Our research was featured in this year's World Congress of the Econometric Society, which took place in Seul, South Korea. Hence the title, Kamsahabnida (originally written as 감사합니다) means thank you in Korean. And we are thankful. The conference was outstanding. Five days, a beautiful location at the heart of a vibrating city, with thought-provoking keynotes sharing their views on frontier research in economics. Larry Samuelson provided  a tour de force Presidential Address highlighting how far economics has moved in their understanding of how individuals make choices, and all the work that remains to be done in the area. It was a celebration of the progress, and a call for action. Magne Mostad's keynote showed how to blend causal inference and economic theory in robust analysis that yield new insights into decades old problems (estimating supply and demand). Silvana Tenreyro showcased a rich model on the role of monetary policy in a world dominated by the dollar... Alas, the number of amazing presentations is so large, that merits several posts. 

Our contribution to the conference was a discussion of income inequality within Global Repository of Income Dynamics initiative. The initiative is set to study income inequality across the world using best data available. We participated in representation of Poland, and had an excellent opportunity to interact with academics from the entire world, exchange experiences, and plan for the future. It was a much welcome opportunity to establish (and cement) the bonds with the international community that conforms this project. 

In our research, we strive to achieve two goals: first, to document earnings distributions, mobility, and shock dynamics in Poland; and second, to estimate parameters of income processes using the Simulated Method of Moments (SMM). The analysis shows that earnings inequality rose until 2007 but declined afterwards, partly due to minimum wage policies and stronger growth at the lower percentiles. Income dynamics are well captured by a process with both persistent and transitory shocks: within-job earnings changes are small, while job-to-job transitions drive larger and more dispersed shocks, a pattern visible also in other advanced economies, such as the US. We later explored how different parameters shape income dispersion using Gini index. We show that gender differences in the income process have moderate effect (at best) in Gini coefficient. More important is the type of shocks faced. If workers faced only shocks related to income change, then inequality would be much larger. 

So again, Kamsahabnida to the local organizers and to the GRID researchers for this wonderful opportunity.