• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.125-147
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• 2001

It is expected that labor mobility and inter-industry labor turnover would rise due to the rapid changes in the industrial structure and legal institutions of layoffs after the 1997 economic crisis in Korea. One aspect of economic costs of labor mobility is demise of accumulated skills of workers. Workers' skills could be decomposed into three parts, general skills, firm-specific skills, and industry-specific skills. Using data from the panal data of Korea Labor Institute(KLIPS), I show that the net return to seniority is markedly reduced once industry-experience are controlled for. The returns to industry-specific experience are relatively high. Particularly, the experience in one-digit industry is more important for the white-collar workers, while the experience in three-digit industry is also important for the blue-collar workers. Therefore, it seems that the economic cost of labor mobility would be diverse between the skills and between the working classes.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.1-28
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• 2005

First, The flow into and out of unemployment has been increasing considerably too since the late 1997. Moreover, about half of job changes involve career changes associated with industrial and occupational changes which workers work for. Workers who switch industries and occupations significantly suffer greater wage losses than observed similar workers who find new jobs in their pre-turnover industry or occupation. These findings imply that labor mobility is more likely to cause losses in accumulated skill of workers. Second, this study compared the wage return to past training when a worker remains with an employer with the wage return to past training when a worker moves to a new employer. Surprisingly, training provided by previous employers has significantly positive wage effect. These findings that the skill acquired by employer- provided training is transferable across some firms. Third, this study finds that the likelihood of sectoral mobility decreases with training received in the current industry. It gives an evidence of the industry- specific training. Based on these findings, this paper suggest the way of dividing the costs of benefits of training among employers within their sector to prevent under-investment in training.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.111-140
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• 2020

This paper focuses on the emerging patterns of educational mobility and unskilled labor migration from Uzbekistan to Japan and South Korea. Labor migration and educational mobility are becoming the next "horizon" in the expanded relationship between East and Central Asia, powered by several factors, including the efforts by Japan and South Korea to build "original" people-oriented policy engagements with the region and the demand from Central Asian states, such as Uzbekistan, to provide more labor opportunities to their young and growing populations. This paper presents the initial findings of a pilot survey that explores and occasionally compares the experiences of Uzbek migrants to Japan and South Korea, using datasets of face-to-face interviews related to various aspects of life in Japan and South Korea. The interviews were conducted face to face and online (Telegram, Skype, etc.) with 66 migrants and Japanese language school students (whom this paper treats as labor migrants masquerading as students) in Japan from November 2019 to January 2020 as well as online with 30 laborers and students in South Korea from August to September 2020.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.43-77
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• 2012

This paper investigates how individual labor income is determined by initial conditions - such as educational attainment, age, and sex - and all the other conditions. Using KLIPS (Korea Labor & Income Panel Study) database, the paper finds, first, that over the period of 1998-2008, cross-sectional income distribution has deteriorated for the whole sample but not within each age group. Second, income mobility defined by the relative importance of initial conditions in individual income disparities has moderately increased in most age groups.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.117-146
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• 2012

This study demonstrates the gender difference in the factors that affect job changes and the resulting wage changes in the recent Korean labor market. By using the KEAPS (2003-2007), we found that male workers uniquely tend to stay longer at their current jobs when they have families to support. After controlling self-selection bias, we also found that wage changes resulting from switching jobs differ between male and female workers during this studied period.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.25-41
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• 2012

This paper estimates the intergenerational income mobility of Korea by applying the new errors-in-variable correction methods to recent waves of the Korea Labor and Income Panel Study. The intergenerational income elasticity estimates ranged from 0.24 to 0.34 show a substantial intergenerational income association in Korea and an upward trend over time.

• 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.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.146-159
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influential factors on the job mobility types and patterns of baby boomers over the past 15 years. Sequential analysis was conducted to analyze the data that were derived from Wave 1~15(1998~2013) of Korean Labor and Income Panel Study(KLIPS). In particular, we analyzed the job mobility types and frequency, conversion analysis, probability, and significance rate. The results were as follows: firstly, proportional rates of male baby boomer workers such as technical, functional, and agriculture workers were higher than those of professionals and semi-professionals, whereas in case of female baby boomer workers, proportional rate of office workers were lower than those of service and sales workers. It was showed that functional and labor workers significantly higher than others. We found that after retiring, they left their job to search for farming job or choose to work in secondary labor markets. We suggested that the retirement support system and management system should be designed and conducted in a good manner.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.247-271
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• 1996

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.161-174
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• 1996

Much of the dual labor markets literature is devoted to exploring the reasons as th why the markets are segmented along the lines where the observed wage differentials are not a result of underlying skill differentials . ; and why otherwise comparable workers different the duration of their job tenure and incidence of unemployment. the logic of competitive economics denies the possibility of equally skilled workers being treated differently in labor markets. The model presented in this paper shows that workers could be segregated quite simply due to the structure of information and job-match quality, even though they are the same in terms of productivity. In general, the model predicts that observability of a worker's productivity and the extent of match specificity are key features of labor market segmentation. An important implication is that the negative from the past labor market experienes, sometimes called as hysteresis effect, helps to restrict mobility of workers among different sectors and results in perpetuation of unemployment in the secondary sector. The model also provides an explanation of the efficient wage scheme in the primary sector.