• Informatization Policy
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.44-60
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• 2010

Under the continuing economic growth without increase in employment, issues regarding the impact of IT investment on demand for labor have been continuously raised. Under the circumstance, this study carried out an empirical analysis on the impact of IT investment on employment with a sample of 498 businesses whose domestic sales for the period of six years from 2003 to 2008 are KRW 100 billion or above. The result of the analysis found that IT investment increases employment in most of the industries except for some of the service sectors. In the manufacturing industry, more IT investment increased employment but decreased the flexibility in demand for labor; therefore, IT investment has a substitutional relationship with low-skilled labor and a complementary relationship with high-skilled labor. In the areas of electricity, gas and construction, employment increased as IT investment increased, with the greatest flexibility in demand for labor. In the service industry, increase in IT investment led to more employment and higher flexibility in producer services only. On the other hand, there was no meaningful relationship found between IT investment and employment in the areas of distribution services and social services.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.1-44
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• 2013

This paper surveys the existing literatures on labor demand of Korea. It has been found that labor and capital are substitutes in Korea and the result holds even if labor is decomposed into white collar and blue collar workers. The elasticity of substitution lies between 0 and 1. It is yet unclear if employment and work hours are substitutes. The reduction of legal work week did not increase employment although decreased work hours. The labor demand elasticity is below 0.5 in the short run. Since mid 1990s, the technological change has shown skill bias and therefore increased demand for skilled labor.

• Economic Analysis
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.30-69
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• 2019

This paper analyzes the effects of trade on demand for labor of trading firms in Korea. We apply system GMM methodology to estimate the effects of imports and exports on employment of Korean manufacturing firms using firm-level data from the Survey of Business Activities of Statistics Korea between 2006 and 2014. According to our estimated results, for firms with high-productivity, exports have a positive and significant effect on the labor demand, while other firms do not show any such significant effects. Furthermore, our results show that offshoring mitigates the positive effects of exports on employment, since tasks within the firms can be relocated abroad. On the other hand, an increase in imports reduces demand for labor because labor is replaced with low-priced imported inputs. Also, when firms partake in global outsourcing, the negative effects of imports are mitigated as those firms expand their production by enhancing their efficiency in the process of offshoring. Therefore, our results suggest that it is important to consider heterogeneous firm productivity as well as offshoring in analyzing the effect of trade on labor demand of firms.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.893-921
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• 2005

In this study, we try to find out the effect of private companies' environmental protection activities on the labor demand of companies in Korea manufacturing industries with empirical practice from 1992 to 2002. One of the main difficulties in this empirical work is to identify the effect of environmental protection activities on the labor demand, because the effect can be mixed with the effect of traditional production technologies on the labor demand. We follow the suggestion of Morgenstern et al. (2002) to identify the effect but which is not enough because of endogeneity between the production technology improvement and pollution reduction. So we propose a Fixed-effect Instrumental Variable estimation method as an estimation strategy. The estimation results support the positive relationship between the labor demand increase and the increase in pollution abatement costs. Therefore, we can conclude that the environmental protection activites of Korea manufacturing industries from 1992 to 2002 can help job creation without making a big burden for business activities when we consider the share of pollution abatement costs among total production costs is around 1% during that time.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.1-28
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• 2011

This paper empirically tests the theory that labor demand elasticity of unionized firms would be smaller than that of nonunionized firms, using the Korean firms' panel data for 1990-2009. The major findings are the following: First, the estimates of labor demand elasticity of unionized firms are in the range of 0.34-0.49, less than a half of those of nonunionized firms, hence supporting the theory. Second, the unionized firms are more rigid in dynamic adjustment of employment than nonunionized firms. Finally, there are no significant differences between unionized and nonunionized firms in the elasticity of substitution.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.101-118
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• 2008

In this study, we estimate the labor demand function of environmental industry with environmental industry survey of Ministry of Environment. To do this, we apply the panel estimation technique. We follow the widely accepted estimation methods: panel generalized least square, panel generalized least square with heteroskedasticity/auto-correlation, random effect model and random effect model with auto-correlation. On the average, each industry is estimated at the elasticity of sales on labor demand from 0.193 to 0.259. It means that the increase of sales by 214billion won can create around $1,600{\sim}2,300$ jobs, and this is merely a direct effect. So when we consider the whole effect of labor demand increase including indirect derived job creation, the labor demand increase will be higher than this. So it is desirable for the government to support the development of environmental industry for sustainable development.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.93-129
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• 2013

Analyzing the change in consumption pattern depending on the employment of married women, the spendings in transportation, education, and dining out are increased. The change in consumption patterns depending on the increase of dual-income family can be seen as the increased demand of market service that replaces the household production service. Especially when the employment of married woman from high income class(highly educated, middle-class, upper-class) is increased, they tend to get employed in more professional and highly skilled industries, which leads to higher effect on employment induction, and consequently increasing the labor demand for low-skilled service industry.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.47-60
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• 2018

계획적이고 안정적인 영농을 위해 영농작업 인력을 확보하는 것은 매우 중요하다. 하지만 농가인구의 감소로 인한 농업인력 확보의 어려움과 농업노동 임금의 지속적인 증가는 경영주에게 이중의 고통이 되고 있다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 농가처분가능소득이 전국에서 가장 높은 강원도를 지역 표집으로 선정하여 Bivariate Probit 모형을 이용해 내국인과 외국인 고용의 상호 관계를 고려한 고용인력 수요 결정요인을 살펴보았다. 분석결과, 첫째, 3개월 이상 노동력을 고용하는 농가들의 경우 내국인 고용수요와 외국인 고용수요 간에는 양(+)의 상관관계가 있는 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 전형적인 도시근교 농업의 특징을 나타내는 춘천시에 비해 강원도내 타 지역 농가들은 다른 변수들이 일정할 경우 내국인과 외국인의 고용수요가 증가하는 것으로 나타났다. 셋째, 젊은 경영주일수록 내국인 상시 고용에 대한 수요가 높고, 농가조직에 참여하고 있는 농가일수록 자가노동 확률은 0.13% 감소하고, 상시 농업 노동력에 대한 수요가 증가하는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 분석결과를 종합한 농업 노동력 확보를 위한 정책적 시사점으로는 첫째, 상시고용된 농업인력들을 대상으로 국내외 문화 차이를 인지하고, 내국인 노동자와 외국인 노동자간의 협력 네트워크 구축을 위한 영농교육 확대가 필요하다. 둘째, 각 지역별로 내국인 또는 외국인 노동자의 상시고용 수요가 상이한 것으로 나타나 강원도내 지역별 농산업 현황을 기반으로 "(가칭)강원도 농업 인력 수급 플랫폼" 구축이 필요하다. 셋째, 청년창업농과 농가조직 참여 농가들을 대상으로 농작업 상시고용 인력을 우선적으로 매칭해 주는 것이 필요하다.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.21-35
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• 2021

The purpose of this paper is to examine how demand for labor affects the job seeker's decision on the level of investment in education. In the current paradigm of economic growth in which innovations and technological developments generally weaken the strength demand for labor and increases the uncertainty related to employment, this paper provides a theoretical framework that can be used as a basic framework in understanding the decision of investment in education in varying conditions of demand for labor. The following are the findings of this paper. First, the level of investment in education can generally be regarded to be higher as the demand for labor exacerbates but for the job seekers with a certain characteristic. Second, the Arrow-Pratt absolute risk-aversion measure is the characteristic of the job seeker that determines in what direction the job seeker changes in the level of investment in education, For an arbitrary level of demand for labor there exists a certain threshold which determines the minimum degree of risk-aversion required for the job seeker's Arrow-Pratt should go over to increase the level of education as demand for labor weakens. Third, the job seekers lower the level of education even though the demand condition in labor markets weakens if the compensation function does not depend on the level of education. This is surprising because it turns out that one of the reasons why job seekers invest in education is that they want to be recognized in their compensation for their level of education even when more education still raises the probability of employment.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.35-72
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• 2008

This paper examines whether me effects of product demand shocks on employment are different between unionized and non-unionized firms, using new firm-level longitudinal data in Korea over the period 1997~2004. The estimation result shows that the effects of both negative and positive demand shocks on employment are smaller in unionized firms than in non-unionized firms. The result implies that unions appear to provide their members with job stability in response to negative demand shocks, while playing a very limited role in employment determination in response to positive demand shocks leading to employment expansion.