Welcome! I am a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Princeton University.
In 2025, I am scheduled to join the School of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Adelaide as a Lecturer (equivalent to an Assistant Professor in the U.S. system).
Scheduled Presentations: Econometric Society World Congress 2025 (Seoul)
Primary Interests:
Macroeconomics / International Economics
Secondary Interests:
Development Economics
Please click here for my CV (March 6, 2025).
Email: chansik.yoon@princeton.edu
Abstract: Since the 1960s, the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) has been a primary conduit for development finance (DF) from developed to developing countries. In the last two decades, China has emerged as a major DF provider with distinct lending practices. I present the first comprehensive analysis of how developing countries strategically determine the amount, sources, and sectoral allocation of DF. Using project-level DF data and corruption indices from over 110 countries between 2000 and 2021, I find that recipient country corruption is linked to greater reliance on Chinese DF, through more projects and larger project sizes, compared to DAC DF. Higher corruption is also linked to disproportionately larger flows to hard-to-monitor sectors. I explain the findings with a novel growth model that includes active government diversion choices under varying monitoring intensities of DAC and Chinese DF across sectors. Calibrating the model for 108 developing economies and 13 sectors, I explore the impact of Chinese DF on citizen welfare in recipient countries. Results show that similar corruption levels may lead to very different welfare outcomes depending on which sectors are financed by Chinese DF. Compared to the counterfactual steady state without Chinese DF, roughly 15% of the countries experience unambiguous welfare improvements, 29% experience negligible or ambiguous effects, and 55% experience potentially large welfare reductions due to the presence of Chinese DF.
Abstract: I study how frictions in exporting firms' trade finance affect the business cycles of a small open economy within a general equilibrium framework. In the model, firms rely on external capital to cover large upfront fixed export costs but face credit constraints that limit borrowing based on the country’s financial development. In quantitative general equilibrium exercises, I show that the effect of trade finance frictions on the aggregate economy is not as significant as on firm-level outcomes due to two mechanisms. First, the decrease in the extensive margin of exports from trade finance frictions is offset by an increase in the average productivity of exporters, limiting its aggregate impact. This extensive margin effect strengthens, while the selection effect weakens, when firm productivity is less dispersed. Second, wage adjustments in general equilibrium reduces the magnitude of these channels, diminishing the role of trade finance frictions at the aggregate level. This wage-adjustment effect is stronger with inelastic labor supply.
Prof. Mark Aguiar
Department of Economics
Princeton University
maguiar@princeton.edu
Prof. Richard Rogerson
Department of Economics
Princeton University
rdr@princeton.edu
Department of Economics
Princeton University
mikkelpm@princeton.edu