Hoon Choi - Do anti-discrimination laws alleviate labor market duality? Quasi-experimental evidence from Korea

Title: Do anti-discrimination laws alleviate labor market duality? Quasi-experimental evidence from Korea

Abstract: This paper examines whether and how labor market duality can be alleviated through legislation that prohibits discrimination based on employment type. In 2007, the Korean government undertook a labor reform banning discriminatory treatment against fixed-term, part-time, and dispatched workers. By exploiting a gradual implementation of the anti-discrimination law by firm size targeting a subset of non-regular workers, I identify the treatment effects of the anti-discrimination law, taking a difference-in-difference-in-differences approach to the 2007-2010 waves of the Economically Active Population Survey. The results suggest that the anti-discrimination law leads to significant increases in hourly wages and the probabilities of being covered by national pension, health insurance, and employment insurance for targeted non-regular workers in small firms, relative to other workers. Anticipatory behaviors of employers and selective transitions of employees in response to the implementation of the anti-discrimination law do not underlie the estimated effects. The presence of labor unions contributes to reducing gaps in labor conditions between regular and targeted non-regular workers.

Presenter: Hoon Choi, Univessity of Bacelona

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