Jungmin Lee

We investigate whether growing up in a socialist country affects the development of competitiveness by comparing three Korean groups in South Korea, born and raised in three countries with distinct institutional environments: South Korea, North Korea, and China.

We compare two groups of the non-student Korean population—native-born South Koreans (SK) and North Korean refugees (NK)—with contrasting institutional and cultural backgrounds. In our experiment, the subjects play dictator games under three different treatments in which the income source varies: first, the income is randomly given to the subject; second, it is earned by the subject; third, it is individually earned by the subject and an anonymous partner and then pooled together.

We compare two groups of the non-student Korean population—native-born South Koreans (SK) and North Korean refugees (NK)—with contrasting institutional and cultural backgrounds.

The Cold War division of Korea, regarded as a natural experiment in institutional change, provides a unique opportunity to examine whether institutions affect social preferences.

The authors work with a framework established by Blau and Kahn (1997 JOLE; 2006 ILRR), who used the Michigan Panel of Income Dynamics (PSID) to decompose that gap into observable and unobservable components in order to determine which contributing factors are gender-specific and which can be attributed to the wage structure.