dissertation

How does economic globalization affect workers’ experiences in the domestic labor market, and how do their perceptions of globalization shape their attitudes toward economic policy? I investigate the linkages between economic globalization and workers’ experiences in the domestic labor market, with a special focus on the political consequences of economic and gender inequality in the labor market. I use computational methods, such as text analysis, survey experiments, and causal inference methods to test my claims.

My dissertation, Three Essays on the International Trade and the Domestic Labor Market, focuses on firms’ and workers’ responses to economic globalization and the diffusion of socially responsible norms. To assess these relationships, I employ a multimethod approach by combining natural language processing (NLP) and causal inference methods.

Protectionism Reconsidered: Economic Insecurity, Social Identity, and the Gender Gap in Trade Attitudes (Job Market Paper)

Previous research has revealed a gender gap in trade attitudes as well as in the rise of populism and economic nationalism. Nonetheless, existing studies have paid less attention to two notable tendencies in trade attitudes: (1) Despite their more populist attitudes, men continue to be more supportive of free trade than women; and (2) Women continue to support protectionism despite their lack of populist attitudes. Accordingly, the gender gap in trade attitudes has not closed despite the rise of populism, which has taken place particularly among men. Why are women consistently more protectionist than men, and when does men’s populism turn into protectionism? When will the gender gap in trade attitudes be closed? Despite the puzzling dynamics of the gender gap in trade attitudes, no consensus has emerged on how women and men form their trade attitudes. This paper investigates the causal process of preference formation across women and men using a decomposition analysis, a survey experiment, a mediation analysis, and structural topic models. I argue that economic insecurity causes both women and men to form protectionist attitudes.

Obfuscating Social Responsibility: Global Performance Indicators and Labor Upgrading in Global Production Networks

The conventional wisdom in international political economy regards compliance as binary: political actors either comply with or violate international norms, laws, or agreements. This binary thinking makes it difficult to examine why the gap between de jure compliance and de facto compliance with norms is observed despite state, international, and activist efforts to promote international norms. Moreover, existing literature has not yet explained why there are variations in compliance within a state. To address this puzzle, I propose shifting the focus from the state level to the firm level and suggest a theory of firms’ compliance by obfuscation, where firms, as political actors, can comply only superficially with labor norms, while appearing to do so more fully. Employing the difference-in-differences method, I investigate how Global Performance Indicators (GPIs) induce firms’ compliance by obfuscation in supply chains and its impacts on workers’ experiences in the labor market.

Assessing the Gap Between De Jure and De Facto Gender Equality in the Labor Market

Do Global Performance Indicators (GPIs) accurately reflect women’s economic rights on the ground? How can we tell if laws and policies promote gender equality in the labor market? Despite formal efforts to promote gender norms at the international, state, and firm levels, it is not evident whether women’s de facto experiences in the labor market have been improved. Moreover, gender norm indicators may not account for the country- and time-specific contexts, potentially missing latent heterogeneity across countries and over time. To bridge the gap between de jure and de facto gender equality and gain a more accurate understanding of gender equality, it is necessary to examine states’ behavior directly, focusing on their compliance with and adoption of gender norms that can affect women’s experiences in practice. I use an item response theory (IRT) model and produce a time-series cross-sectional measure of gender equality across 187 countries from 1991-2020.