Working Papers
Does Presidential Alignment Amplify Favoritism Risk? Agency Ideology, Campaign Contributions, and U.S. Contracting
Presidents have incentives to reward politically supportive firms, but agencies award federal contracts. Existing work explains why favoritism varies across agencies through formal independence. I examine whether president–agency ideological alignment also conditions favoritism at the contract-award stage. Officials in aligned agencies may follow presidential signals more willingly. Alternatively, presidents may concentrate their control, through appointees and White House review, on agencies whose preferences differ from theirs. I draw on 475,459 federal contracts signed from 2004 to 2014 and measure favoritism with the risk index of Fazekas, Ferrali, and Wachs (2023). Alignment comes from agency ideal points that change with each administration. Contracts awarded to firms that donate to the president’s party carry higher favoritism risk than other contracts. This difference, which I call the donor gap, does not vary detectably with alignment, and the data rule out large amplification in aligned agencies. A fixed survey measure of agency ideology yields the same null. The gap is largest in conservative agencies under both Bush and Obama. On the same contracts, independent commissions show no positive gap. These patterns contrast with recent evidence from contract terminations under the Department of Government Efficiency. In routine contracting, donor-linked favoritism risk tracks formal structure more closely than alignment with the sitting president.
Administrative Presidency, Agency Ideology, Agency Independence, Federal Contracting, Favoritism Risk, Campaign Contributions
Agency Alignment in Congress: Questioning Networks and Interbranch Information Sharing
Congress relies on bureaucrats for information about how policy works. Ban et al. (2026) show that bureaucrats give less analytical information to legislators from the party opposite the president. Yet agencies hold policy views of their own, and some are built to resist presidential control. I argue that agency alignment and agency independence shape both who questions an agency and what its witnesses say. Treating House hearings from 1997 to 2014 as a network of legislators and agencies, I show that a few cabinet departments reach many members. Communities of members partly follow committee jurisdiction and cut across party lines. With continuous measures of agency ideology and independence, I find that the out-partisan gap in legislative hearings grows as an agency’s ideology moves closer to the president’s. In oversight hearings, the gap is smaller when an agency’s decision makers are more independent of the president. These patterns suggest that committees organize who hears from an agency, while agency alignment and independence condition how much analysis its witnesses give.
Agency Ideology, Agency Independence, Bipartite Networks, Congressional Hearings, Information Sharing
Efficiency for Whom? The Politics of SSA Field Office Closings and Racialized Administrative Burden
Social Security Administration (SSA) field offices are where many people apply for Social Security disability benefits, and closing them raises the cost of applying. Since 2000, SSA has closed more than a hundred offices, most of them during the budget cuts of 2011 to 2014. Recent work treats these closures as unrelated to local conditions. We examine whether that assumption holds: did closures fall more heavily on counties with larger minority populations, net of administrative reasons such as office redundancy and population size? We collect annual office lists from 2000 to 2024 and link them to county demographic, economic, and electoral data. We model two outcomes: any closure, and the loss of a county’s only office, which marks the clearest loss of in-person access. This study speaks to how retrenchment shapes unequal access to the welfare state.
Administrative Burden, Field Office Closures, Retrenchment, Social Security Administration, Unequal Access
Does Banning Affirmative Action Hurt Racial Diversity? Evidence from U.S. Universities
Affirmative action in U.S. university admissions aims to enhance student racial diversity and address educational inequities. However, 11 states have banned affirmative action in university admissions. This study examines the effects of these bans on student racial diversity across U.S. public universities from 1990 to 2020. I find that banning affirmative action has reduced undergraduate racial diversity. Specifically, there is a sharp rise in Hispanic enrollment shares while Asian, Black, and White enrollment shares remain unchanged. Furthermore, the study explores how state legislature partisanship creates variations in policy effects, showing that Asian enrollment shares have decreased in Democratic-led states. The results provide implications for U.S. higher education policy regarding the interactions among affirmative action bans, student racial diversity, and state political factors.
Affirmative Action, Racial Diversity, State Legislature Partisanship, U.S. Higher Education
What Makes International Students Stay in the Korean Labor Market? Factors Shaping Perceived Workforce Integration of International Graduate Students
This study examines individual-level, university-level, and job-level factors affecting workforce integration of international graduate students in South Korea. We measure workforce integration through three dimensions: perceived inclusiveness in the Korean labor market, employment benefits, and job satisfaction. Using ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions, we analyze survey data from 650 international master’s and doctoral graduates employed in Korea. All participants graduated from Korean higher education institutions between 2016 and 2019. The results highlight the critical role of university career services in facilitating school-to-work transitions for international graduate students. These findings are essential for leveraging international students’ potential in Korea’s future workforce.
Workforce Integration, International Graduate Students, University Career Services
Conference Papers
A Regional Typology of International Students in Korea (in Korean)
외국인 유학생 특성에 따른 지역 유형화 연구
Korea’s shrinking school-age population and the deepening crisis facing regions and regional universities have raised expectations of international students, both as an enrollment pool for higher education and as human resources for regional economies. Yet Korean policy on international students has been led by the central government and carried out by individual universities, and it remains focused on recruiting more students. We know little about how many international students each region hosts and who they are. This study examines whether the characteristics of international students differ by region and provides baseline evidence for recruitment and employment policies that fit regional conditions. Using 2022 regional data from the Korean Educational Statistics Service (KESS), we run factor analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis on Korea’s 17 metropolitan cities and provinces. First, we group regions by five characteristics of all international students, in degree and non-degree programs: the share of international students in total enrollment, the share in degree programs, the share of men, the share from Asia, and the share enrolled in junior colleges. We then repeat the analysis for degree-seeking students, the main target of future training and employment policy, using six variables, including the shares of undergraduates and of science and engineering students. Both analyses yield three factors and five clusters. Regions differ between the Seoul Capital Area and the rest of the country, and they also differ within each group. Seoul has many non-degree students and many students from outside Asia. Incheon and Gyeonggi have higher shares of Asian students, undergraduates, and junior college students. Among degree-seeking students, Ulsan and Daegu have high shares of men and of science and engineering majors. Sejong, with a much lower share of Asian students, and Jeju, with a markedly high share of junior college students, each forms a cluster of its own. These differences likely reflect students’ preferences for large or small cities and for particular institutions, their purpose of study (research or vocational training), and each region’s living conditions and industrial structure. The findings show that policies to recruit, train, and employ international students need careful design that accounts for each region’s population and industrial structure.
International Students, Regional Typology, Regional Universities, Factor Analysis, Hierarchical Cluster Analysis
학령인구 감소에 따른 교육 환경의 변화와 함께 지역과 지역대학의 위기가 심화되고 있다. 이에 고등교육의 입학자원으로서는 물론 지역의 인적자원으로서의 외국인 유학생에 대한 기대가 나날이 높아지고 있다. 그러나 지금까지 외국인 유학생 정책은 중앙정부가 주도하여 개별 대학이 추진하는 형태로 시행되어 왔으며, 여전히 유치 규모의 확대에 치중되어 있다. 지역별 외국인 유학생 유치 현황과 이들의 특성에 대한 이해는 충분히 이루어지지 못하고 있는 실정이다. 본 연구에서는 외국인 유학생의 특성이 지역마다 다른지 살펴보고, 지역의 특수성을 고려한 외국인 유학생 유치 및 활용 정책에 필요한 기초자료를 제공한다. 이를 위해 교육통계서비스(KESS)에서 제공하는 2022년 외국인 유학생 통계 중 지역별 분포 자료를 활용하였다. 분석 대상은 우리나라 17개 시·도이며, 요인분석과 계층적 군집분석을 실시하였다. 먼저 전체 외국인 유학생(학위과정, 비학위과정 포함)의 특성과 관련한 5개 변수(유학생 비율, 학위과정 비율, 남성 유학생 비율, 아시아 출신 비율, 전문대학생 비율)를 바탕으로 지역을 유형화했다. 다음으로 향후 외국인 유학생의 양성 및 활용 정책의 주요 관심 대상이 될 학위과정 유학생에 주목하였다. 이들의 특성과 관련한 6개 변수(학부생 비율, 이공계생 비율 등)를 바탕으로 동일한 분석을 추가로 실시하였다. 분석 결과, 두 분석 모두에서 3개의 요인과 5개의 군집이 도출됐다. 흔히 생각하는 수도권, 비수도권 간의 차이뿐만 아니라 수도권 내, 비수도권 내에서도 매우 다양한 특성을 보였다. 서울은 비학위과정 유학생과 비(非)아시아 국가 출신 유학생이 많은 특징을 보였다. 인천, 경기 지역은 아시아 출신 비중이 높고 학부생과 전문대학 유학생 비율이 더 높은 경향을 보였다. 학위과정 유학생의 경우 울산과 대구 지역은 남성, 이공계 전공 유학생 비중이 높았다. 세종은 아시아 국가 출신 비율이 크게 낮았고, 제주는 전문대학 유학생 비율이 두드러지게 높았다. 두 지역은 각각 독자적인 군집으로 분류되었다. 이러한 차이는 대도시, 소도시와 같은 지역 특성에 대한 선호, 특정 고등교육기관에 대한 선호, 연구 또는 직업교육 등 국내 수학 목적, 지역의 정주 여건 및 산업 구조 등 다양한 원인에 기인했을 것으로 보인다. 본 연구의 결과는 지역의 인구 및 산업구조 등 지역의 특수성을 고려한 외국인 유학생 유치, 양성, 활용 정책이 매우 세밀하게 설계될 필요가 있음을 보여주는 점에서 의의가 있다.
외국인 유학생, 지역 유형화, 지역대학, 요인분석, 계층적 군집분석