I started my career as an economist (in 1988) when I was hired as a research assistant at the Economic Research Institute of Economic Planning Agency, where I engaged in the development of large econometric models in the Japanese government. While my earlier researches concentrated on macro econometric analyses based on the aggregated time series data, my interest slightly shifted in micro data based empirical studies, after finishing my doctoral dissertation on the US Great Depression (at UC Berkeley). Some of my research topics are motivated by my own experiences as a government official. For example, I started my studies on the impact of bank failures on the client firms after my two year service to the Financial System Planning Bureau of the Ministry of Finance. I am also interested in the policy evaluation studies, especially those on the economic policy measures undertaken by the Japanese government during the Japan’s Lost Decades (since 1990s).

I am currently working on the following two projects: (1) the evolution of income and assets distribution among Japanese households and its impact on household consumption behaviors; and (2) the impact of bank failures on the performance of client firms. The research on topic (1) uses micro data from several sources including the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) and the Basic Survey on Wage Structure (BSWS) and tries to estimate the distributions of (financial/real/human) capital among Japanese households. Topic (2) uses regional and firm level data to estimate the negative effects of bank failures on client firms and regional economy in a few periods of banking crises.