Sijeong Lim

Governments enact environmental regulations to compel firms to internalize pollution externalities. Critics contend that regulations encourage technological lock‐ins and stifle innovation. Challenging this view, the Porter‐Linde hypothesis suggests that appropriately designed regulations can spur innovation because (1) pollution reflects resource waste; (2) regulations focus firms’ attention on waste; and (3) with regulation‐induced focus, firms are incentivized to innovate to reduce waste. This

Abstract Scholars have long debated whether economic globalization increases citizen support for welfare policies to compensate for or insure against the new economic risks. The vast majority of what we know about such issues is gleaned from study of Western polities. We know little of such dynamics in Asia, the continent harboring much of the world’s population and having experienced the most extensive development in economic globalization. This article remedies such silence by focusing on publ

Why do some citizens across the globe prioritize the democracy of international organizations (IOs), while others place more emphasis on their effectiveness? We suggest that this difference in attitude may reflect two distinct perspectives on the subjects of IO democracy: (1) a citizen-centered perspective focusing on substantive citizen representation and IO accountability to citizens and (2) a state-centered perspective centering on fair state representation and IO accountability to member sta

Exogenous shocks such as pandemics have a profound influence on how citizens think about their country. We explore how the successful handling of COVID-19 shaped South Korean citizens' perception of their country. Empirically, we compare data from surveys conducted in August 2019 and April 2020. Using regression on matched samples, we find a significant increase in general national pride. More importantly, we find an increase in positive assessments of their country in domains directly related t

Abstract Building on the burgeoning literature on the association between the welfare state and the environmental state, this study empirically examines how the politics of the former has affected the development of the latter. We suggest that the size of the welfare state shapes the calculus of environmental policy costs by partisan governments. A generous welfare state lowers the costs perceived by the left‐wing government, as large redistributive spending allows the government to mitigate the

Abstract Workplace safety is an important issue in global public policy. Given the failure of many governments to enforce their workplace safety laws, might voluntary programs help in this regard? Most studies on the effectiveness of voluntary programs focus on their first‐order effects reflecting program goals. Yet, well‐designed programs that focus on firms’ internal practices and policies can have significant spillover effects beyond the program objectives. This insight motivates our study of

Abstract Much scholarly attention has been given to the potentially disruptive distributional implications of new technologies in labor markets. Less explored is the way citizens as socially embedded individuals perceive and respond to technological transformation. This study fills this gap by exploring how welfare state institutions shape and are shaped by citizens’ perceptions of technological transformation. My analysis covering over 50 developed and developing countries finds that welfare st

Abstract The literature suggests that voters have a self-centered incentive to call for the de-escalation of conflicts that inflict economic costs on them, which explains why economic sanctions and trade wars often lose popular support when the resulting cost for the domestic economy rises. It is thus puzzling why some costly disputes between two advanced democracies are prolonged. Taking a psychological approach, we argue that nonviolent yet costly disputes between international rivals can fail

Abstract What drives a developing country's government to provide access to clean drinking water in urban and rural areas? Because creating water infrastructure is expensive, practicality and efficiency considerations might motivate governments to locate such infrastructures in urban areas with high population density. In contrast, we provide a political explanation of how political incentive shapes where governments locate water infrastructures which, in turn, shapes citizens' water access. In

Abstract This research focuses on the increasing but unexplored role of individual investors in sustained sustainable investment. Sustainable investment with pecuniary motives tends to be fractured by economic downturns. Drawing on research on social emotions shaping decision‐making, this study explores how non‐pecuniary motives and emotions—empathy and self‐esteem—affect the attention to sustainability ratings by individual investors. We administered the original survey‐embedded experiments to