Working Papers

• Disability Employment Incentive, Levy, and the Labor Demand for Persons with Disabilities [Draft]

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of disability employment incentives and levies on the labor demand for the disabled. Using Survey on the Employment Status of the Disabled in Business, I construct a four-year panel dataset on employment status. I employ the reduced form approach to find that incentives increase, while levies decrease the number of disabled employees. It is consistent with that incentives reduce the cost of the employment. The reduction in disabled employees due to levies can be explained by that large corporations pay levies rather than hire more, given the difference between the programs. 

• Did Local Currency Change the Transportation Behavior of residents? [Draft]

Abstract: The local currency is a voucher in South Korea that the local government issues to revitalize the local economy. Consumers can use local currency only in local stores and small businesses. We employ a difference-in-differences method to estimate the effect of local currency on people's transporting behavior. We focus on the changes in areas where local currencies were implemented between 2010 and 2016 with data from the Household Travel Survey. Our main results suggest that people travel shorter and less after the implementation of the local currency. Our findings imply that the local currency help residents shop locally rather than visiting far-flung stores, which result in faster and more efficient transportation behaviors. 

Publications

• Local Currency and the Post-Work Traffic of Residents (With Sun Go)
  Journal of The Korean Data Analysis Society, 2024, 26(2), 527-538 (In Korean) [Full Paper]

Ongoing Research

• Donations to Schools: Regional Schooling Disparities (With Sun Go)

We analyze how local donations funded public education during Korea’s colonial period and how this affected educational outcomes and regional disparities in attitudes toward education, based on data from the 1930s. During the Japanese colonial period in Korea, schools were established with funds from donations by local residents. If there were many adults in the community who emphasized the importance of schools and human capital, it is expected that schools would be established earlier or on a larger scale in those communities. We are currently collecting data related to donation receipts. We are in the process of finding donation-related records from the 1930s and entering the data.

• 'TongIl Rice' and Economic Growth (With Parth Chawla)

We analyze the government directive to cultivate ’Tongil rice’ in South Korea during the 1970s in connection with economic growth. In the 1970s, the South Korean government promoted the spread of 'Tongil rice' to ensure rice supply. Viewing the introduction of this new rice variety as a shock to agricultural productivity, we aim to analyze how the emergence of 'Tongil rice' impacted South Korea's economic growth. This study is being prepared in collaboration with Parth Chawla at UC Davis, and we are currently in the process of collecting individual-level agricultural data of Korea in 1970s. 

• The Effect of Designating Temporary Holidays on Local Consumption  (With Sun Go)