It is commonly argued that crises open up a window of opportunity to implement policies that otherwise would not have the necessary political backing. The argument goes that the political cost of deep reforms declines as crises unravel structural problems that need to be urgently rectified and...

We examine the impact of COVID-19 on employment in South Korea as of June 2020. To estimate the causal effect, we use two complementary methods. First, using individual-level data without residence information, we estimate the effects by controlling for detailed characteristics of individuals....

This paper takes advantage of access to detailed matched bank-firm data to investigate whether and how employment decisions of SMEs have been affected by credit constraints in the wake of the Great Recession. Variability in banks' financial health following the 2008 crisis is used as an...

This study empirically examines the fragility of five major Asian economies (China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and South Korea) to economic policy uncertainty (EPU) of US and EU, and oil prices in different state of the economies. To investigate these dynamics, we use the relative tail dependence...

This study examines the impact of 1997 Asian and 2008 Global financial crises on the capital structure of Korean listed companies. Using a data set covering 1,159 Korean listed non-financial firms from 10 industrial sectors over period 1985-2015, the pattern of firms' capital structure before...

Failure of participants to complete training programs is pervasive in existing active labor market programs both in developed and developing countries. The proportion of dropouts in prototypical programs ranges from 10 to 50 percent of all participants. From a policy perspective, it is of...

Health screening provides information on disease risk and diagnosis, but whether this promotes health is unclear. We estimate the impacts of the National Health Screening Program in Korea for diabetes, obesity, and hyperlipidemia. In this setting, information on disease risk and prompting for a...

Various countries have implemented transfer programs to individuals since the Covid-19 outbreaks. However, the extent to which such transfers alleviate economic recessions is unclear. This paper analyzes a South Korean program, which provided vouchers redeemable only at small local businesses....

Are workers in modern economies working "too hard" – would they be better off if an equilibrium with fewer work hours were achieved? We examine changes in life satisfaction of Japanese and Koreans over a period when hours of work were cut exogenously because employers suddenly faced an...

This paper examines the extent to which the 2005 Clean Air Act introduced in South Korea affected air pollution and infant health. To identify the causal effect, we exploit the time and geographical variations in the adoption of the Act between 2003 and 2006. During this period, the Clean Air...