Yongjin Ahn

I am a tenured-track assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration at Korea University Sejong Campus. My research interests include public management, behavioral public administration, public personnel management, and citizen-state interactions. I teach courses such as Behavioral Public Administration (DPAD222), AI Governance (DPAD221), The Korean Bureaucracy (KDA600; KU GSPA), Research Methods in Social Sciences (DPAD318), Modern Society & Public Administration (GSSO041), and Public Management Seminar (DPAD313; DPAD161;KU GSPA). I have published research about these topics in international journals such as The American Review of Public Administration, Administration & Society, Public Personnel Management, Governance, Public Performance & Management Review, and Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration. 

Prior to joining Korea University Sejong Campus, I have been engaged as an associate research fellow at the Civic Leadership Education and Research (CLEAR) Initiative located at the University of Southern California's Sol Price School of Public Policy. I have been leading two collaborations with CLEAR that is funded by the Haynes Foundation of Southern California and the Volcker Foundation. In "Estimating the Public Sector Workforce Labor Market: Supply and Demand in the Los Angeles Regions," we examined the United States federal government market in terms of incoming talent and the turbulent environment of the public sector labor market within the Southern California region.  

Most recently, I have received the 2024 Herbert Kaufman Best Paper Award from the Public Administration Section at the American Political Science Association (Philadelphia, PA). In "Assessing the Effects of Government Shutdowns on the Inflow and Outflow Dynamics of the United States Federal Workforce (with Bill Resh, Weijie Wang, and  Eli Lee)," we examine the intervening impact of the 2018-2019 shutdown on the federal labor market. Building on previous work, "Populism and administrative dysfunction:  The impact of US government shutdowns on personnel and policy implementation (with Bill Resh and Don Moynihan)," we find that the 2019 shutdown during the Trump administration led to an increase in separations across affected agencies. More work on how exogenous political events  affect public administration is to come in the near future.