Trends in Unemployment Rates in Korea: A Search-Matching Model Interpretation

We investigate the steady decline in aggregate unemployment rates in Korea since the 1960's. We argue that a pronounced decrease in the intensity of reallocation shocks, which resulted in a downward trend in the natural rate of unemployment, has been an important factor in this decline. Our claim is based on a structural search-matching model, the times series of job-separation and job-finding rates, and sectoral-shift measures that we construct from a micro data for the past three decades.