Articles
Unintended Consequences of Employment Protection: Evidence from Korea's University Lecturer Protection Law
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AuthorMinjin Seo (Seoul National University)
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Year2026
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VolumeVol.74
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NumberNo.2
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This paper examines the effects of the Lecturer Act, a case of employment protection legislation (EPL), on faculty composition and course operations at universities. Using university information disclosure data from 2008 to 2023, I estimate heterogeneous responses by lecturer dependency rates with an intensity-based difference-in-differences approach, distinguishing anticipatory and post-implementation effects. Universities with higher lecturer dependency rates experienced larger declines in the shares of lecturers and courses taught by lecturers during the implementation delay period. After implementation, these declines became more pronounced, accompanied by other changes, including an increased share of courses taught by non-tenure-track faculty other than lecturers. The post-implementation effects were generally stronger in private universities. These findings suggest that EPL can reduce employment among protected workers even in universities, which differ from the firms that have been the primary focus of the existing EPL literature. -
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