Current Projects
Please refer to my curriculum vitae for updated details.
Information Advantage in the Global Economy (Dissertation)
As economic globalization creates worldwide production chains, corporations have faced an increasing need to gather market information, analyze its contents - and make real-time strategic decisions. Such functions are increasingly concentrated in financial service clusters sometimes called world cities. My dissertation connects global and local-scale networks with hedge funds' ability to access market information, to achieve higher returns while managing risk.
Committee: Mark Granovetter (Chair), Gi-wook Shin, Walter W. Powell, Dan McFarland (prospectus defense), W. Richard Scott (prospectus defense)
The Revolving Door: Charitable Foundation Funding for Think Tanks and Implications for Democratic Governance
Over the past eight years, philanthropic foundations gave over $230 million to non-profit policy research institutes (commonly called "think tanks"). Such funding not only constitutes a substantial proportion of the money entering American national politics, but also enables "governments in exile" for a party outside the White House. Despite these implications, the financial link between think tanks and foundations have escaped scholarly attention. My project will address this gap. Using social network analysis, I will start by mapping the flows of money and personnel between think tanks, charitable foundations and the executive branch. I will build on this analysis by investigating how these relationships affect major foreign policy decisions.
This research is supported by a yearlong graduate fellowship from the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and will be conducted in conjunction with Professor Gi-wook Shin, Director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University.
Download my proposal to the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society
The South Korean National Assembly
Over the past three years, I have participated in a group at the Korean Studies Program at Stanford that has worked with various government agencies and media sources to assemble three types of data on the Korean National Assembly and its membership. The first category consists of assembly member biographies - educational backgrounds, personal relationships and work histories. The second describes the districts and elections voting them into office. A third type describes assembly member committee memberships and voting patterns once in office.
Much of this data has proven suitable for social network analysis. Working with Professor Gi-wook Shin and Dr. Myung-koo Kang, I have analyzed the internal social structures of Korean political parties during the so-called 3 Kims Era (1987-1997), and investigated their effects on key party post occupancy (e.g. the party secretary and floor leader positions). We are currently revising a draft manuscript summarizing these results.
The rich data we have collected has also enabled us to investigate why incumbent advantage in the Assembly is so much less pronounced than incumbent advantage in the United States Congress and the Japanese Diet.
Past Projects
The Paradox of Korean Globalization
Many globalization scholars consider nationalism and globalism contradictory cultural tendencies. Although this framework explains many empirical situations, it fails to explain many cases where nationalism and globalism mutually reinforce each other. Working with Professor Gi-wook Shin, I have constructed a theoretical explanation for this scenario, and tested it using quantitative data from the South Korean case.
Publications: