Economic crises and fiscal measures in South Korea: Asian Financial Crisis, Global Financial Crisis, and COVID-19

Abstract

ABSTRACT . This study conducts a changes-in-changes analysis to identify the adverse effects of three economic crises and the countercyclical stabilisation effect of the welfare system in South Korea. First, the crises commonly delivered disproportionate effects and the economically vulnerable experienced more severe damages. Second, even though the welfare system has better mitigated negative impacts during the recent crises thanks to welfare expansion, it still provided limited coverage and insufficient benefits. Therefore, the Korean government introduced the Emergency Disaster Relief Funds as the first-ever one-off universal benefit, but it did not mitigate early damages and had temporary positive effects.