About me
Hi! I am Dongjin Hwang (황동진), a Master’s student in the Department of Economics at Seoul National University (SNU). I received my B.A. in Economics and B.S. in Mathematics from Seoul National University in 2024.
My primary research interests lie in applied micro theory and political economy, with developing interests in industrial organization and firm dynamics.
You can access my CV here
Feel free to reach out any time to: djsteve@snu.ac.kr
Working Papers
Competitive Information Disclosure with Heterogeneous Consumer Search (with Ilwoo Hwang).
Draft date: July, 2025 (Updated). Submitted. Slides (20min).
Extended Abstract in EC’25
Talks: SNU Micro Lunch (2024), UIUC Micro Lunch (2024), ACM EC’25 (2025), Stony Brook ICGT (2025), ESWC (2025), Asian School in Economic Theory (2025, accepted), University of Tokyo (2025, by coauthor)
Abstract
We study a model of competitive information design in an oligopoly search market with heterogeneous consumer search costs. A unique class of equilibria—upper-censorship equilibria—emerges under intense competition. In equilibrium, firms balance competitive pressure with local monopoly power granted by search frictions. Notably, firms disclose only partial information even as the number of firms approaches infinity. The maximal informativeness of equilibrium decreases under first-order shifts in the search cost distribution, but varies non-monotonically under mean-preserving spreads. The model converges to the full-disclosure benchmark as search frictions vanish, and to the no-disclosure benchmark as search costs become homogeneous. Moreover, we show that the well-known discontinuities of equilibrium with respect to the search cost distribution in price search literature carry over to information competition.
Split the Calendar to Split the Power: Mismatched Electoral Cycles as a Disciplining Device. (Draft available upon request) Slides.
Abstract
Whether officeholders that jointly shape policy should face voters at the same time (synchronized electoral cycles) or at different times (mismatched electoral cycles) is a contentious choice in democratic design. This paper asks: under what conditions does election (de)synchronization benefit voters, and how does it interact with the policy-making process? Using a canonical electoral accountability framework, we show that the desirability of mismatched cycles depends on the strength of institutional checks across officeholders. When checks are weak and authority is concentrated in a single body, mismatched cycles enhances voter welfare relative to synchronized cycles: midterm turnover of the weaker body forces the dominant officeholder to renegotiate with a new counterpart, breaking collusive rent-sharing and acting as an institutional “circuit breaker.” By contrast, when checks are strong and authority is already divided, institutions alone prevent such collusion, rendering election timing irrelevant. In this sense, mismatched cycles function as an informal substitute for formal checks. Our analysis thus highlights a critical spillover in institutional design: changes to term lengths inevitably alter electoral synchronization, thereby reshaping the structure of accountability
Work in Progress
Search over Suppliers and Misallocation in Production Networks
Abstract
Standard macroeconomic models assume perfect price observability: agents observe the entire vector of relevant prices and can optimally allocate inputs accordingly. In many real-world environments, however, prices are not fully observed ex ante and must be learned through costly price discovery, so agents act on a limited and noisy set of price offers. This paper develops a tractable general-equilibrium model with input-output linkages to study the aggregate consequences of such frictions in production networks. The model endogenizes both network topology---who trades with whom---and the prices on those linkages. I quantify the resulting misallocation and aggregate TFP losses, and characterize how limited price visibility generates market power and distorts the propagation of markups and shocks through production networks.
Robust Welfare Analysis with Multiple Goods
Description: A short note extending Kang and Vasserman (2025, AER) into multi-good environemnts. Derives robust bounds on changes in consumer surplus under flexible and unknown substitution patterns.
Correlation Robust Bayesian Persuasion
Description: Characterizes the sender’s max–min payoff in Bayesian persuasion when the sender only knows the marginal distributions of receiver’s prior over a multi-dimensional state, but unspecified about the correlation structure.
Information Transmission in Social Networks: Motivations and Partisanship (with Hanil Chang, Syngjoo Choi, Abhisheka Dubey, Yong Kyun Kim, Yoonje Lee)