When explaining the declining labor income share in advanced economies, the macro literature finds that the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is greater than one. However, the vast majority of micro-level estimates shows that capital and labor are complements (elasticity less...

Sex ratios at birth in South Korea reached 116.5 boys per 100 girls in 1990, but have since declined. In 2007, sex ratios were almost normal, a development heralded as a sign that son preference and sex choice have vanished. However, normal sex ratios imply neither. We show that over the last 60...

How would people spend time if confronted by permanent declines in market work? We identify preferences off exogenous cuts in legislated standard hours that raised employers' overtime costs in Japan around 1990 and Korea in the early 2000s. We estimate the probability that an individual was...

This paper examines macroprudential policies in open emerging economies. It discusses how the recent financial crisis has provided a rationale for macroprudential policies to help manage the economy and the need for policymakers to monitor the financial cycle and systemic risks. It also...

Using Korean firm-level data on publicly-listed and privately-held firms together with firm exit data, we find strong evidence of the balance-sheet effect for small firms at both the intensive and extensive margins. During the crisis, small firms with more short-term foreign debt are more likely...

Can a government credibly promise not to bailout firms whose failure would have major negative systemic consequences? Our analysis of Korea's 1997-99 crisis, suggests an answer: No. Despite a general "no bailout" policy during the crisis, the largest Korean corporate groups (chaebol) - facing...

The large literature on costly signaling and the somewhat scant literature on preference signaling had varying success in showing the effectiveness of signals. We use a field experiment to show that even when everyone can send a signal, signals are free and the only costs are opportunity costs,...

In this study, we first evaluate the effect of a significant increase in low-skilled immigration in Korean municipalities from 2010-2015 on the internal migration of natives. Using Korean survey data we are able to distinguish between natives moving for work-related and non-work-related reasons....

We examine patterns of work in the U.S. from 1973-2018 with the novel focus on days per week, using intermittent CPS samples and one ATUS sample. Among full-time workers the incidence of four-day work tripled during this period, with over 8 million more full-time workers on four-day weeks. The...

We study the international spillover effects of air pollution by developing a framework that integrates recent advances in atmospheric science into econometric estimation with microdata on mortality and health. Combining transboundary particle trajectory data with the universe of...