ByungKoo Kim
Journal Publication
ByungKoo Kim and Iain Osgood. "Democracy and Clustered Models of Global Economic Engagement." International Studies Quarterly, 68(4). [pdf]
Abstract: One of the most fundamental economic policy choices a society makes is how to order its global economic relations. What models do states use to structure this multi-faceted decision, and how do they choose among these alternatives? We combine data on trade policies, foreign investment, exchange rates, capital flows, and international treaties to discover states’ strategies of global economic engagement. We identify five distinct strategies through dynamic clustering. We then examine the economic and political drivers of states’ choices among these competing strategies, focusing on the tradeoffs between public and private goods activated by differing styles of openness. In particular, we uncover a production-focused and risk-heavy model of global integration favored by non-democracies, and cautious (or insular) models of semi-globalization favored by (large) democracies. Decisions over global economic engagement are clustered and multi-dimensional: uncovering this variety unlocks new findings about the role of democracy in shaping foreign economic policy.
Stuart Benjamin, ByungKoo Kim, and Kevin Quinn. 2024. "Partisan Panel Composition and Reliance on Earlier Opinions in the Circuit Courts." Journal of Law and Empirical Analysis, 1(1). [pdf]
Abstract: Does the partisan composition of three-judge panels affect how earlier opinions are treated and thus how the law develops? Using a novel data set of Shepard's treatments for all cases decided in the U.S. courts of appeals from 1974 to 2017, we investigate three different versions of this question. First, are panels composed of three Democratic (Republican) appointees more likely to follow opinions decided by panels of three Democratic (Republican) appointees than are panels composed of three Republican (Democratic) appointees? Second, does the presence of a single out-party judge change how a panel relies on earlier decisions compared to what one would expect from a panel with homogeneous partisanship? Finally, does the size of these potential partisan effects change over time in a way that would be consistent with partisan polarization on the courts? We find that partisanship does, in fact, structure whether earlier opinions are followed and that these partisan effects have grown over time—particularly within the subset of cases that we believe are most likely to be ideologically salient. Since legal doctrine is developed by building upon or diminishing past opinions, these results have important implications for our understanding of the development of the law.
Stuart Benjamin, Kevin Quinn, and ByungKoo Kim. 2023. "Twenty-First Century Split: Partisan, Racial, and Gender Differences in Circuit Judges Following Earlier Opinions" BYU Law Review. [pdf]
Abstract: Judges shape the law with their votes and the reasoning in their opinions. An important element of the latter is which opinions they follow, and thus elevate, and which they cast doubt on, and thus diminish. Using a unique comprehensive dataset containing the substantive Shepard’s treatments of all circuit court published and unpublished opinions issued between 1974 and 2017, we examine the relationship between judges’ substantive treatments of earlier appellate opinions and their party, gender, and race. Are judges of a particular party, gender, or race more likely to positively treat (that is, follow), and less likely to negatively treat, opinions written by judges who share that attribute than are judges of a different party, gender or race? What we find is both surprising and nuanced. We have two major findings. First, we find no meaningful partisan differences in positively treating opinions in the early years of our study but significant partisan differences more recently. Those differences are sharpest for treatments in ideologically salient categories of cases. The partisan differences arise more for treatments of opinions written by Democratic appointees than for opinions written by Republican appointees, which we think is best explained by an accelerating movement among Republican appointees in a conservative direction compared to a steady move among Democratic appointees in a liberal direction. Notably, the increase in partisan differences is not a function of presidential cohorts or age cohorts. More recently appointed judges and judges appointed decades ago show similar patterns of increasing partisan differences in recent years. And this is not a function of less partisan judges retiring earlier: the recent partisan differences apply when we focus only on judges who served during the same extended period of time. Second, there are within-party gender differences in positively treating opinions similar to the partisan differences: male and female judges of the same party (particularly Democrats) diverge in their likelihood of following ideologically salient opinions written by female and male judges from their party, and those differences have risen in recent years. (We do not find meaningful differences based on race, but that reflects in significant part smaller numbers and thus a lack of statistical power.) These results defy easy explanation. They do not support the proposition that party and gender have always played a pervasive role for judges. But our results provide evidence of increasing partisan and gender-based behavior among judges in recent years. Those partisan and gender differences are best explained by political ideology. Thus it appears that judges’ substantive treatments of opinions have moved from lacking an ideological component to being significantly ideological. Many groups in the United States have recently become more ideologically polarized, and judges appear to be one of them.
Jong Hee Park and ByungKoo Kim, 2020. "Why Your Neighbor Matters: Positions in Preferential Trade Agreement Networks and Export Growth in Global Value Chains." Economics & Politics, 32(3). pp. 381-410. [pdf]
Abstract: In rapidly expanding global and regional preferential trade agreements (PTA) networks, policy-makers are keen to situate their countries in a better position, believing that a better position in PTA networks will help their economies trade more and grow faster. In this paper, we provide a theory that explains how changes in countries' PTA network positions affect their trade performance. We argue that a dense and deep “neighbor network” provides a country with a wide access to global value chains, better protection to investment, and strong credibility to their policy commitments. To measure trade performance, we compute value-added exports at the country, year, and industry level across 43 countries, 56 industries, and 15 years (2000–14). The estimation of network position effects is done by panel fixed-effects methods and the sample-splitting and cross-fitting double machine-learning method. The findings show that as a country's neighbors have deeper and wider PTA networks, the country's value-added exports grow faster. Also, the industry-level analysis shows that sectors heavily engaging in the fragmentation of production stages exhibit faster growth with the improvement of neighbor networks.
ByungKoo Kim and Iain Osgood. 2020. "Pro-trade Blocs in the US Congress." The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics. Vol.17. pp. 549-575. [pdf]
Abstract: Who supports trade in the US Congress? We uncover the ideological space of trade voting, focusing on trade agreements and development policy as two fundamental cleavages around globalization. We then cluster members of Congress into coherent voting blocs, and identify the most pro-trade voting blocs in each Chamber. We find that these blocs: cross party lines; are ideologically heterogeneous; and are over-represented on the committees with jurisdiction over trade. We then examine two leading theories of Congressional voting – on constituency characteristics and campaign contributions – and find support for each using our learned voting blocs. Members of pro-trade blocs have defended their constituents’ and contributors’ interests by speaking out to confront the Trump administration’s protectionism. We conclude that unsupervised learning methods provide a valuable tool for exploring the multifaceted and dynamic divisions which characterize current debates over global economic integration.