I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at The Ohio State University. I am an applied microeconomist with research interests in labor economics and entrepreneurship. My current research focuses on the determinants of self-employment entry, exit, and outcomes, the effects of regulations on small businesses and consumers, and the measurement of skills.

Contact Information

Email: lee.9962@osu.edu
Address: 311 Bricker Hall, 190 N Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210

Working Papers

[JMP] Beyond Jack of All Trades: Business Experience and the Self-Employment Entry and Outcomes Across Venture Types
- Presentation: SEA 2025
Restricting Large Firms to Protect Small Businesses: Evidence from Retail Operating-Day Restrictions (with Marco Gonzalez-Navarro and Jaecheol Lee)
- Presentations: UEA 2023 (Toronto), PacDev 2025, UEA 2025 (Berlin), Ohio State University
- Abstract: Governments often try to protect small businesses by restricting larger rivals rather than subsidizing them directly. Whether such policies achieve their objectives depends on how much displaced demand is actually transferred to the intended beneficiaries, a question that requires tracing substitution toward other days, locations, or unregulated sellers, yet direct evidence on these margins remains limited. We study South Korea's policy requiring large retail chains to close two days per month, which provides predetermined variation in closure schedules across districts and weeks. Using high-frequency card-transaction data, we estimate that only 18 percent of displaced spending is redirected to small, independent retailers; larger shares are recouped by restricted chains on other shopping days or diverted to other unrestricted retail formats, many of them operated by large firms. Consistent with these limited transfers, we find no evidence that the policy improves the long-run survival of independent retailers. Mapping the observed substitution patterns into a discrete-choice framework identified by policy-induced variation in travel time to open stores, we estimate that the consumer welfare losses from restricted access are 2.7 times larger than the gains accruing to independent retailers. These findings suggest that restricting large firms can impose meaningful consumer costs while providing little durable support to the small businesses such policies are intended to protect.

Work in Progress

Can Self-Employment Provide a Lifeline for Struggling Workers?
Long-Term Effects of Financial Education in High School on Business Ownership
AI Adoption and Gender Disparities in the Workforce (with Tian Lou and Bruce Weinberg)
- Presentation: U Chicago

Pre-Doctoral Publications

The Effect of COVID-19 Stimulus Payments on Household Spending (with Chulhee Lee)
Korean Journal of Social Policy, 51, 2022, 60-88 (in Korean, non-peer reviewed).
The Effect of Child Support Payment Coupons in Response to COVID-19 on Household Spending (with Chulhee Lee)
The Korean Journal of Economics Studies, 69(3), 2021, 5-54 (in Korean). [abstract ↓]
Abstract: This paper examines the household spending effects of child support payment coupons in South Korea, which were granted to subsidize households suffering from COVID-19. The results of difference-in-differences estimation suggest that child support payment coupons increased household spending by a weekly average of 22,355 South Korean Won (KRW) over 10 weeks, which is 8.8% of the treatment group's average consumption for the period of analysis. Child support payment coupons have positive impacts on supporting both children and small-scale business-owners. The effect on household spending is shown to be significantly larger for low-income households, compared to that of the top 20% of households. We find that coupon redemption replaces some of the household spending that would occur if there was no support from the government. The size of the net effect (weekly average of 22,355 KRW over 10 weeks) is determined by the difference between coupon redemption (57,620 KRW) and the size of the substitution effect (35,256 KRW). These results imply that the net effect of the coupons is estimated to be approximately 39% of the coupon redemption for 10 weeks. We also discuss the implications of our findings on the effects and design of government subsidies.

Teaching

The Ohio State University

Principle of Microeconomics, Independent Instructor, SU 2023
Principle of Microeconomics, Teaching Assistant, FA 2023
Principle of Macroeconomics, Teaching Assistant, FA 2023
Health Economics, Teaching Assistant, FA 2022
Intermediate Microeconomic Theory with Calculus, Teaching Assistant, FA 2022

Seoul National University

Economic History, Teaching Assistant, FA 2019, FA 2020
Population and Economy, Teaching Assistant, SP 2020