Do School Ties Matter?: Evidence from the Promotion of Public Prosecutors in Korea

26 Pages Posted: 27 Jul 2005

See all articles by Taejong Kim

Taejong Kim

KDI School of Public Policy and Management

Date Written: July 2005

Abstract

Does stronger networks capital favor graduates from elite schools over their same-ability peers in promotion? To help answer the question, we examine the public prosecutors' position changes data in South Korea. The key empirical challenge is to control for unobserved individual heterogeneity, such as ability. For the purpose, we employ various techniques such as shared frailty model in duration analysis, instrumental variables estimation, and panel fixed effects estimation. Once we control for individual heterogeneity, the apparent effects of school ties largely disappear. Even when we take OLS evidence at face value, which does not account for unobserved heterogeneity, favoritism based on school ties seems to be a phenomenon limited to the highest echelon of the hierarchy.

Keywords: labor markets, credentialism, discrimination

JEL Classification: J4, J7, J24

Suggested Citation

Kim, Taejong, Do School Ties Matter?: Evidence from the Promotion of Public Prosecutors in Korea (July 2005). KDI School of Pub Policy & Management Paper No. 05-08, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=768864 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.768864

Taejong Kim (Contact Author)

KDI School of Public Policy and Management ( email )

P.O. Box 184
Seoul, 130-868
Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

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