Who I am
I am a financial economist who is committed to the mission of developing the corporate and financial ecosystem that serves the interest of humanity. My research areas include entrepreneurial finance, which aids the creation of firms and jobs and thereby grows an economy, and corporate governance, which mitigates agency costs incurred by large and mature firms. The subareas that micro-found the desired ecosystem include labor and finance, which examines underrepresented populations such as women and contingent workers, and environmental, social, and governance.
As who I name a corporate and financial ecologist, I have committed to the mission of designing corporate and financial ecosystems that serve the interests of humanity and identifying frictions against the ecosystems. To serve the role, I do research in the areas of labor and finance that micro-found the ecosystems. I study people in the market for innovation and entrepreneurship, who create the vast majority of businesses and jobs (i.e., maximizer of national revenue), and people in the director labor market, who mitigate agency costs and costs arising from the market concentration of large and mature companies (i.e., minimizer of national cost). I also study people who work under atypical employment arrangements both in traditional and non-traditional industries. My lifelong objective has its root in the founding philosophy of Korea, Hongik Ingan (in Korean language), translated as live and work for the benefit of all humankind.
My greatest strength as a financial economist is the ability to come up with the most fundamental economic questions. It comes from the unique asset that I have experienced extremes in socio-economic classes both over time and in the cross section. On one hand, I was born and raised in a country which rose from one of the poorest countries to one of the richest in a few decades. On the other hand, I was homeless for seven years in my 20s, interacting with the bottom of the income distributions everyday, while working with those from the top. I have been fortunate to continue working with the smartest people, that is, those who are absolutely smarter and sharper than me, both in industry and academia. But, I have not seen anyone who has better or more important questions than me.
on my unique experience
based on my experience of having lived in a country that (i.e., time-series variation) (i.e., cross-sectional variation).
I married Jineui Kim and have two children.
What I do
(Contingent) labor and finance
Contingent workers represent about 40% of the labor force among OECD countries, while little is known about determinants and consequences of contingent employment. As one of a handful of financial economists who study the contingent workforce, I study roles of financial market players in the proliferation of contingent employment (Hwang, 2020b) and implications of contingent employment on firm outcomes such as corporate innovation (Hwang, 2020a). These projects make novel contributions to the labor and finance literature, which is centered around gender issues.
Innovation and entrepreneurship
Innovation plays a central role in the economic growth, particularly when implemented by and diffused through young and small firms (i.e., entrepreneurship). Academic research disproportionately focus on managers. But, it is also important to appreciate innovation incentives and risk preferences of employees who translate innovation input determined by managers into innovation output. My current projects examine the effects on employee-level innovation of basic job security (Hwang, 2020a) and legal institutions (Hwang, 2020c).
Corporate governance
Corporate governance stands at the heart of capitalism. A well-structured governance system maximizes the value of suppliers of capital, particularly for large and mature firms. My current corporate governance research focuses on director labor markets, for which I take advantage of my experience at Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. Hwang, Shivdasani, and Simintzi (2019) estimate the effects of a 2018 law that mandates women on boards for all firms headquartered in California. Hwang (2018) examines the information role of the decision to appoint who I name a black director to a board without black directors, in the regime shaped by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and supplemented by proxy advisors. In contrast, my earlier corporate governance research focuses on the market for corporate control (Hwang and Kim, 2012) and the business-group control succession (Hwang and Kim, 2016) of family firms.
What I do home
Other than doing research, I love spending time with family, playing soccer with friends, and reading ancient histories which have guided my life and research.