My dissertation studies issues in international economics and the labor markets. Chapter 2 examines the relationship between international trade and wage inequality. One of the most interesting issues of the current international economic environment is the relationship between wage inequality and international trade. This paper examines the cause of wage inequality in Korea with two different models, which are a traditional Heckscher-Ohlin Samuelson (HOS) model and a model of monopolistic competition.; This is the first paper to take into account the fact that "semi-developed" countries are relatively skilled abundant to less developed countries (LDCs) and relatively unskilled abundant to developed countries (DCs). Rising imports from LDCs should increase wage inequality between skilled workers and unskilled workers. However, rising imports from DCs should decrease the wage inequality. Empirical evidence from Korea for trade with LDCs and DCs supports this HOS theory. I also find that greater intra-industry trade with developing and developed countries results in greater wage inequality in Korea, supporting Dinopoulos, Syropoulos and Xu's model based on monopolistic competition model. My data are a panel of 67 three-digit Korea Standard Industrial Classification (KSIC) industries over the 1993--1997 years.; Chapter 3 explains when developing countries open their financial market. This is the first to explain when countries opened their financial markets and is the first to explain financial liberalization using a sample of developing countries. I test several novel hypotheses. I find that financial markets are opened earlier in countries that trade more with developed countries and that have more developed financial markets. Financial markets are opened earlier in democracies, especially if the country's leader is a civilian. My other findings are consistent with other research that has found greater financial market openness in countries receiving more FDI (foreign direct investment), in richer countries, and in democracies. Both parametric (Weibull) and semi-parametric (Cox) hazard models produce similar findings.; Chapter 4 provides new empirical evidence on the relationship between wage gradients and job locations. This empirical work provides a strong test of the relationship between wage gradients and work location in metropolitan areas using a new measure of work location for many occupations. Since my empirical model includes all occupational dummies and MSAs (Metropolitan Statistical Areas) dummies without restrictions in the empirical specification, this paper can control for characteristics of occupations and metropolitan areas. This paper hypothesized and found a positive effect of interaction between centralization ratio and the size of metropolitan areas on wage rates. Thus occupations concentrated in the CBD experience a larger rise in wage rates as population increases than do occupations that are scattered throughout the MSA.
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