Rohini Ray
2023: Shunsuke Hori (Hitotsubashi University), Minki Kim (University of Mannheim), Tyler Paul (University of Toronto teaching stream)
2022: Jacob Orchard (Federal Reserve Board), Mitchell VanVuren (Yale University post-doc)
2021: Alejandro Nakab (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella), Wendy Zeng (US Department of Agriculture)
2020: Olga Denislamova (University of Toronto teaching stream), Daniel Leff (Wayfair Inc.), Daniela Vidart (University of Connecticut)
current: Paula Donaldson, Cole Dreier, Renata Abbott Navarrete, Vafa Behnam Roudsari, Dongkeun Choi, Youngdoo Choi, Ruby Mittal, Facundo Pernigotti, Yi Zhou
Editorships
Guest Editor, KDI Journal of Economic Policy, 2025, call for papers, program
Seminar Organization
UC San Diego Global Economy Workshop, Spring 2025 (w/ Fabian Trottner), Fall 2023 (w/ Fabian Eckert), Fall 2022 (w/ Fabian Eckert), Spring 2022 (w/ Fabian Trottner), Fall 2020 (w/ Jim Rauch), Fall 2019 (w/ Tom Vogl), Spring 2019 (w/ Jim Rauch)
UC San Diego Development Seminar, Fall 2024 (w/ Sam Bazzi)
UC San Diego Korea-Pacific Program Seminar, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2019-20 (w/ Stephan Haggard)
SNU-UC San Diego Joint Webinar Series, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 (w/ Jungmin Lee)
Program committee for BREAD 2024, SED 2022/23, EIIT 2022, PacDev 2021
Co-PI for KDI-HAPI Conferences, 2025, 2024 (w/ Sang-Hyop Lee)
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