노동공급곡선의 후방 굴절에 관한 연구

Abstract

The paper aims to identify whether a backward-bending supply curve of labor is going on in the whole industry and a few major industries-manufacturing industry, construction industry, whole sale & retail industry, finance & insurance industry and education service industry-in Korea. To bigin with, based on income-leisure choice model, the possibility of a backward-bending supply curve of labor will be derived. In case that income effect is larger than substitution effect, when wage is changed, supply curve of labor might be downward sloping.

Next, the possibility that supply curve of labor is backward-bending in the industries mentioned above will be empirically tested, with the time series data(1993-2015) provided by Korean government. It was found that in the whole, monthly average wage is negatively correlated with monthly working hours in the industries mentioned above, which indicated the existence of backward- bending supply curve of labor. It was also found that when external economic shock such as Korean exchange crisis and international finance crisis took place, during the short period, the relation between monthly average wage and monthly working hours changed into being positively correlated with each other, except that the negative correlation has been kept in the education service industry. It is concluded that during the period concerned with analysis, the income effect of wage change is larger than the substitution of that, which means that Korean people's preference has moved toward enjoying leisure(reduction of labor) rather than consumption of goods and services when wage income is increased.

However, recently(after 2014) despite that no external economic shock happens, a new turning point has just started in that the positive relation between two factors reappears in the industries mentioned above except education service industry. When it comes to analyzing labor supply in Korea, Korean economy faces the changing circumstance.