• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.25-46
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• 2010

The outstanding performance of some nations in Central and Northern Europe such as Denmark and the Netherlands in the labor market is much indebted to their policy to help labor flexicurity. In this study, the possibility of replicating the Dutch or Danish performance in the labor market is explored in case of adopting such policy in the 22 OECD countries. If implementing the flexicurity policy in the 22 member countries of the OECD leads to strong performance in the labor market, this policy can be globally shared as universal labor policy to provide a win-win situation among the labor, management and the authorities on the matter, paving the way for replacing the Anglo-Saxon policy characterized by high flexibility and low security, or the European alternative with a lower level of flexibility and a higher level of security. According to findings from our research, flexicurity policy can not produce any tangible accomplishments in the labor market by only itself. Therefore, we may safely reach the conclusion that flexicurity policy has a limited positive influence on the labor market of some northern or central European countries. Given the striking difference in inherent conditions between such European countries and OECD countries, it is not sensible for OECD nations to adopt labor policy in the direction of flexicurity.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.1-34
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• 2020

After the global financial crisis, doubts have been raised about the usefulness of traditional unemployment rate for the labor market slackness, hence, this study provides alternative indicators that can help estimate the labor market slackness in Korea, and investigates the degree of biasness of traditional indices of Korean labor market. In particular, this study intends to focus on the possibility of employing the labor underutilization index officially announced by Statistics Korea (KOSIS) from 2015. To do this, we first define the labor underutilization indices from 2003 to 2014 by applying current definitions of labor underutilization indices retrospectively to these periods. Based on these indices, the empirical analysis shows that the employment gap using labor underutilization indices is highly correlated with total output gap, and has significantly improved the performance of forecasting inflation rate compared to other labor market slackness indicators.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.235-241
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• 2017

This study investigated the performance factors for entry into the labor market of 4 - year college graduates using KEEP data and to determine how the labor market performance is related to the training institutions. The labor market performance is termed as 1) labor market entry time, 2) employment type, and 3) wage. Correspondence analysis was carried out with a nominal variable indicating the characteristics of a training institute, in which the respondents were trained for employment, and the relationship between the two was expressed in a more visible way. First, as a result of analyzing the first job transition period, the shortest training institutes were analyzed as public institutes, followed by private institutes and universities. Second, the employment rate of the public institutions is higher than that of private institutes and universities. Second, the employment rate of public institutions is higher than that of private institutes and universities. Third, the wage level of public institutes ranged from wage level 1 to 3, while private institutes had a wage level ranging from 2 to 4. Universities showed a wide range from 1 to 5. Based on these results, this study can analyze the difference in the labor market performance by training institutions when young people enter society.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.29-66
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• 2006

This study investigates the structural change of wage determination within internal labor market that have occurred around the financial crisis in 1997 by using the personnel data(1996~2000) of a Korean large firm. We take the effect of performance-based pay system to apply on wage determination of workers using Mincerian earnings function estimation. After introducing the annual salary system in the firm, we did not find the fact that the wage effect of seniority decreases, but we found the wage effect of relative evaluation ratings increases. Then, this study identifies the importance of the reward strategy of firm in Korean internal labor market. Finally, we have concluded that although the firm acknowledged the positive effects of performance-based HRM practices, we have not obtained enough evidence on the transformation into such practices because the seniority-based HRM has been traditionally prevalent in the Korean internal labor market.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.273-309
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• 2021

The development of regulatory systems varies between transition and non-transition economies. This suggests that they provide different incentives for entrepreneurial development and could have varied effects on the economy because they have different methods to deal with market failure. However, limited empirical evidence exists to prove the assumption of dichotomy. Using comprehensive data for institutional quality, labor market and financial market development, this research sought to analyze their effect on employment growth at micro level. The results show that the quality of institutions in transition economies are poorer relative to those in non-transition economies, but their financial and labor markets are more developed than the latter. Further analysis for the transition sample shows that the three variables are individually positively related with employment growth. For the non-transition sample, institutional quality and labor market flexibility bear a positive and significant effect on employment. Financial market development enters the model with a negative coefficient when regressed alone, but a joint test of significance finds that all the variables have a positive effect on employment growth. This result could imply that there is interdependence between institutional quality, labor flexibility and financial market development in firm-employment-growth relationship, or complementarity between regulations and the quality of institutions. Alternatively, this finding suggests that a stringently regulated credit market in non-transition economies have a selection effect-allocating credit only to entrepreneurs who already demonstrate strong growth potential. In sum, despite differences in the evolution of regulatory environment between the two samples, both of them complement employment growth at firm level. The overall implication of these findings is that less rigid regulations and coherent policies that are enforced with impartiality provide incentives for firms to expand.

• Economic Analysis
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.1-24
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• 2019

This study examines the labor market performance of graduates who had student loans. Compared to earlier studies, we extended analyses to all jobs that were experienced for more than 18 months after graduation. First, we found that students who had student loans earned 2.81% less at their first job compared to their counterparts without student loans. Second, the wage gap decreased over time, a reduction of 0.66%p due to labor market turnovers. Third, when we compared cumulated labor income, however, the amount for borrowers were continuously higher. This is because the job searching period of a borrower was shorter, despite relatively lower wages at the first job, and borrowers also made more frequent job turnovers, accompanying relatively more wage increases. These results suggest that the negative effects of college loans on earnings, reported in previous studies, may have exaggerated the negative impact to some extent of having loans. However, when we look at the quality of jobs beyond simply wages, the proportion of borrowers working at large companies as regular workers was consistently low. Given that job conditions at the earlier stages of one's career may lead to gaps over time, our findings call for more systematic investigations into the effects that student loans have on long-term labor performance.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.69 no.3
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• pp.193-212
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• 2017

This study is purposed to explain the characteristics of injured workers' labor market situation and to analyze the factors influencing labor market transition of those workers. Using the Worker's Compensation Insurance Panel Data ver.1~3 which was surveyed by the Korean Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service in 2013-2015, this study analyzed 1,668 injured worker cases. The study shows that workers who have experience job retention at least once are 36.8% of all, 51.5% of them have experienced re-employment, and 36.9% have done unemployment. One result of the longitudinal analysis is that socio-demographic factors including gender, age, education years, convalescence period, ability on job performance, company size, term of service, temporary employment, daily-workers status before job accident and job training were associated with return to pre-injury job. The other result is that statistically significant factors affecting the probability to be the unemployed are gender, age, levels of disability, convalescence, ability on job performance, term of service before job accident, job rehabilitation service utilization. These findings indicate that we need to develop efficient intervention programs for supporting return-to-work and labor market transition of injured workers.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.17-24
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• 2023

Purpose - The objective of this research is to investigate how lowering labor market frictions for female workers affects corporate social responsibility (CSR). Design/methodology/approach - We utilize the staggered adoption of state-level Paid Family Leave (PFL) acts in the U.S. These acts provide significant flexibility for female employees by mandating paid leave for a family or medical events. Our study is based on a sample of 30,027 publicly traded firms in the U.S. from 1991 to 2012. We employ a difference-in-differences research design, considering treated firms as those headquartered in states that enacted PFL laws. Findings - We find that there is a significant increase in the firms' CSR performance following the adoption of the PFL, suggesting that lowering the labor market frictions for female workers encourages firms to invest in CSR initiatives. Research implications or Originality - This study informs policy makers that PFL enables firms to reduce costly employee turnover and results in an increase in CSR performance.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.113-122
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• 2001

This study is to examine the effect of layoff on shareholders' wealth. Firms make layoff decisions by reason of cost cutting, lower performance, demand decline, restructuring. Therefore, I think that stock market responds to layoff positively, since the firm's labor productivity and profitability is improved after execution of layoff, I find that layoff variables effect on abnormal return positively in regression analysis. This means that layoff sends positive signal to the stock market for the firm's future performance. Therefore, layoff has a good effect on shareholders' wealth.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.33-73
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• 2016

We examine the relationship between individual's personality trait and wage performance using administrative data collected by Korea Employment Information Service. We use Aptitude Test Battery and Five Factor Personality Inventory for individual's cognitive and noncognitive skill respectively. The results show that there are robust relationships between wages and conscientiousness, extraversion. The relationships between personality traits vary across gender. Additionally, this results imply that the return to schooling is higher for those with higher cognitive ability in early labor market.