• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.75-105
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• 2008

This paper examines the changes over lime in union relative wage effects during the period of 1988 and 2007. The union wage premium was 3.4 percent in average during the last 20 years. It has fallen in the boom years up to the mid-1990s, but has rapidly risen since the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Time series evidence suggests that the union wage premium is counter-cyclical, which means that it responds to economic conditions with a reverse direction. There has been also a fast increase in the unadjusted wage gap relative to regression-adjusted wage gap during the last 10 years in particular, implying favorable changes in the selection of workers into unionized companies.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.79-106
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• 1992

This study analyzes the determinants of wage premium, defined as the excess of actual wage rate over opportunity wage, for the average worker in a Korean bargaining unit. Average wage premium of a firm is decomposed into quasi-rent per worker and rent-sharing rule. Per capita quasi-rent, representing a firm's ability to pay, is defined as the difference between sales revenue and the opportunity cost of mobile factors, divided by the number of employees. Rent-sharing rule, a measure of workers' bargaining power, is defined as the average wage premium divided by the per capita quasi-rent. Empirical results show that the differences in wage premium among Korean bargaining units are much better explained by the differences in quasi-rent than by the differences in bargaining power. Also, comparing the results of 1986 with those of 1988 show that the wage settlement mechanism in 1988 was not quite different from that of 1986, in spite of the drastic change in industrial relation system in 1987. It may simply yield higher opportunity wages, by raising the bargaining power of overall workers. The tendency of Korean labor market in 1988 to show a dual structure of high & low wage premium sectors, is not due to the fact that the differences in bargaing powers across firms tend to expand, but to the fact that unions tend to reduce the wage differences among the workers within an enterprise by pursuing more equal distribution of total wage premium. Hence, the policies for reducing the wage differentials across firms should focus on rent-regulating industrial policies, e.g. eliminating monopoly rents by deregulation.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.129-149
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• 2010

We find that there is the height premium in the Korean labor market. The wage increases by 1.5% with a centimeter increase of height among male workers of ages 30-49. This estimate is barely affected by family backgrounds such as a worker's father's education or occupation. It is rejected that a worker's height is a proxy variable for his health, which increases his wage. The height premium is unrelated with obesity. It is not also supported that a worker's height affects his wage through his occupational choice. We partly confirm that a worker's height affects his wage through his educational choice. The estimated height premium of 30's in Korea is comparable to that of age 33 in Great Britain.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.1-23
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• 2006

This study investigates the effects of inward foreign direct investment on local workers' wages by focusing on U.S. manufacturing industries for the period from 1987 to 1992. Contrary to public perception that foreign ownership is positively associated with higher wages, previous studies show mixed results. Since most of the previous studies used industry or firm level average wages, they can not control for the impact of individual characteristics on wages. I use two different approaches to control individual characteristics and to implement estimation in this study: (1) One-step estimation with industry-state level of inward foreign direct investments by using individual level data, and (2) Two-step industry characteristic regression approach. The higher presence of foreign firms is associated with higher local wages after workers' observable characteristics are controlled for in the first approach. This effect, however, disappears once workers' industry affiliations and regions are controlled for in cross-section analysis. In a panel data analysis, I did not find any statistically significant positive association between inward FDI activities and industry wage premiums within industry. Further, inward FDI activities appeared to be negatively associated with worker's industry wage premium for workers with more than high school education.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.61-93
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• 2009

In this paper, we estimate the wage premium of English skills in the Korean labor market using Korean Labor and Income Panel Study(KLIPS) data. In a simple OLS model, we find that people with some English skills in terms of self evaluation or job requirement earn 30% more than those who do not have English skills. But in a small sample of relatively young people, higher English lest scores do not raise earnings. When we add SAT scores in the wage equation, there is no wage premium of English skills, and in the IV estimation, we find no "English premium". These results consistently imply that while there is a large wage premium of English skills in the Korean labor market, it reflects unobservable ability for the most part. Meanwhile some of the regression results favor human capital theory over screening theory as an explanation of the nature of the wage premium of English skills.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.33-51
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• 2023

This study aims to investigate the changes in the employment structure of occupational groups by job characteristics and analyze the factors influencing wage premiums in local labor markets from 2010 to 2020. This study's analysis involves three primary steps. First, the occupational characteristics data from the Korea Network for Occupations and Workers are subjected to an exploratory factor analysis, and then a non-routine task intensity index is calculated by each occupations. Then, we conduct an exploratory analysis of changes in the distribution of employment by occupation from 2010 to 2020 by combining data from the Population Census with data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study to construct individual-level and regional-level data. Thirdly, we employ a hierarchical linear model to examine the individual-level and regional-level factors influencing wage premiums. Since 2010, the proportion of employment in occupations requiring non-routine task has continued to rise and now dominates the metropolitan labor market. Moreover, agglomeration effects resulting from urbanization produce a substantial wage premium for wage workers in occupations requiring non-routine tasks. This study seeks to provide policy implications to mitigate inequality and polarization in local labor markets by empirically analyzing the transition of occupational structure and wage inequality in relation to the local labor market context.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.31-53
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• 2007

This paper, using the sample of male workers in manufacturing industry from the HCCP (Human Capital Corporate Panel) data, analyzes the effects of trade union on the level and dispersion of wages. One of the advantages of the HCCP data is that it enables a researcher to control the effect of individual firm's 'ability to pay' on wage. All relevant variables controlled, the union effect is estimated to be 5-8%. Yet this figure seriously underestimates the wage advantage enjoyed by union workers, because union sets the "price" for experience low and the price for tenure high and at the same time extends tenure of workers by adopting strong employment protection policy. The paper also analyzes the effects of union on the wage inequality. The results are mixed: overall wage inequality is smaller in union sector while standard deviation is larger when all the personal characteristics are controlled.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.47-77
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• 2017

This paper analyzes the changes in wage inequality and its contributing factors since the mid-2000s. Although trends vary by data and wage indices, the Gini coefficient of the total wage of all workers shows an increasing trend due to the part-time increase of less than 35 hours per week, while the wage Gini coefficient of hourly wages and the total wage Gini coefficient of full-time workers showed a declining trend. Part-time increases have increased inequality based on total wages, but part-time hourly wage increases can be considered to have reduced hourly wage inequality. Therefore, as a result of decomposing the factor of Gini coefficient reduction only for full-time workers, factors that contributed absolutely to inequality reduction were variables such as job tenure, career, and occupation, and employment type variable has little effects, and the establishment size variable deepens inequality. The variables such as industry, age, and education did not contribute significantly to the inequality change. This is attributed to the decline in wage premiums for job tenure and management and professional jobs and the increase in wage premiums for large-scale businesses.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.39-74
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• 2019

In this paper, the wage equations of local labor markets for college graduates in Korea are estimated by Dahl(2002)'s methodology to correct for selection bias. The results suggest that the variations of coefficients in wage equations across the local labor markets are mostly remained after correcting for selection bias. The gender wage gap is hardly affected by selection bias. The variations of return to education and the major premium are reduced about 18% and 11% respectively. Meanwhile, the selection bias is negligible in the national capital region, which suggests that college graduates prefer the national capital region regardless of their gender, level of education, and major.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.355-364
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• 2009

This study investigated the labor market outcomes between IT graduates and non-IT graduates in terms of employment, wage, and work period through Monte-Carlo and Calibration method. The empirical result of the movement from work to unemployment implied that IT major graduates have stable work period irrespective of continuous employment, and but the number of work period of non-IT graduates decreases. It also showed that IT related department graduates got relatively paid more than non-IT graduates and IT major graduates was 0.8% higher wage premium than non-IT graduates.