Dongkeun Choi
Thank you for visiting my website!
I am a PhD Candidate in Economics at UC San Diego.
My research focuses on macroeconomics, monetary economics, and financial institutions.
Curriculum Vitae: CV
Email: dochoi@ucsd.edu
Dongkeun Choi
Thank you for visiting my website!
I am a PhD Candidate in Economics at UC San Diego.
My research focuses on macroeconomics, monetary economics, and financial institutions.
Curriculum Vitae: CV
Email: dochoi@ucsd.edu
Working Paper
Equipment, Structures, and the Limits of Investment-Specific Technological Change (with Munseob Lee) [SSRN]
[Abstract] The declining relative price of equipment has long been viewed as a primary driver of long-run growth through investment-specific technological change (ISTC). We document that this view overlooks a critical countervailing force: the rising relative price of structures. We establish four facts: (i) high-income countries face sharply rising structures prices despite falling equipment prices; (ii) investment rates in both sectors respond negatively to their own prices; (iii) equipment prices predict income growth more strongly than structures prices; and (iv) U.S. structures price increases are broad-based across categories. Using KLEMS data, about half of the post-1996 rise in construction-sector relative prices is explained by declining TFP. We develop a two-capital endogenous growth model where structures enter both production and R\&D. Calibrated to the U.S., ISTC contributes 0.82 percentage points to annual per-capita growth, reflecting a 1.32-point equipment boost offset by a 0.50-point structural drag through reduced capital deepening, rising R&D facility costs, and tightened R&D resources. Extending the model to nested CES, we find equipment--skilled labor complementarity alongside substitutability between structures and unskilled labor and across the two input bundles. These substitution margins reduce structural drag to 0.33 percentage points, while the structures--unskilled margin reveals a novel channel that dampens the skill premium.
Selected Work in Progress
Unintended Risks of Bank Capital Regulations (Job Market Paper)
Why Is Monetary Policy Less Effective at Low Interest Rates: The Role of Banking Sector Profitability
Redistribution from Safe to Risky Borrowers through the Secondary Mortgage Market