Job Market Candidates 2024/25
Ph.D. Program in Economics

Education

M.Sc. / Ph.D., Economics, Goethe University Frankfurt, GSEFM program, 2025 (expected)
M. A., Economics, Seoul National University, 2018
B.A., Economics, Sungshin Women’s University, 2015

Fields of Specialization

Macroeconomics, Firm Dynamics, Corporate Finance, Labor Economics

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant for Economics of Labor Market, Apr 2021 - Jul 2024

Curriculum Vitae

Click here to download the CV.

References

Working Papers

Going Public over the Business Cycle (Job Market Paper)

Abstract: This paper analyzes the role of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) on employment cyclicality. Using Compustat data, I show that IPOs are cyclical in numbers and compositions and that the economic conditions at the time of IPO have long-lasting effects on subsequent firm growth. An important factor driving this result is the procyclical amount of capital raised from IPOs. Building on this evidence, I develop a firm dynamics model in which private firms decide whether to go public, while public and private firms decide about employment, investment, and exit in the presence of borrowing constraints. Crucially for the model mechanism, public firms face a looser borrowing constraint. The model is calibrated to match selected features of the U.S. non-financial firm sector and replicates the procyclical number of IPOs, selection patterns, and procyclical capital injections observed in the data. Using my model, I find that if IPOs were acyclical, the volatility of employment would be reduced by 10.4 percent. This amplification operates through two channels: first, a decline in the public firm share exacerbates capital misallocation; second, a lower propensity to go public reduces potential entrants' expected future value, decreasing entry rates. These findings suggest that policies mitigating IPO cyclicality during recessions could facilitate a faster recovery in aggregate employment.

Firm Expectations, Innovation and Growth (with Georg Duernecker, Marek Ignaszak, and Leo Kaas)

Abstract: Using a large and representative panel survey of German firms, we document sizable forecast errors in employment growth which decline with firm age and which are related to investment and RD activity. Motivated by this evidence, we build an endogenous growth model with heterogeneous firms which learn their productivity from noisy signals, decide about innovation activity, employment, and exit. Aggregate productivity growth responds to a selection channel via firm entry and exit and to an innovation channel via RD investments of heterogeneous firms. We calibrate the model to replicate the realized and expected firm growth rates over the firms’ lifecycle in our data. We use the calibrated model to quantify the role of information frictions in the selection and innovation channels behind aggregate productivity growth.