Abstract: Vietnam’s strong performance on the 2012 and 2015 PISA assessments has led to interest in what explains the strong academic performance of Vietnamese students. Analysis of the PISA data has not shed much light on this issue. This paper analyses a much richer data set, the Young Lives data for Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Vietnam, to investigate the reasons for the strong academic performance of 15-year-olds in Vietnam. The (preliminary) analysis thus far indicates that the Young Lives data can “explain” about two thirds of the gap between Vietnamese and Ethiopian 15-year-olds, about half of the gap between Vietnamese and Indian 15-year-olds, and about 40% of the gap between Vietnamese and Peruvian 15-year-olds.

場所：6号館3階305室

Venue: 3rd Floor, Bldg.No.6 Room 305

幹事/Organizer：堀江哲也/Tetsuya Horie

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: The model to analyze perishable products was proposed around five decades ago, but is still of interest to many due to its practical importance. The goal of the model is to find an optimal ordering policy that minimizes the operational cost. Dynamic programming is one way to find the optimal policy, but is complicated to use in practice. We propose a new heuristic method based on a marginal analysis that includes externality. The method converts complex inventory models to a simple newsvendor-type model, avoiding a curse of dimensionality in perishable inventory systems. Since our method is easily implemented in Excel, we believe it provides a practical approach to solve complex inventory models in real world.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

Abstract: Parental leave policy is one of the most popular policies to promote career continuation of mothers among developed countries. Using the Japanese Census data, we evaluated the long-run impact of job protection and paid leave policies on maternal employment, by exploiting 1992 and 1995 reforms of the parental leave policy as natural experiments. We found that the introduction of unpaid leave had null effects on maternal employment both in short-run and long-run. In contrast, we found the positive effect of the introduction of paid leave on maternal career continuation. In short-run, the paid leave policy increased the parental-leave take-up rate. In mid-run, it increased full-time employment, and this positive effect lasts 10–15 years after childbearing. The paid leave policy, therefore, seems to strengthen labor market attachment of mothers, allowing those who would otherwise engage in part-time jobs after childbirth to continue full-time jobs.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：長谷部拓也/Takuya Hasebe

言語/Language：日本語/Japanese

Abstract: In this study, we consider a spatial stochastic volatility model in which latent log-volatility terms follow a spatial autoregressive process. Though there is no spatial correlation in the outcome equation (the mean equation), the spatial autoregressive process defined for the log-volatility terms introduces spatial dependence in the outcome equation. We develop an MCMC algorithm in which the latent log-volatility terms are considered as additional parameters to facilitate the posterior simulation. To introduce a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation approach, we transform the model such that the outcome equation takes the form of log-squared terms. We approximate the distribution of the log-squared error terms in the outcome equation with a finite mixture of normal distributions such that the transformed model turns into a linear Gaussian state-space model. Our simulation results indicate that the Bayesian estimator has satisfactory finite sample properties. We investigate empirical validity of our specification using price returns of residential properties in broader Chicago Metropolitan area.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：長谷部拓也/Takuya Hasebe

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: The paper analyzes the effects of attending trade fairs on export performances using Japanese firm-level data on export performance and trade-fair participation. In order to solve self-selection problem, I utilize the difference-in-differences matching estimation approach with unique firm characteristics, as well as a linear estimation approach with paired fixed-effects. The results show that there are positive effects of attending trade fairs on exporting status. In addition, the positive results are mainly from attending trade fairs in the geographically farther markets such as Europe or the U.S., but not from attending the close markets, such as Asian countries or China.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：長谷部拓也/Takuya Hasebe

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：釜賀浩平/Kohei Kamaga

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: Firms create new jobs while removing old jobs to achieve optimal performances. During the process, the oversea foreign direct investment can play an important role. On the one hand, foreign expansion can reduce the budget to be spent domestically, which leaves less room for domestic employment. On the other hand, activities of FDI can contribute to more technical progress and higher productivity, which help to create more new jobs or alleviate the destruction of existing jobs. This study uses a unique dataset of Japanese firms’ oversea activities to examine the individual effect of outward FDI on firm-level job creation and destruction respectively. The empirical results indicate that the overall FDI reduces the total amount of job creation and job destruction at the same time, but the scale of the impact on job destruction is larger than that on job creation. We further show that the reallocation patterns are closely related to different purposes of FDI, namely vertical and horizontal ones, varying across industries and destinations. We then rationalize the findings by applying a general equilibrium model which illustrates the mechanism of how employment reallocation can improve production efficiency to better serve outward foreign direct investment. The findings provide evidence that going abroad does not necessarily lead to the increasing unemployment at home.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：孫明超/Mingchao Sun

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: Over the past decades, economists have established that higher education is associated with lower mortality and heathy behavior using an instrumental variable approach. An obstacle in using an instrumental approach is finding an instrument which is relevant and exogenous. To this end, we leverage a competition shock for college enrollment from Firehorse Year in Japan. In 1966, Japanese fertility rates decline significantly as a result of the belief of Firehorse Year, parents avoid having children as women born into this year are believe to be “unlucky”. Under Japanese education system, school year starts at April of each year. That is, Firehore School Year starts at April of 1966 and ends at March of 1967. Consequentially, a mismatch group exists between Firehorse Year and Firehorse School Year, people born between January of 1967 and March of 1967. The mismatch group experiences a reduction in competition for college enrollment without the parental selection of Firehorse Year. Using this mismatch as an instrument for education, we investigate the causal impact of higher education on smoking, alcohol use, and sleep behaviors. Using 2010 to 2016 Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions, we show that higher education significant reduce the probability of being an ever smoker, a current smoker, an ever drinker, and a daily current drinker. Conversely, we do not find any impact of higher education on adequate sleep and good sleep. Furthermore, we examine the mechanism behind the link between education and health behavior through stress-based mechanism. We show that higher education significantly reduces income-related stresses, such as finance-related and living condition-related stresses. In turns, it translates into a reduction of smoking and alcohol use behavior.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：長谷部拓也/Takuya Hasebe

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: We consider the problem of allocating greenhouse gas reduction targets among countries, or regions, with, possibly, different historical and future emissions (if they remain in business as usual) and populations. We formulate several normative principles, pertaining to emission history or population, as axioms for allocation rules. We show that two specific combinations of these axioms characterize the so-called equal per capita allocation rules, with or without historical accountability.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：釜賀浩平/Kohei Kamaga・蓬田守弘/Morihiro Yomogida

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: Many countries and intergovernmental organizations have official lists of designated terrorist organizations, although their lists vary to a large degree. This paper examines the political motivations of designating terrorist organizations, focusing on the government perspective. We argue that democratic and authoritarian governments have different considerations while deciding whether to label a group as a terrorist group. Authoritarian governments pay more attention to their domestic stability, and thus are more likely to proscribe domestic groups. Democratic governments are less likely to worry about regime stability, but may take foreign policy preferences into consideration in their designation decision. Therefore, they are more likely to designate terrorist groups that operate in their allies. We test our hypotheses using a self-collected dataset that includes 84 countries and 377 terrorist groups, and the results show that domestic terrorist groups are more likely to appear on authoritarian countries’ lists and that democratic countries are more likely to designate groups operating in their foreign allies as terrorist organizations.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：長谷部拓也/Takuya Hasebe

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: We develop a nonparametric approach to test for monotone choice behavior among optimizing agents and to recover preferences with the single crossing property that could account for those choices. The method is applicable to simultaneous games with agents playing pure strategy Nash equilibria, and to models where agents make choices subject to peer effects. It requires no parametric assumptions on payoff functions and minimal assumptions on their unobserved heterogeneity. It allows for multiple equilibria and imposes no restriction on their selection. To illustrate how the approach works, we include an empirical application to an IO entry game.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：釜賀浩平/Kohei Kamaga

言語/Language：日本語/Japanese

Abstract: The impacts of negative shocks on children’s outcomes are widely documented. However, parental responses to such shocks and whether parental responses can mitigate the unfavorable consequences on children remain understudied. This paper uses a Longitudinal Survey of Newborns in the 21st Century to estimate the effect of a natural disaster on children’s outcomes, parental behavior, and their interaction. Exploiting the regional variation of the earthquake and applying difference-in-differences, we find that the maternal labor supply is reduced and the probability that children are hospitalized is not significantly changed. Curiously, children’s non-cognitive outcome is not aggravated in the most seriously devastated area, while the children living in the area exposed to comparatively high seismic intensity are more likely to take insubordinate behavior to the parents. Our analyses support the following mechanism: the shortage of parental time investment and intra-household communication after experiencing the traumatic events can cause an adverse impact on children’s psychological aspects. This might lead the parents to overlook the changes in the health status of children.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：長谷部拓也/Takuya Hasebe

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: This paper analyzes effects of health checkup on health outcomes and behaviors focusing on the heterogeneous effects depending on education. In Japan, the checkup policy was reconstructed based on the scientific evidence in April 2008 and would become more effective. I use this variation to estimate the effects of health checkup. Since the checkup is mandatory for salaried workers but voluntary for self-employed workers, the participation rate of the checkup is significantly higher among salaried workers. In other words, salaried workers have more proportion of individuals affected by the policy reform. Using this institutional setting, I regard salaried workers as treatment group and self-employed workers as control group and employ a difference-in-differences approach. According to the estimated results, by the policy reform, university graduates with relatively high obesity risk significantly decrease the Body Mass Index and some diagnosed health problems although there are no significant changes among non-university graduates with the risk. Additionally, there are significant changes in the health behaviors such as physical activity and energy intake only among the university graduates.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：長谷部拓也/Takuya Hasebe

言語/Language：日本語/Japanese

Abstract: Japan experienced an asset price bubble from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. This dramatic change in real asset prices had a great impact on housing decisions, asset accumulation, and the lifetime utility of households in Japan. This study aims to estimate the lifetime impact of real asset price bubbles on Japanese households. We construct a theoretical model explaining the dynamic housing decisions of households under collateral and borrowing constraints. Then, we estimate a model by using a unique dataset on household consumption and assets, precisely and subjectively estimating their housing wealth. By using the estimated model, we conduct a counterfactual simulation to quantify the effect of real asset price bubbles. From the simulation result, we find that the bubble caused a 2.5% loss in lifetime utility. This is equivalent to a 6 million yen (about $ 55,000) increase in financial asset holdings at age 25.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：釜賀浩平/Kohei Kamaga・長谷部拓也/Takuya Hasebe

言語/Language：英語/English