Research

Peer-Reviewed Articles

  1. Dong Hun Kim, and Boyoon Lee. 2015. “Sovereign Wealth Funds and the Political Economy of Global Financial Order” (in Korean). OUGHTOPIA: The Journal of Social Paradigm Studies 30(1): 35-59.
  2. Boyoon Lee, and Dong Hun Kim. 2015. “Sovereign Wealth Funds and the Political Economy of Global Financial Order” (in Korean.) Korea and World Politics 31(2): 149-176.

Under Review

“The Impact of Educational Content on Anti-Immigrant Attitudes: Evidence from Taiwan” [Slides (presented at VIM 2021)] How does education affect attitudes towards immigrants? Shifting the scholarly focus from levels of education to educational content, I argue that the effect of education depends on the type of national identification that educational content promotes. Content that promotes a narrower form of national belonging fosters more negative attitudes towards immigrants because it emphasizes a more exclusive notion of national membership. To test the implications of my theory, I leverage a textbook reform in Taiwan that introduced a new narrative promoting Taiwanese identity based on a common ancestral and historical background. Using a difference-in-differences design that compares academic and vocational paths affected differently by the reform, I find that the consumption of educational content emphasizing a narrower form of national identification induces exclusionary attitudes towards immigrants. The evidence suggests that higher levels of education do not necessarily increase positive attitudes towards outsiders — it depends on what is taught.

“Income-based inequality in post-disaster migration is lower in high resilience areas: Evidence from U.S. internal migration” (Revise & Resubmit) (with Ted Hsuan Yun Chen) [Slides (presented at PolNet 2021)] [OSF Preprint] Residential relocation following extreme weather events is among the costliest individual-level measures of climate change adaptation. Consequently, they are fraught with inequalities, with disadvantaged groups most adversely impacted. As climate change continues to exacerbate extreme weather events, it is imperative that we better understand how existing socioeconomic inequalities affect climate migration and how they may be offset. In this study we use network regression models to look at how internal migration patterns in the United States vary by disaster-related property damage, household income, and local-level disaster resilience. Our results show that post-disaster migration patterns vary considerably by the income level of sending and receiving counties, which suggests that income-based inequality impacts both access to relocation for individuals and the ability to rebuild for disaster-afflicted areas. We further find evidence that these inequalities are attenuated in areas with higher disaster resilience. However, because existing resilience incentivizes in situ incremental adaptation which can be a long term drain on individual wellbeing and climate adaptation resources, they should be balanced with policies that encourage relocation where appropriate.

Working Papers

“The Effect of Country-of-Origin Stereotypes on Attitudes towards Immigrants” [Slides (Presented at APSA Annual Meeting 2021)] How do country-of-origin stereotypes influence native attitudes towards immigrants? Drawing on dual processing models of stereotypes from social psychology, I argue that country-of-origin stereotypes moderate how natives respond to new information about immigrants. Using a novel conjoint experiment in Japan, I examine how country-of-origin stereotypes related to competence and warmth (Fiske et al. 2002) condition the way that natives evaluate information about individual-level immigrant attributes when deciding whether to support immigrant acceptance. Some individual-level immigrant attributes such as higher education and language skills are generally seen as more valuable for immigrant acceptance than others. While negative stereotypes related to competence and warmth always reduce the value of these attributes, there is little evidence that positive stereotypes, especially as they relate to competence, have any moderating effect. My analysis suggests that negative country-of-origin stereotypes weigh more heavily than positive ones when natives process new information that might affect their preferences for immigrant acceptance. 

“Immobile Capital: The Impact of High Skill Intensive Firms on Immigration Policy” What causes variations for high-skill intensive (HSI) firms in demanding for high-skilled immigrants? I argue that the degree to which an HSI firm possesses key resources that need to be protected through domestic government determines its preferences for high-skilled immigrants. To prevent a spillover of their critical resources, firms take advantage of intellectual property rights regulations which in turn chain them in the domestic market because the rights are territorial in nature. The immobility stemming from the safeguard leads firms to demand high-skilled immigrants to fill a labor shortage. The demand is stronger for firms operating in a state where one party controls both the House and Senate because the presence of a dominant party makes legislators more responsive to the special interests. Using a novel firm-level lobbying data for S&P 500 companies from 1998 to 2015, I find that HSI firms lobby for high-skill targeted policies as the number of intangible assets increases. The result suggests that HSI firms’ high-skill immigration policy demand is a strategic response to the immobility originating from characteristics of the firms’ essential resources under a favorable political environment. 

Works In Progress

“Who Fits in Better? Natives’ Perceived Level of Cultural Threat: Evidence from Four Asian Countries” [Pre-analysis Plan]

“Historical Narratives and Anti-Immigrant Attitudes”

“Measuring Elite Anti-Immigration Discourse in Japan’s National Congress”