Since the first provision of international food assistance in the mid-1990s, humanitarian aid to North Korea has been a constant source of scrutiny and debate. It was not only a major contributing factor to ending the devastating famine in the mid-to-late 1990s, but it has continuously helped...

In the study of the North Korean economy, industrial and business activities still remain uncharted territory. They are the most basic components of an economy, yet the scarcity of information makes those in North Korea almost impossible to understand from the outside world. Today, the general...

Over the past three decades, North Korea has experienced a period of economic change, most notably in the development of the market. North Korea maintains that it operates a tightly controlled planned economy, the elements of which are poorly understood by the international community. Currently,...

The basis for studying the North Korean economy is to gain an understanding of the size of the overall economy and the trends within it. However, owing to the fact that North Korea does not release data on its GDP and GNI, the task has fallen on the shoulders of outside researchers and such...

One of the most important variables in the study of the North Korean economy is market prices and foreign exchange rates. This is because of the assumption that the two variables immediately reflect the status and trends of the North Korean economy. In fact, many North Korean economic studies...

We present a simple, finite-state search model to understand how the cross-sectional distribution of money affects its value. We first document a network effect: the value of a given unit of money is higher when its distribution is even, rather than skewed. We also find some distributions to be...

In the study of the North Korean economy, industrial and business activities still remain uncharted territory. They are the most basic components of an economy, yet the scarcity of information makes those in North Korea almost impossible to understand from the outside world. Today, the general...

Over the past three decades, North Korea has experienced a period of economic change, most notably in the development of the market. North Korea maintains that it operates a tightly controlled planned economy, the elements of which are poorly understood by the international community. Currently,...