• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.289-306
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• 2021

This paper aims to investigate how and to what extent FDI impacts the relative demand for skilled labor within firms in the case of developing countries. The analysis uses a sizeable micro-level dataset for Malaysian manufacturing industries using the System-GMM estimators to control the estimations' endogeneity problems. For this purpose, the study uses foreign equity share at the firm level to investigate foreign ownership effects at the firm level and the Horizontal FDI index by Smarzynska Javorcik (2004) to analyze FDI intra-industry linkages influence on the structure of labor demand for Malaysian domestic firms. Our findings indicate that foreign ownership increases the skilled demand within Malaysian manufacturing through the learning process, exclusively for small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs). Conversely for foreign-owned firms, changes in their skilled-labor share do not associate with changes in firm-level foreign equity share. We conclude that foreign ownership per se is not the major contributing factor for skill upgrading in Malaysian manufacturing firms. Furthermore, the competitive pressures caused by foreign firms' presence within the same industry - namely horizontal FDI - has a significant negative spillover effect on the level of skilled-labor share for domestic firms in the Malaysian manufacturing sector within periods of the understudies.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.93-129
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• 2013

Analyzing the change in consumption pattern depending on the employment of married women, the spendings in transportation, education, and dining out are increased. The change in consumption patterns depending on the increase of dual-income family can be seen as the increased demand of market service that replaces the household production service. Especially when the employment of married woman from high income class(highly educated, middle-class, upper-class) is increased, they tend to get employed in more professional and highly skilled industries, which leads to higher effect on employment induction, and consequently increasing the labor demand for low-skilled service industry.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-39
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• 2007

This study focuses on the possibility that skill-biased technological change is one of the factors for relatively poor employment conditions of the unskilled after the economic crisis. Increasing employment share of skilled workers accompanying with rising wage premium for education since implies that labor demand has shifted toward the skilled. The decomposition of changes in wage share of skilled workers into between-industry and within-industry changes suggests that the increase in the demand for skilled labor has been largely due to within-industry changes, which can be seen as reflecting the effect of the skill-biased technological change. Also the regression results indicate that the employment share of skilled workers has more rapidly increased in the industries with higher ICT (Information Communication Technology) investment intensity since the mid 1990s, hinting to the possibility that skill-biased technological changes may have come from ICT.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.44-60
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• 2010

Under the continuing economic growth without increase in employment, issues regarding the impact of IT investment on demand for labor have been continuously raised. Under the circumstance, this study carried out an empirical analysis on the impact of IT investment on employment with a sample of 498 businesses whose domestic sales for the period of six years from 2003 to 2008 are KRW 100 billion or above. The result of the analysis found that IT investment increases employment in most of the industries except for some of the service sectors. In the manufacturing industry, more IT investment increased employment but decreased the flexibility in demand for labor; therefore, IT investment has a substitutional relationship with low-skilled labor and a complementary relationship with high-skilled labor. In the areas of electricity, gas and construction, employment increased as IT investment increased, with the greatest flexibility in demand for labor. In the service industry, increase in IT investment led to more employment and higher flexibility in producer services only. On the other hand, there was no meaningful relationship found between IT investment and employment in the areas of distribution services and social services.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.1-44
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• 2013

This paper surveys the existing literatures on labor demand of Korea. It has been found that labor and capital are substitutes in Korea and the result holds even if labor is decomposed into white collar and blue collar workers. The elasticity of substitution lies between 0 and 1. It is yet unclear if employment and work hours are substitutes. The reduction of legal work week did not increase employment although decreased work hours. The labor demand elasticity is below 0.5 in the short run. Since mid 1990s, the technological change has shown skill bias and therefore increased demand for skilled labor.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.12
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• pp.283-293
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• 2021

To verify the employment impact of two-directional FDI, the study analyzes panel data composed of 26 OECD countries from 2006 to 2018 by using the system GMM. Furthermore, we decompose domestic employment into types of industries and skill compositions to identify the heterogeneous employment impact. The results show that inward and outward FDI at lag one period promote domestic employment at the overall level. In terms of workers' skill levels, lagged inward FDI significantly persistently promotes high-skilled workers' employment, likewise, the positive employment impact also appears with a time lag in low-skilled labor subgroups. Outward FDI, on the other hand, initially inhibits both high- and low-skilled labor demand, but then changes to a positive effect in the highskilled labor subgroups. Although there is a time difference between inward and outward FDI, it has a significant and positive impact on employment in the manufacturing and service industries. The results indicate that the relationship between manufacturing and service employment is a mutual substitute. To attract international investors, governments should promote a favorable investment climate and maintain stable economic growth. Because low-skilled labor is more susceptible to changes in FDI, policy measures are required to ensure employment stability.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.13
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• pp.141-162
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• 2003

This article discusses the issues of the estimated size and characteristics of irregular employment work force in Korea after IMF economic crisis in 1997. The issues of the estimated size of irregular employment work force originated from different concepts and its operationalizations among the labor economists, despite their utilization of the same labor force data, 'Economically Active Population Survey(EAPA)' collected from Korea National Statistical Office(KNSO). And the issues contribute toward the understandings of the irregular employment and the limits of the EAPA, despite its various usefulness. This article also describes the summary characteristics of irregular employment work force from both sides of labor supply and its demand. The major characteristics of irregular employment work force on the labor supply side appears in the concentration of social minorities, i.e. woman, the aged, lower educated and skilled populations. On the labor demand of irregular employment work force, the majority of it concentrated on the establishments under 10 employees, and probably the important incentives for irregular employment work force of the firms is labor cost efficiency. Finally, this article propose an alternative against the discrimination between the regular and irregular work force.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.87-133
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• 2012

This paper consists of two parts. The first part introduces a simple endogenous growth model. It is based on Romer(1990), but extends the original model by incorporating individual workers skill heterogeneity. Based on the heterogeneity, the model has a labor allocation mechanism between skilled (research) and unskilled (production) sectors. Different from Romer(1990), the labor allocation is determined by both demand and supply conditions of the economy. The endogenous growth model presented in this paper shows how the shape of the distribution of human capital affects on the labor allocation, hence on the employment structure, wage profile and economic growth. The model can be extended to an open economy. With the heterogeneity, the extended model explains distributional effect as well as growth effect of the economic openness. The second part provides empirical evidence in support of the extension part of the model presented in the first part. Based on the endogenous growth framework as proposed by Romer(1990) and Rivera-Batiz and Romer(1991), the model explains how economic openness affects labor allocation between skilled and unskilled sectors. According to the model, economic openness can affect labor allocation through two channels; knowledge spillover and specialization. First, the openness promotes knowledge spillover and hence increases the productivity of workers in the skilled sectors. This makes the economy employs more workers in the skilled sector. On the other hand, the openness causes global specialization which leads more employment in the skilled sector for the developed countries but at the same time, leads less employment in the skilled sector for the developing countries since the developing countries have comparative advantages in the unskilled sector. The empirical results obtained using cross country panel data in this paper support these two effects of knowledge spillover and specialization.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.109-126
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• 1998

We analysed the determinants of part-timer labor demand and supply in Kwangju. The findings of the paper are as follows; First, firms employ part-timer workers in the unskilled or skilled jobs not demanding much training cost. There are two reasons for firms to employ part-time workers: labor cost cut and flexible employment adjustment. Estimated wage differential is 40% not including fringe benefits differential. Second, we find lots of married women to want part-time jobs. The more probably married women choose part-time work, the younger and the less educated they are, and the less kids and the less other income they have.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.29-54
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• 2005

This paper presents a simple two-sector general equilibrium model of noncomparative advantage trade between structurally identical advanced economies. Attention has focused on the effects of trade in information technology (IT) goods and services on the wage inequality in the digital economy. The model confirms and illustrates that wage inequality in the digital economy reflect trade in IT goods and services between advanced economies. In particular, this paper shows that even though the relative price of skilled labor-intensive technology good is declined with trade in IT goods and services, the wage of skilled labor increases. The reason is that as Jorgenson (2001) has empirically found, the price elasticity of demand for the technology goods is elastic.