Chaewon Kim

We explore the role of demographic changes as a determinant of real exchange rates (RER). Demographic shifts alter saving and investment behaviors and demand for tradables and non-tradables, thus influencing RER trends in ways standard macroeconomic factors do not fully capture. Estimating a panel cointegration model of 84 countries from 1970 to 2022 embedded with four demographic variables—old-age dependency ratio, fertility rate, life expectancy, and immigration—we assess how each dimension of demographic change has been associated with RERs. Based on the United Nations World Population Prospects and the in-sample estimated coefficients, we make projections for the RER of each economy up to 2050. The RER of a faster-aging economy is expected to appreciate in the long run, mainly through an increasing old-age dependency ratio.

Presented at: BSE Summer Forum (2025), 12th IAAE (2025), 18th Joint Economics Symposium of Six Leading East Asian Universities (2025)

Innovation depends not only on the creation of new ideas but also on their effective dissemination. While trade, migration, and digital communication have been extensively studied as conduits for knowledge diffusion, the role of air travel—particularly in enabling face-to-face interactions that facilitate the transfer of complex and tacit knowledge—remains comparatively understudied. A central challenge in evaluating the causal effect of physical connectivity on knowledge flows lies in identifying plausibly exogenous variation in global mobility networks. This paper addresses this gap by leveraging geopolitical airspace closures as natural experiments that induce exogenous shocks to international flight routes and associated travel costs. We use these disruptions to examine how reductions in air connectivity influence cross-border knowledge diffusion, as proxied by international patent citations. Our empirical analysis reveals that increased travel distances due to airspace closures significantly reduce patent citations between affected country pairs, with the effect being particularly pronounced in knowledge-intensive and complex technological domains. These findings offer novel causal evidence that physical infrastructure shapes the geography of innovation and reveal the vulnerability of global knowledge flows to geopolitical shocks.

Presented at: Korea-Japan Joint Economics Seminar (2025), Korea’s Allied Economic Associations Annual Meeting (2025)

Ride-hailing platforms may affect labor markets not only by creating driving jobs but also by expanding passengers' access to work. Using 2007--2017 American Community Survey microdata aggregated to U.S. metropolitan areas, we estimate the effects of Uber entry with a staggered difference-in-differences design that compares workers in zero-vehicle households with those in households with vehicle access. Among men, Uber entry raises annual earnings and wages primarily through higher hourly compensation, while work hours remain broadly unchanged. Among women, hourly compensation rises and commute time falls, but work hours decline, leaving annual earnings unchanged. Women also experience substantial occupational reallocation and greater participation in nonstandard commuting schedules, whereas men shift toward more conventional departure times. The results are robust to alternative estimators, vehicle-access definitions, treatment timing, and fixed-denominator outcomes including nonworkers. Overall, ride-hailing relaxes mobility constraints but generates distinct gender-specific adjustments in job quality, commuting, and labor supply.

Presented at: 11th JSC Economics Student Workshop (2024), Yonsei Applied Microeconomics Reading Group (2025), Yonsei-Keio Economics Graduate Workshop (2025)

We revisit the distributional consequences of U.S. monetary policy with newly available high-frequency data containing information on both the wealth and income of the so-called super-rich. Using newly available high-frequency U.S. wealth share data containing information about the far-right tail of the distribution and considering different aspects of monetary policy, we revisit the relationship between monetary policy and wealth inequality. We argue that the lack of consensus on this relationship is largely driven by missing out on different factors embedded in the monetary policy. Once we differentiate these factors, we find that unconventional monetary easing (driven by large-scale asset purchases or forward guidance) raises wealth inequality in the United States by mainly boosting stock prices. In contrast, accommodative interest rate-based monetary policy counteracts this force by reducing wealth concentration at the top by increasing the price of housing, which has much broader ownership than stocks.

Presented at: 11th ECINEQ Conference (2025), ICEE PSU Altoona (2025)

We study how the level, composition, and sectoral distribution of countries’ external balance sheets shape exchange rate responses to global risk shocks. Using local projections for 41 advanced and emerging economies over 1996Q1–2022Q4, we show that gross foreign debt assets mitigate, while gross foreign debt liabilities amplify, currency depreciation following global risk shocks. These effects operate beyond aggregate net foreign asset positions and are substantially stronger in advanced economies. The difference reflects balance-sheet composition: stabilizing effects are driven by portfolio debt assets held by the non-bank private sector, which are limited in emerging markets. By contrast, other investment debt and banking-sector exposures—more prevalent in emerging economies—are destabilizing. Evidence from gross capital flows shows that retrenchment and countercyclical inflows by the non-bank private sector underpin exchange rate resilience. Overall, our findings highlight that exchange rate stability during global risk-off episodes depends critically on the composition and sectoral structure of gross external positions.