Month: October 2024

Assistant Professor Wookun Kim’s research Baby Bonus, Fertility, and Missing Women has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Human Resources. 

His forthcoming work was featured in the article South Korea’s Plan to Avoid Population Collapse at Think Global Health, an initiative from Council on Foreign Relations. 

Below is Wookun’s brief description of his research in this publication: 

I estimate the effects of pro-natalist cash transfers on fertility, sex ratio at birth, and infant health in South Korea, using registry data from 2000 to 2015. I find that the total fertility rate in 2015 would have been 4.7% lower without the transfers. Cash transfers also lowered the sex ratio at birth, historically skewed toward boys in South Korea. Additionally, I show that the cash transfers led to reductions in birth weight and gestational length, which appear to be driven by negative selection into fertility, and that the cash transfers had positive impacts on birth weight among low-income families.

Congratulations, Woo! 

Professor Salmon published his article (with E. Glenn Dutcher and Krista J. Saral) Is “real” effort more real? in Experimental Economics.

Many laboratory experiment studies use “real” effort designs where subjects complete an actual task to exert effort rather than using a stylized effort design where subjects simply choose an effort level from a predefined set. Professor Salmon’s research finds no differences in participants’ behavior when the experiment proposes “real” effort tasks instead of “stylized” efforts, when controlling for effort costs.

Congratulations to Professor Salmon!