• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.385-432
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• 2017

This paper investigates how firm age, size and ownership are related with job creation and destruction, and how these patterns differ across transition and non-transition economies. The analysis finds that age is inversely related with gross job creation and net job creation in the two samples. This finding is consistent with the theory of the learning effect. The relationship between age and job destruction is indifferent in non-transition economies. On the contrary, old firms in transition economies destroy more jobs than young ones. The paper further establishes an inverse relationship between size and gross job creation in the two groups. However, there is divergence between the two samples; small firms in non-transition economies also exhibit a higher gross job destruction rate. Consequently large firms have a higher net job creation rate. In transition economies, small and large firms exhibit similar rates of job destruction. But small firms retain a higher net job creation rate. A more intriguing finding is that state owned firms do not underperform domestic private ones. This means these countries may be using soft budget constraint which allows state owned firms to overstaff. Finally, crowding out of SMEs by foreign owned firms is not evident in transition economies.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.55-74
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• 2015

Using the Census on Establishments collected by Statistics Korea, we analyze how the patterns of job creation and destruction differ across counties (si-gun-gu). We measure aggregate employment changes due to establishment startups, expansions, contractions, and shutdowns for each county and quantify the role of such reallocations in explaining variation in employment growth across counties. Overall we find that both rates of net entry and job creation play an important role in explaining differences in net job creation rates across regions. Moreover, counties with high employment growth rates also tend to have high exit and job destruction rates, which suggests that an active process of job reallocation is a key source of regional employment growth.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.29-66
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• 2004

In this paper, I investigate job creation and destruction in Korean mining and manufacturing between 1982 and 2000 using the raw data of Annual Mining and Manufacturing Survey. The rate of job creation and destruction of continuing plants averaged 9.75 and 10.33, respectively, which are higher than those of OECD countries, Chile, and Colombia. The created jobs showed weak persistence and the concentration of job reallocation is high, compared with other countries. Job reallocation accounts for major fraction of worker reallocation and the fraction has increased before 1997. Analysis of time series data of job flow revealed a general pattern of pro-cyclic job creation and counter-cyclic job destruction. However job reallocation in Korea is strongly acyclic whereas the rate is known to be counter-cyclical in the U.S.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.1-24
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• 2015

We estimate the natural rate of Unemployment in Korea, using job finding and separation rates. The estimation results suggest that both job finding and separation rates of Korea have increased after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. However, we don't find evidence of significant increase in the trend of the natural rate of unemployment. Overall our finding suggests that both job creation and destruction have increased.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.99-127
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• 2006

This paper examines the effect of the market power of firms in the product market on job creation, job destruction and net job growth. It uses the reconstructed establishment data in the Korean Annual Mining and Manufacturing Survey between 1982 and 2002. This paper shows that job creation has continuously declined since the late 1980s and the decline is common for both market-dominant and competitive firms. The effect of market dominance on job creation is negative, controlling the firm-characteristics variables such as firm size and firm age.

• STI Policy Review
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2013

The Schumpeterian process of "creative destruction", associated with the emergence and diffusion of new radical, so-called "general purpose" technologies, has throughout history impacted wealth and income, jobs creation, jobs displacement, and the emergence and submergence of new hotspots of innovation. Emerging countries have benefited most from such a renewing of those societies' dynamics, leading them to higher levels of economic development and welfare. Doing so they have shown a remarkable capacity in moving upstream in the value chain, from outsourcing of manufacturing activities to autonomous process technology development, product development, design, and applied research. At the same time however, such Schumpeterian processes have now and then turned into exactly opposite processes of "destructive creation." Such processes seem to have become common among what could be called "submerging" economies: innovation only benefitting a few at the expense of many with as a result an opposite pattern of a long term reduction in overall welfare, productivity, and employment growth.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.111-139
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• 2005

This study analyzed employment instability, defining the increase of employment instability as 'a greater possibility of losing a job and a declining possibility of re-employment'. Flow variable measurements showed that the extent of employment instability was higher post 2000 compared to the period of before financial crisis. When considering the status of workers, such an increase in employment instability can be characterized by a greater possibility of unemployment for daily workers. If this is examined in conjunction with job creation and destruction, employment instability is increased not because there are less jobs being created but because there is an actual decline in the number of jobs and also because the jobs that are being created are mostly temporary. On the other hand the increased instability is due to the large-scaled public work policy under the financial crisis.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.1-29
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• 2018

The paper reviews the trend of youth employment in Korea in recent years and examines whether the change in labor demand through declining business dynamism is one of the causes. The analysis based on Employment Insurance database finds that the rate of job creation declined over the period from 1999 to 2014 and that the job creation of small- and medium-sized enterprises fell sharply. This is partly explained by entry of fewer firms than before given that young firms tend to experience rapid employment growth. In fact, it is confirmed that the share of firms under age 6 in employment level and job creation declined. The finding that young firms employ young workers more than old firms suggests that a smaller role of young firms in the economy had a negative effect on youth employment.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.45-112
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• 2002

Enhancing labor market flexibility is currently posted as one of the major economic policy objectives in Korea. However, the labor market effects of specific policies to achieve it have not been sufficiently investigated. This paper takes up the issue of employment protection deregulation and surveys and empirically analyzes its policy effects. Academic researches generally confirm that deregulation tends to promote labor turnover and employment of the disadvantaged groups such as the youth and female by raising the overall efficiency of the economy, but its effects on unemployment is not clear. In the Korean labor market, both job creation and destruction, and labor mobility have increased after the economic crisis of 1998, but they can not be seen as deregulation effects as the changes are confined to the temporary and daily employment whose labor markets are least regulated whereas the regular employment market remains virtally unchanged. Such results suggest that labor market deregulation need to be pursued consistently as a policy goal since the labor demand condition shift and the need for expanding regular employment necessitates it, for which detailed policy agenda for removing market inefficiencies should be carefully arranged.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.187-216
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• 2004

After Asian financial crisis hit the Korea, Korean government and Korean firms need to restructure their system. Specially financial sector has to renew its system. One way renew its system was adjust company's labor system. The forms of labor adjustment are external numerical flexibility, externalization, internal numerical flexibility, functional flexibility and wage flexibility. These five forms based on two big categories which are wage flexibility and employment flexibility. This study only focus on th effect of employment flexibility in financial sector in Korea. Employment flexibilities can be practice as employment adjustment. Also we concentrate on separation and re-accessors to other financial institute after the separation. The result shows that Korean financial sector are in the range of 10.78% and the job destruction rates are about 11.26%. During the period from year 1998 to year 2002, the numbers of accession has down about 30%. The logit statistical analysis for separation shows that demographical variables and the reasons of separation affected separation and reemployment.