Labor Market Changes and Gender Polarization in Deindustrializing Societies
(Swiss National Science Foundation, Division 1, 2023-2027)
I am leading a research project on how structural labor market changes in deindustrializing societies affect social and political conflicts from a gender perspective. The research team employs interdisciplinary, mixed-methods and comparative approaches to understand how young citizens in Korea and China respond to increasing labor market competition, structural changes in the labor market and growing unemployment. The project focuses on cultural and social factors that mediate and moderate the political and social consequences.
Besides my contribution as a PI, the research team has a doctoral student and a post-doctoral research fellow. The project currently is hiring a post-doctoral fellow. Please consult the following webpage for more information.
Peer-reviewed Journals
"Why Don't Trade Preferences Reflect Economic Self-Interest?" with Michael Tomz.
International Organization 71, Issue S1, April 2017, pp. S85-S108
This study tests the effects of economic ignorance on voters' preferences for trade policies. We argue that one of the reasons why voters do not express self-interested attitudes toward trade protection is that a majority of voters are uninformed about the consequences of trade policies. We use survey experiments that manipulate the level of information given to the survey respondents to analyze how information changes voters' responses. The study finds that informed respondents are more likely to express self-interested policy preferences, but they also become more sensitive to the interests of society.
Manufacturing Productivity with Worker Turnover with Moon, K., Bergemann, P., Brown, D., Chen, A., Chu, J., Eisen, E., Fischer, G., Loyalka, and J. Cohen
To maximize productivity, manufacturers must organize and equip their workforces to efficiently handle variable workloads. Their success depends on their ability to assign experienced and skilled workers to specialized tasks and coordinate work on production lines. Worker turnover may disrupt such efforts. We use staffing, productivity, and pay data from within a major consumer electronics manufacturer's supply chain to study how firms should manage worker turnover and its effects using production decisions, wages, and inventory. We find that worker turnover impedes coordination between assembly line co-workers by weakening knowledge sharing and relationships. Publicly available unit-cost estimates imply that worker turnover accounts for $206--274 million in added direct expenses alone from defectively assembled units failing the firm's stringent quality control. To evaluate managerial alternatives, we structurally estimate a dynamic equilibrium model (Experience-Based Equilibrium, Fershtman and Pakes 2012) encompassing (1) workers' endogenous turnover decisions and (2) the firm's weekly planning of its production scheduling and staffing in response. In counterfactual analyses, a less turnover-prone, hence more productive, workforce significantly benefits the firm, reducing its variable production costs by 4.5%, or an estimated $928 million for the studied product. Such benefits justify paying higher efficiency wages even to less skilled workforces; further, interestingly, rational inventory management policies incentivize self-interested firms to reduce, rather than tolerate, turnover.
Working Papers
Politicization of Labor Discontent in Contemporary China (under review)
Unlike the assumption in the comparative literature that authoritarian regimes have a strong incentive to suppress labor mobilization, some authoritarian regimes allow workers to engage in popular contention as long as they demand short-term economic gains. In contemporary China, the central government has tolerated limited forms of popular contention among marginalized workers such as labor strike at a single workplace. Yet we have limited understanding of its effect on political resilience in the long run. In this paper, I theorize the regime's approach as atomized incorporation as a tool for blame avoidance and investigate whether workers' discontent can be contained within the firm boundary. Atomized incorporation could be a blame avoidance strategy for the central government because it frames workers' everyday struggles as isolated economic matters internal to a specific workplace. Using an original survey dataset of industrial workers in South China, I demonstrate that atomized incorporation has only been partially successful in diverting blame away from the central government. While those who participate in labor contention blame the firm rather than the central government, those who are exposed to alternative sources of information eventually attribute blame to the central government. These findings imply that the divide between economics and politics might not be sustainable in the long run in an environment where citizens are able to access alternative sources of information.
COVID-19 and Social Dialogue in Indonesian Garment Factories (with Luisa Lupo and ILO)
Using the data from the ILO Better Work program, our paper investigates whether and how social dialogue contributed to lowering labor conflicts during the COVID pandemic. Our central focus is the relationship between the bipartite cooperation institutions and trade unions in promoting social dialogue. We argue that promotion of social dialogue through bipartite committees could induce worse outcomes for those workers affiliated with trade union.
Structural Labor Market Changes, Self-Conscious Emotion, and Anti-Feminism
This paper investigates how structural changes in the labor market contributes to the rise of anti-feminist movement from the theoretical lens of self-conscious emotions. During the last ten years, young male citizens in South Korea have increasingly engaged in anti-feminism movement; this has been attributed to the deteriorating labor market conditions. In the extant literature, studies have argued that structural labor market changes have led to the rise of right-wing authoritarianism in other parts of the world. Yet, the studies have mainly focused on Western Europe and the United States and do not take into account different social contexts that give rise to the self-conscious emotions. I argue that when we focus on how social environment shapes self-conscious emotions, we can understand the political consequences of structural market changes with a more integrative framework. Utilizing a mixed-method approach by combining a nationally representative survey of Korean citizens with qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews, the paper argues that young male citizens' emotional antagonism is influenced by how they process social cues.
Working Projects
(Swiss National Science Foundation, Division 1, 2023-2027)
I am leading a research project on how structural labor market changes in deindustrializing societies affect social and political conflicts from a gender perspective. The research team employs interdisciplinary, mixed-methods and comparative approaches to understand how young citizens in Korea and China respond to increasing labor market competition, structural changes in the labor market and growing unemployment. The project focuses on cultural and social factors that mediate and moderate the political and social consequences.
Besides my contribution as a PI, the research team has a doctoral student and a post-doctoral research fellow. The project currently is hiring a post-doctoral fellow. Please consult the following webpage for more information.
Peer-reviewed Journals
"Why Don't Trade Preferences Reflect Economic Self-Interest?" with Michael Tomz.
International Organization 71, Issue S1, April 2017, pp. S85-S108
This study tests the effects of economic ignorance on voters' preferences for trade policies. We argue that one of the reasons why voters do not express self-interested attitudes toward trade protection is that a majority of voters are uninformed about the consequences of trade policies. We use survey experiments that manipulate the level of information given to the survey respondents to analyze how information changes voters' responses. The study finds that informed respondents are more likely to express self-interested policy preferences, but they also become more sensitive to the interests of society.
Manufacturing Productivity with Worker Turnover with Moon, K., Bergemann, P., Brown, D., Chen, A., Chu, J., Eisen, E., Fischer, G., Loyalka, and J. Cohen
To maximize productivity, manufacturers must organize and equip their workforces to efficiently handle variable workloads. Their success depends on their ability to assign experienced and skilled workers to specialized tasks and coordinate work on production lines. Worker turnover may disrupt such efforts. We use staffing, productivity, and pay data from within a major consumer electronics manufacturer's supply chain to study how firms should manage worker turnover and its effects using production decisions, wages, and inventory. We find that worker turnover impedes coordination between assembly line co-workers by weakening knowledge sharing and relationships. Publicly available unit-cost estimates imply that worker turnover accounts for $206--274 million in added direct expenses alone from defectively assembled units failing the firm's stringent quality control. To evaluate managerial alternatives, we structurally estimate a dynamic equilibrium model (Experience-Based Equilibrium, Fershtman and Pakes 2012) encompassing (1) workers' endogenous turnover decisions and (2) the firm's weekly planning of its production scheduling and staffing in response. In counterfactual analyses, a less turnover-prone, hence more productive, workforce significantly benefits the firm, reducing its variable production costs by 4.5%, or an estimated $928 million for the studied product. Such benefits justify paying higher efficiency wages even to less skilled workforces; further, interestingly, rational inventory management policies incentivize self-interested firms to reduce, rather than tolerate, turnover.
Working Papers
Politicization of Labor Discontent in Contemporary China (under review)
Unlike the assumption in the comparative literature that authoritarian regimes have a strong incentive to suppress labor mobilization, some authoritarian regimes allow workers to engage in popular contention as long as they demand short-term economic gains. In contemporary China, the central government has tolerated limited forms of popular contention among marginalized workers such as labor strike at a single workplace. Yet we have limited understanding of its effect on political resilience in the long run. In this paper, I theorize the regime's approach as atomized incorporation as a tool for blame avoidance and investigate whether workers' discontent can be contained within the firm boundary. Atomized incorporation could be a blame avoidance strategy for the central government because it frames workers' everyday struggles as isolated economic matters internal to a specific workplace. Using an original survey dataset of industrial workers in South China, I demonstrate that atomized incorporation has only been partially successful in diverting blame away from the central government. While those who participate in labor contention blame the firm rather than the central government, those who are exposed to alternative sources of information eventually attribute blame to the central government. These findings imply that the divide between economics and politics might not be sustainable in the long run in an environment where citizens are able to access alternative sources of information.
COVID-19 and Social Dialogue in Indonesian Garment Factories (with Luisa Lupo and ILO)
Using the data from the ILO Better Work program, our paper investigates whether and how social dialogue contributed to lowering labor conflicts during the COVID pandemic. Our central focus is the relationship between the bipartite cooperation institutions and trade unions in promoting social dialogue. We argue that promotion of social dialogue through bipartite committees could induce worse outcomes for those workers affiliated with trade union.
Structural Labor Market Changes, Self-Conscious Emotion, and Anti-Feminism
This paper investigates how structural changes in the labor market contributes to the rise of anti-feminist movement from the theoretical lens of self-conscious emotions. During the last ten years, young male citizens in South Korea have increasingly engaged in anti-feminism movement; this has been attributed to the deteriorating labor market conditions. In the extant literature, studies have argued that structural labor market changes have led to the rise of right-wing authoritarianism in other parts of the world. Yet, the studies have mainly focused on Western Europe and the United States and do not take into account different social contexts that give rise to the self-conscious emotions. I argue that when we focus on how social environment shapes self-conscious emotions, we can understand the political consequences of structural market changes with a more integrative framework. Utilizing a mixed-method approach by combining a nationally representative survey of Korean citizens with qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews, the paper argues that young male citizens' emotional antagonism is influenced by how they process social cues.
Working Projects
- Challenging Atomization: Gender and Labor Activism in South Korea and China