Hello! I am Nara Chung from South Korea. I studied economics as my major in Sogang University and also was deeply impressed by the values of Christianity and became interested in education. Thus, I obtained a master's degree in TESOL from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. As obligatory military service, I spent three years serving as a naval officer and an English instructor in the Naval Academy of Republic of Korea. Teaching experience as an assistant professor in the Naval Academy motivated me to pursue the Ph.D. degree, and I have clearer vision and passion for economics, so now I am here at CSU as a Ph.D. student of economics. In the process of applying for Ph.D. program of economics, I was introduced to heterodox economics such as post-Keynesian economics which intrigued me to study eagerly.

Through various courses and guidance from faculty, I associated a political economic situation of widening inequalities in societies with adverse health outcomes such as deaths of despair. Thus, the first chapter of my dissertation is "Labor Market Deregulation and Deaths of Despair: Evidence from Advanced Economies" using local projection methods to check a reduced relationship between Employment Protection Deregulation among OECD countries and mortality caused by drug use disorder, suicide, and alcohol use disorder.

While I also was fascinated by economic modeling papers, a current co-author of the second chapter in my dissertation, Dr. Marwil Davila-Fernandez guided me to adapt Goodwin's (1967) predator-prey growth-cycle model to incorporate the effect of opioid-use disorder (OUD) on worker's productivity and growth cycles.

I found financialization in many aspects of our economies to be associated with increasing inequalities and am working to connect local financialization in US states with the phenomenon of deaths of despair in my third chapter of the dissertation.

I am on the job market this fall semester in 2026 and excited to move forward into my next career.