Jihee Kim

Associate Professor of Economics @ KAIST
School of Business and Technology Management, College of Business
Joint appointment with School of Computing and Graduate School of Data Science

In 2026, I launched econai@kaist, the Economic Progress and AI Research Group at KAIST.

Education

2013 Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
2011 M.A. in Economics from Stanford University.
2005 B.S. in Computer Science from KAIST.

Publications

Economic Research

Can Stimulus Checks to Households Save the Local Economy? The Impact of South Korea's COVID-19 Stimulus on Small Business Sales
Jihee Kim and Susang Lee
Economic Analysis and Policy, December 2024

The Economic Costs of Trade Sanctions: Evidence from North Korea
Jihee Kim, Kyoochul Kim, Sangyoon Park, and Chang Sun
Journal of International Economics, November 2023
Winner of the 2023 Korean Economy Research Prize

The Impact of Chinese Shadow Banking Risk on Global Commodity Markets
Yonghwan Jo, Jihee Kim, and Francisco Santos
Journal of Empirical Finance, March 2022

Revisiting the Time Series Momentum Anomaly
Yonghwan Jo and Jihee Kim
Annals of Economics and Finance, November 2019

A Schumpeterian Model of Top Income Inequality
Charles I. Jones and Jihee Kim
Journal of Political Economy, October 2018
Winner of the 2021 Robert E. Lucas Jr. Prize

Interdisciplinary - Journal Papers

Minimally Supervised Learning on Sub-Meter Satellite Imagery Reveals Slum Expansion During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Jeasurk Yang*, Sungwon Park, Hyoshin Kim, Sumin Lee, Jungwon Kim, Jihee Kim*, Meeyoung Cha*
Communications Sustainability, March 2026 (* co-corresponding authors)

A Human-machine Collaborative Approach Measures Economic Development with Satellite Imagery
Donghyun Ahn, Jeasurk Yang, Meeyoung Cha*, Hyunjoo Yang*, Jihee Kim*, Sangyoon Park*, Sungwon Han, Eunji Lee, Susang Lee, Sungwon Park
Nature Communications, October 2023 (* co-corresponding authors)

Disaster Assessment Using Computer Vision and Satellite Imagery: Applications in Detecting Water-Related Building Damages
Danu Kim, Jeongkyung Won, Eunji Lee, Kyungryul Park, Jihee Kim, Sangyoon Park, Hyunjoo Yang, and Meeyoung Cha
Frontiers in Environmental Science, October 2022

Assessing Proliferation Uncertainty in Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Under New Power Dynamics of the International Nuclear Trade
Philseo Kim, Jihee Kim*, Man-Sung Yim
Energy Policy, April 2022 (* co-corresponding author)

What Influences Public Opinions on Nuclear Energy Before and After Deliberation: South Korea's Deliberation on Closing Nuclear Reactors
Philseo Kim, Jihee Kim*, Man-Sung Yim
Applied Energy, July 2020 (* co-corresponding author)

Full Peer-reviewed Conference Papers in AI/CS

Instruction-Tuned Language Models Cannot Sample from Distributions They Can Describe
Chaemin Jang, Jihee Kim*, Dongman Lee*
Accepted at EMNLP Findings 2026

Ideological Bias in LLMs' Economic Causal Reasoning
Donggyu Lee, Hyeok Yun, Jungwon Kim, Junsik Min, Sungwon Park*, Sangyoon Park*, Jihee Kim*
Accepted at COLM 2026

In-Context Examples Suppress Scientific Knowledge Recall in LLMs
Chaemin Jang, Woojin Park, Hyeok Yun, Dongman Lee*, Jihee Kim*
Accepted at COLM 2026

Generalizable Slum Detection from Satellite Imagery with Mixture-of-Experts
Sumin Lee, Sungwon Park, Jeasurk Yang*, Jihee Kim*, Meeyoung Cha*
AAAI 2026 (Social Impact track, selected for oral presentation)
Best Paper for AI for Social Impact

Tracking Economic Disparities in North Korea: Satellite Imagery Analysis Using AI with Policy Insights
Sumin Lee, Hyoshin Kim, Donghyun Ahn, Donggyu Lee, Jungwon Kim, Hyuk Yun, Chaemin Jang, Dongman Lee, Meeyoung Cha, Jihee Kim
GoodIT 2025

Measuring Fine-Grained Urban Air Temperature with Satellite Imagery
Minhyuk Song, Donghyun Ahn, Seungeon Lee, Jihee Kim, Meeyoung Cha
AAAI 2025

Generalizable Disaster Damage Assessment via Change Detection with Vision Foundation Model
Kyeongjin Ahn, Sungwon Han, Sungwon Park, Jihee Kim, Sangyoon Park, Meeyoung Cha
AAAI 2025 (selected for oral presentation)

Fine-Grained Socioeconomic Prediction from Satellite Images with Distributional Adjustment
Donghyun Ahn, Minhyuk Song, Seungeon Lee, Yubin Choi, Jihee Kim, Sangyoon Park, Hyunjoo Yang, and Meeyoung Cha
CIKM 2023

Learning Economic Indicators by Aggregating Multi-level Geospatial Information
Sungwon Park, Sungwon Han, Donghyun Ahn, Jaeyeon Kim, Jeasurk Yang, Susang Lee, Seunghoon Hong, Jihee Kim, Sangyoon Park, Hyunjoo Yang, Meeyoung Cha
AAAI 2022

Learning to Score Economic Development from Satellite Imagery
Sungwon Han, Donghyun Ahn, Sungwon Park, Jeasurk Yang, Susang Lee, Jihee Kim, Hyunjoo Yang, Sangyoon Park, Meeyoung Cha
KDD 2020

SolutionChat: Real-time Moderator Support for Chat-based Structured Discussion
Sung-Chul Lee, Jaeyoon Song, Seongho Park, Eun-Young Ko, Jihee Kim, Juho Kim
CHI 2020

BudgetMap: Engaging Taxpayers in the Issue-Driven Classification of a Government Budget
Nam Wook Kim, Jonghyuk Jung, Eun-Young Ko, Songyi Han, Chang Won Lee, Juho Kim, Jihee Kim
CSCW 2016

Factful: Engaging Taxpayers in the Public Discussion of a Government Budget
Juho Kim, Eun-Young Ko, Jonghyuk Jung, Chang Won Lee, Nam Wook Kim, Jihee Kim
CHI 2015
Honorable Mention Award (top 5%)

Content-Aware Kinetic Scrolling for Supporting Web Page Navigation
Juho Kim, Amy X. Zhang, Jihee Kim, Robert C. Miller, Krzysztof Z. Gajos
UIST 2014

Working Papers

Teaching Machines to Measure Economic Activities from Satellite Images: Challenges and Solutions (white paper)
with Meeyoung Cha, Sangyoon Park, Hyunjoo Yang, Donghyun Ahn, Sungwon Han, Ian Jaeyeon Kim, Susang Lee, Sungwon Park, and Jeasurk Yang

Institutional Changes and CEO Pay Inequality (with Hansoo Choi and Eun-Young Ko)

The Effect of the Top Marginal Tax Rate on Top Income Inequality

Ideas and Non-Balanced Economic Growth

Peer-reviewed Extended Abstracts in Computer Science Conferences

Crowdsourcing Perspectives on Public Policy from Stakeholders
Hyunwoo Kim, Eun-Young Ko, Donghoon Han, Sung-chul Lee, Simon Perrault, Jihee Kim, Juho Kim
CHI 2019 Extended Abstracts

Micro-NGO: Tackling Wicked Social Problems with Problem Solving and Action Planning Support in Chat
Sung-Chul Lee, Jihee Kim, Juho Kim
CHI 2018 Extended Abstracts

BudgetMap: Issue-Driven Navigation for a Government Budget
Nam Wook Kim, Chang Won Lee, Jonghyuk Jung, Eun-Young Ko, Juho Kim, Jihee Kim
CHI 2015 Extended Abstracts

Workshop Papers in Computer Science Conferences (non-archived)

Disaster Assessment Using Computer Vision and Satellite Imagery: Applications in Water-Related Building Damage Detection
Danu Kim, Jeongkyung Won, Eunji Lee, Kyungryul Park, Jihee Kim, Sangyoon Park, Hyunjoo Yang, and Meeyoung Cha
AAAI 2023 Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Social Good

Human-in-the-loop Solution for Scoring Economic Development from Geospatial Data
Sungwon Park, Donghyun Ahn, Sungwon Han, Eunji Lee, Danu Kim, Jeasurk Yang, Susang Lee, Sangyoon Park, Hyunjoo Yang, Jihee Kim, Meeyoung Cha
NeurIPS 2020 HAMLETS Workshop

Micro-NGO: Crowd-Driven Social Activism Via A Chat-Based Online Platform
Sung-Chul Lee, Jihee Kim, Juho Kim
CSCW 2017 Workshop on Crowdsourcing Law and Policy

Changing News Media Landscape in South Korea
Hongjun Lim, Choongho Chung, Jihee Kim, Juho Kim, Sue Moon, Meeyoung Cha
WWW 2017 Workshop on Social News On the Web

BudgetWiser: Gamification Design Opportunities in the Government Budget Domain
Nam Wook Kim, Jihee Kim, Juho Kim, Chang Won Lee, Eun-Young Ko, Jonghyuk Jung
CHI 2015 Workshop on Researching Gamification

Teaching

ECN 301/BTM301 Econometrics (Undergraduate)
ECN 312 Intermediate Macroeconomics (Undergraduate)
BTM 408 Economics of Technology and Innovation (Undergraduate)
BTM 701/GGS643/DS644 Advanced Econometrics (Graduate)