Bongseop Kim (김봉섭)

Abstracts: While existing literature highlights the career costs of childbearing as a potential contributor to low fertility in high-income countries, few empirical studies investigate how women form beliefs about these costs and whether such beliefs shape their fertility decisions. Using a sample of South Korean female workers aged 19 to 40 years, we conduct an online survey to examine the relationship between the individuals' beliefs about the career costs of children and their family formation plans. We also execute an information provision experiment to assess how objective information about the likelihood of women working post-childbirth leads to changes in beliefs and family formation plans. We find that female respondents hold pessimistic expectations about their own post-childbirth employment, partly because they underestimate the extent to which mothers in Korea remain in the workforce. These pessimistic beliefs are strongly associated with lower fertility and marriage intentions, particularly among women with strong current career prospects and higher incomes. Information provision leads to only modest changes in intentions, as many respondents interpret higher maternal employment as reflecting financial necessity rather than improved work–family compatibility. Overall, the study underscores the importance of beliefs—and their interpretation—in shaping family formation decisions.

Abstracts: This paper examines the effects of increasing pensionable age on an individual's labor supply, focusing on Korean pension reforms. In Korea, the pensionable age for full pension benefits has increased from 60 to 65 over the course of twenty years. Using individual-level administrative data, I implement a regression discontinuity with a second difference (RD-DD) design, and find that the 1-year increase in the pensionable age has a positive but relatively modest effect on labor supply. Raising the pensionable age from 61 to 62 leads to an increase of 0.6 percentage points (1.0% increase) in employment rate and 0.76 million won (5.2% increase) in annual earnings at age 61. This change is driven by existing workers who choose to postpone retirement and remain in the workforce. The increase in employment is mainly observed in self-employment, and there is also an increase in the proportion of individuals taking on side jobs. The labor supply response is more pronounced among females and workers who earned higher wages previously.

Abstracts: To overcome the lack of data in predicting the payment preference for central bank digital currency (CBDC), we conducted a discrete choice experiment that varied the attributes of payment methods among over 3,500 participants in Korea. We identified key attributes, such as the discount rate and the issuance form, that shape the demand for payment methods. The predicted usage shares of existing payment methods closely align with their actual usage patterns in Korea, which lends credible support for the external validity of our experimental design. Building on this validation, we further predict that CBDC, when introduced, will be preferred over cash and mobile fast payment but less preferred than credit and debit cards, with its adoption rate as the most preferred payment method ranging 19-27% of respondents.

Abstracts: This study investigates the relative importance of non-wage job attributes, with a particular focus on corporate culture and overtime work. Using a discrete choice experiment with 3,026 wage workers in South Korea, we estimate the willingness-to-pay for a horizontal corporate culture, no overtime requirement, career development opportunities, and commuting time flexibility. We find that workers place the highest value on a horizontal corporate culture, followed by no overtime requirement. Using auxiliary data on working conditions from a nationally representative survey, we find that accounting for the non-uniform distribution of these non-wage job attributes across workers exacerbates compensation inequality.

Abstracts: Privacy protection is among the key features to consider in the design of central bank digital currency (CBDC). Using a nationally representative sample of over 3,500 participants, we conduct a randomized online survey experiment to examine how the willingness to use CBDC as a means of payment varies with the degree of privacy protection and information provision on the privacy benefits of using CBDC. We find that both factors significantly increase participants’ willingness to use CBDC by up to 64% when purchasing privacy-sensitive products. Our findings provide useful insights regarding the design and the public’s adoption of CBDC.

Abstracts: Despite unprecedented progress in developing COVID-19 vaccines, global vaccination levels needed to reach herd immunity remain a distant target, while new variants keep emerging. Obtaining near universal vaccine uptake relies on understanding and addressing vaccine resistance. Simple questions about vaccine acceptance however ignore that the vaccines being offered vary across countries and even population subgroups, and differ in terms of efficacy and side effects. By using advanced discrete choice models estimated on stated choice data collected in 18 countries/territories across six continents, we show a substantial influence of vaccine characteristics. Uptake increases if more efficacious vaccines (95% vs 60%) are offered (mean across study areas = 3.9%, range of 0.6%–8.1%) or if vaccines offer at least 12 months of protection (mean across study areas = 2.4%, range of 0.2%–5.8%), while an increase in severe side effects (from 0.001% to 0.01%) leads to reduced uptake (mean = −1.3%, range of −0.2% to −3.9%). Additionally, a large share of individuals (mean = 55.2%, range of 28%–75.8%) would delay vaccination by 3 months to obtain a more efficacious (95% vs 60%) vaccine, where this increases further if the low efficacy vaccine has a higher risk (0.01% instead of 0.001%) of severe side effects (mean = 65.9%, range of 41.4%–86.5%). Our work highlights that careful consideration of which vaccines to offer can be beneficial. In support of this, we provide an interactive tool to predict uptake in a country as a function of the vaccines being deployed, and also depending on the levels of infectiousness and severity of circulating variants of COVID-19.