Research

Pandemic Economics

• The Economic Ripple Effects of a Temporary Shutdown, with F. Buera, R. Fattal Jaef, H. Hopenhayn, P. A. Neumeyer, March 2025. (This version supersedes NBER Working Paper No.  28704.)
• Where Are the Workers? From Great Resignation to Quiet Quitting, with D. Lee and J. Park. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, First Quarter 2024.  Article in Harvard Business Review   Article in NBER Digest
• Covid-19 Economics: Introduction, with G. Vandenbroucke. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, July 2022.
• Hit Harder, Recover Slower? Unequal Employment Effects of the Covid-19 Shock, with S. Y. Lee and M. Park. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, Fourth Quarter 2021.
• Who Should Work from Home during a Pandemic? The Wage-Infection Trade-off, with S. Aum and S. Y. Lee. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, Second Quarter 2022.
• COVID-19 Doesn’t Need Lockdowns to Destroy Jobs: The Effect of Local Outbreaks in Korea, with S. Aum and S. Y. Lee, Labour Economics, June 2021.  Article in ProMarket.org
• Inequality of Fear and Self-Quarantine: Is There a Trade-off between GDP and Public Health? with S. Aum and S. Y. Lee, Journal of Public Economics, February 2021.

Technological Changes across Sectors and Occupations

• The Labor Market Impact of Digital Technologies, with S. Aum, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, Second Quarter 2025.
• Is Software Eating the World? with S. Aum, June 2024.  Article in VoxEU
• Technology and the Task Content of Jobs across the Development Spectrum, with J. Caunedo and E. Keller. World Bank Economic Review, August 2023.
• Horizontal and Vertical Polarization: Task-Specific Technological Change in a Multi-Sector Economy, with S. Y. Lee, April 2018. (This version supersedes NBER Working Paper No. 23283.)
• Why is the Labor Share Declining? with S. Aum, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, Fourth Quarter 2020.
• Computerizing Industries and Routinizing Jobs: Explaining Trends in Aggregate Productivity, with S. Aum and S. Y. Lee, Journal of Monetary Economics, August 2018. Article in VoxEU
• Industrial and Occupational Employment Changes during the Great Recession, with S. Aum and S. Y. Lee, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, Fourth Quarter 2017.

Human Capital and Labor Supply

• The Option Value of Human Capital: Higher Education and Wage Inequality, with D. Lee and S. Y. Lee, June 2017. (This version supersedes NBER Working Paper No. 21724.)
• Lifetime Labor Supply and Human Capital Investment, with R. Manuelli and A. Seshadri, January 2012. (Also available as St. Louis Fed Working Paper No. 2012-004A.)
• Occupational Mobility and Lifetime Earnings, with C. Y. K. Yuen, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, Third Quarter 2019.

Industrial Policy

• The Plant-Level View of an Industrial Policy: The Korean Heavy Industry Drive of 1973, with M. Kim and M. Lee, March 2025. This version supersedes NBER Working Paper No. 29252.  Article in VoxEU   Article in NBER Digest
• Big Push in Distorted Economies, with F. Buera, H. Hopenhayn and N. Trachter, March 2021. (Available as NBER Working Paper No. 28561 and CEPR Discussion Paper 18023.)

Macroeconomic Transitions

• The Plant-Level View of Korea’s Growth Miracle and Slowdown, with M. Lee. Canadian Journal of Economics, August 2024.
• Productivity Growth and Capital Flows: The Dynamics of Reforms, with F. Buera, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2017.
• Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in Korea, 1982-2007, with M. Kim and J. Oh, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, Second Quarter 2017.
• Financial Frictions and the Persistence of History, with F. Buera, Journal of Political Economy, April 2013.
• Well-Intended Policies, with F. Buera and B. Moll, Review of Economic Dynamics, January 2013.

Aggregate and Distributional Impact of Financial Development

• The Macroeconomics of Microfinance, with F. Buera and J. Kaboski, Review of Economic Studies, January 2021.
• Finance and Economic Development in the Very Long Run: A Review Essay, Journal of Economic Literature, December 2018.
• Taking Stock of the Evidence on Micro-Financial Interventions, with F. Buera and J. Kaboski, in The Economics of Poverty Traps, December 2018.
• Entrepreneurship and Financial Frictions: A Macrodevelopment Perspective, with F. Buera and J. Kaboski, Annual Review of Economics, August 2015.
• Macro-Perspective on Asset Grants Programs: Occupational and Wealth Mobility, with F. Buera and J. Kaboski, The American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings, May 2014.
• Finance and Development: A Tale of Two Sectors, with F. Buera and J. Kaboski, The American Economic Review, August 2011.
• Self-Insurance vs. Self-Financing: A Welfare Analysis of the Persistence of Shocks, with F. Buera, Journal of Economic Theory, May 2011.

Finance and Aggregate Fluctuations

• Anatomy of a Credit Crunch: From Capital to Labor Markets, with F. Buera and R. Fattal-Jaef, Review of Economic Dynamics, January 2015.

Fiscal Policy

• Does Transparency Pay? with R. Glennerster, IMF Staff Papers, April 2008.
• Managing the Maturity Structure of Government Debt, Journal of Monetary Economics, September 2007.
• Ramsey Meets Bewley: Optimal Government Financing with Incomplete Markets. (Under major revision. An earlier version is available upon request.)

Estimation of Dynamic Models

• Estimation of Dynamic Models with Nonparametric Simulated Maximum Likelihood, with D. Kristensen, Journal of Econometrics, March 2012.
• Smooth Filtering and Likelihood Inference in Dynamic Latent Variables Models, with C. Brownlees and D. Kristensen. (A preliminary version is available upon request.)