Working Papers
-Presented at 2026 ASSA, 2025 ASSA, 2025 GLO, 2025 KAEA Job Market Conference, 2025 CAES, 2024 RIT seminar, 2024 SEA, 2024 WEAI, 2024 MEA, 2022 CAAS
-Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of a policy that restricts students to a maximum of six college applications. While the policy was designed to alleviate the financial burden arising from applications, this paper focuses on the unintended consequences of the policy: how it affects student–college match quality and socioeconomic equity in access to prestigious colleges. In the game theoretical model, uncertainty about true ability leads high-achieving students to apply to a safer college after the cap. When incorporating socioeconomic differences, the results show that the cap mitigates disparities in application decisions across socioeconomic status. To test the predictions, I compile a new college-level administrative dataset and exploit the event-study framework. The results support the theoretical prediction in that match quality declines after the cap, while more students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds enroll in top colleges. Results highlight efficiency-equity trade-offs in student–college assignment, offering policy implications for higher education markets facing excessive competition.
Child’s School Starting Age and Maternal Employment
-Abstract: This paper asks how the parental employment response to a first child's entry into elementary school depends on the child's relative age at entry. Identification comes from within-cohort variation in birth month under South Korea's March 1 cutoff, which assigns children born March through July a relatively old entry age and those born August through December a relatively young one. Using the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study for 1998 to 2024, I find that maternal employment falls by 5 to 7 percentage points at entry while paternal employment is unchanged. The care gap created by the transition from institutional childcare to elementary school does not vary with relative age, so the contrast operates on the length of nonemployment. A relatively old child reaches school entry about five months later in the mother's own life, and among mothers with any interruption, the old group accumulates about eleven additional months out of work. The decline itself is concentrated among mothers whose pre-entry jobs were in the private sector, with no gradient by education and no movement in wages. Schedule slack decides who leaves work at entry, and relative age decides how long they stay out.
Childcare Burden and Parental Employment: Evidence from COVID-19 School Closures in South Korea