Bureaucrats and the Korean export miracle

Barteska, Philipp (2024) Bureaucrats and the Korean export miracle. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

What makes an industrial policy successful? This thesis finds that the effect of an industrial policy changes tremendously with the implementing bureaucrat. I study South Korean bureaucrats who promote exports on appointments to 87 countries between 1965, when South Korea was one of the world’s poorest countries, and 2001. I exploit the three-yearly rotation of bureaucrats between countries to show that individual bureaucrats matter greatly in boosting exports. Increasing bureaucrat ability by one standard deviation is associated with a 37% increase in exports. This effect is comparable to that of opening an office, implying that this industrial policy has no effect when implemented by a bureaucrat one standard deviation below average. I exploit differential import demand growth to study a mechanism via which better bureaucrats increase exports: transmitting information about market conditions. Under better bureaucrats South Korean exports increase more with a product’s import demand. Finally, I investigate whether experience can bridge the gaps between bureaucrats. I isolate quasi-random variation in experience, exploiting a product’s import demand growth during the bureaucrat’s first appointment. In subsequent appointments of this bureaucrat exports increase in products with greater bureaucrat experience. This highlights that organizational capacity grows endogenously, implying a novel channel for path dependence in organizational capacity.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2024 Philipp Barteska
Uncontrolled Keywords:	industrial policy, bureaucracy, economic development, managers, government, political economy, export promotion, trade policy
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management H Social Sciences > HF Commerce
Sets:	Departments > Economics
Supervisor:	Bandiera, Oriana and Bryan, Gharad and Burgess, Robin
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4651

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