Dr. Wookun Kim recently presented his working paper titled “Heterogeneous Local Employment Multipliers: Evidence from Relocations of Public Entities in South Korea” in the Atlanta Fed’s Early Career Program Workshop. The authors (joint with Changsu Ko and Hwanoong Lee) estimate local employment multipliers following an episode of relocations of public entities in South Korea. They find that an introduction of one public sector employment increases the private sector employment by one unit, with employment growth in the services sector driving this increase in private sector employment. In addition to the effects being highly localized, their results imply that local employment multipliers tend to be higher in areas with predetermined characteristics that allow faster and larger general equilibrium responses to take place after the public sector shock. Here is a link to a summary, along with the other papers at the workshop: https://www.atlantafed.org/blogs/macroblog/2022/10/20/atlanta-feds-early-career-visitor-program-workshop-synopsis.
