Michell Yoonjei Dong

Publication

"How Does Low-Skilled Immigration Affect Native Wages? Evidence from Employment Permit System in Korea" (with Jongkwan Lee and Hee-Seung Yang), Forthcoming, Oxford Economic Papers.

This study examines the effects of low-skilled immigration on the labor market outcomes of native workers in South Korea. Using firm-level survey data, we exploit exogenous variations in the number of foreign workers firms can hire to estimate the labor market impact of immigration. We find that an increase in immigrant workers in a firm does not affect the firm-specific native wages. We propose an explanation that the wage losses of native workers from immigration were mitigated as firms benefitted from the presence of immigrant workers. At the same time, the inflow of immigrants decreases the job duration of native workers, suggesting that native workers reallocate into different types of firms.

Recalling Extra Data: A Replication Study of Finding Missing Markets, 2019 (with Benjamin D.K. Wood). Journal of Development Studies, 55:5, 926-945.

We re-examine some of the strongest evidence supporting agricultural commercialization, a highly touted yet under-researched development intervention. Our replication study re-examines Ashraf, Giné, and Karlan’s ‘Finding Missing Markets’ paper. Using the previous paper’s raw data, our research generally reproduces the original findings. We explore the evaluation’s theory of change, focusing on the result that first time export crop adopters benefit more from agricultural commercialization than previous adopters. We also examine recall bias questions and provide sample size guidance for future researchers. Similar to the original paper, we find that the intervention mostly benefits households just entering the agricultural production value-chain.

Working Paper

"Credit and Child Labor Complementarity in the Wake of Natural Disaster" (with Hee-Seung Yang), Revision Requested, Journal of Development Studies.

Natural disasters can bring considerable damage to households in terms of destruction of houses, loss of physical assets, and casualties of household members. We examine the impact of an earthquake in Indonesia on children’s school and work activities and how that relationship differs by access to credit. We find that earthquake decreases education by increasing child labor, but the effect is stronger for households with access to credit. Heterogeneity in treatment effects suggests that the opportunity costs of schooling increase as households with micro-loans open up businesses. Our finding indicates the complementary effect between credit and child labor and suggests the need for policies to increase educational investment when providing micro-loans to help households affected by shocks.

"Task Reallocation of Community Health Workers: Experimental Evidence from Nigeria"

This study examines the unintended health consequences of training and involving community health workers. Using a cluster-randomized controlled trial, I find that the malaria control program in Nigeria involving community health workers resulted in lower malaria prevalence but negatively affected children’s physical growth. I provide suggestive evidence that these unintended health consequences are driven by the poor households being crowded out in the utilization of health services as the malaria control program increases the demand for community health workers. These findings suggest that health programs that target a selective number of health problems could alter household and community behaviors and unintentionally impact health outcomes not targeted by the program. I provide policy recommendations that it is crucial to account for such unintended spillover impacts when a program requires community health workers to provide health services.

Work in Progress

“Gendered Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Employment in the Philippines” (with Yoonyoung Cho and David Margolis)

This paper examines the gendered impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on employment in the Philippines, where a stringent lockdown, coupled with extended school closures, were implemented during the pandemic. Surprisingly, we find a much smaller negative impact in the Philippines than in the United States, and we propose two main mechanisms to explain the divergent outcomes. First, Filipino women are more likely to be employed in flexible jobs than women in other countries, and thus they were more resistant to the shock. Second, as inflexible jobs in urban areas disappeared due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these workers shifted to agricultural employment in rural areas, which allowed them to keep working. This finding suggests that agricultural work served as a cushion for Filipino workers, an option that does not exist for workers in many developed countries.

"Can informal health providers help improve health? experimental evidence from Nigeria" (with Pedro Carneiro, Sanghmitra Gautam, Marcus Holmlund, Costas Meghir, and Edit Velenyi)

This paper presents experimental evidence from a cluster-randomized controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of involving non-traditional health services providers in malaria prevention and treatment in Southern Nigeria. We observe lower malaria prevalence among children in treatment villages. Our study tries to understand the potential mechanism by examining the intermediate outcomes and conducting heterogeneity analyses. We find that household knowledge on malaria can be improved by involving community health workers and training drug retailers, while higher knowledge on malaria does not necessarily lead to higher preventive nor better care-seeking activities. We also find that primary health facilities in Nigeria differ in terms of their quality at baseline, and the intervention had a higher impact in wards with better quality primary health facilities. Our finding suggests that the quality of the formal sector is important for the effectiveness of informal health providers, providing evidence for the complementary effect between non-traditional health workers and the existing public health system.

“The Impact of Inter-Village Competition and Leadership on Collective Action: Experimental Evidence from Myanmar and Cambodia” (with Syngjoo Choi, Booyuel Kim, Taejong Kim, and Hee-Seung Yang)

Using a two-country field randomized experiment conducted in Cambodia and Myanmar, this study examines the impact of inter-village competition on social capital in the context of a community-driven development program. In order to measure the level of social capital within villages, we conducted two lab-in-the-field experiments – (1) a village donation game that measures the amount of donation contributed for the provision of public goods in the village, and (2) a joint investment game which captures village-level coordination under uncertainty. While we observe a limited impact of inter-village competition on social capital measured by the village donation game, we find a significant heterogeneous treatment effect during the joint investment game which is only apparent among villages that experienced three years of community-driven development program. Our findings suggest that competition among villages can contribute to the effective implementation of a community-driven development program by improving collective action and coordination within villages.