Project details : 2016

In the course of the project, Suzuki has investigated possible impact of the European crises on FDI inflow into East European and former Soviet countries. Iwasaki has dealt with the relationship between the world oil price fluctuation by the crisis and firm entry and exit in Russia and Kumo and Suganuma have examined the determinants of birth rate and poverty in Russian regions during the crisis period, respectively. The research results were reported in the Vienna workshop on “European Crises and Emerging Markets” and published or will be published in international refereed journals and/or an edited book.

Effects of energy trade in North east Asia, which involves the Russian Far East, on the economic growth of Russia, were examined. The resource endowment of regions has critical effects on regional economic growth as well. The obtained results were published in academic journals and as chapters in a book published by Palgrave Macmillan. Oral reports were made at the annual meeting of the Japanese association for comparative economic studies or the East Asian conference on Slavic-Eurasian studies. 

Yasuyuki Sawada(The University of Tokyo), Yukinobu Kitamura(IER), Junichi Yamasaki(Kobe University), Ken Miura(Brown University)

This project worked on four different themes. First, we studied the association between landowner's political power and public expenditure in the Meiji Era. Preliminary results showed a positive relationship between land equality and educational expenditure. Second, we investigated how nationalism was shaped after the Meiji Restoration. Third, we constructed the data set for the third project about the impact on public finance of communication between local and central governments. Finally, we find the effect of railroad on technology adoption, structural change and urbanization.

Chiaki Moriguchi(IER), Naohito Abe(IER), Noriko Inakura(Osaka Sangyo University), Timothy Halliday(University of Hawaii at Manoa), Anthony Wray(Hitotsubashi University)

We examined how a price per a nutrient has changed over time in Japan by constructing a unique dataset that combines the national surveys of household food consumptions and food prices with published information of nutrients contained in foods.  Our analysis shows that a price per calorie declined by approximately 5% after 1990 relative to the level of 1985 whereas a price per protein and fiber increased over time. We also analyzed how calories contained in fast food meals have changed since 1970 and found no common trend across major fast food restaurants.   

Xinxin Ma(IER), Quheng, Deng(Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

Firstly, we constructed repeated cross-section dataset (CHIPs) from 1988 to 2013 and employed a set of empirical studies on the issue.

Secondly, we utilized the human resource and material resources to hold an international workshop named ""Economic Transition and System Reform in China:Evidence from Micro-data Analysis” in Institute of Economic Research, Hitosubashi University on November 25th，2016. Four speaker including Shi Li, Xinxin Ma, Quheng, Deng took presentations on the latest studies on issue. Members of Japanese Chinese Economic and Management Association (JCEMA), professors and researchers at Hitotsubashi University and over Universities, students in Japan attended the workshop. Academic discussion and education to students were took in the workshop.

Thirdly, we summarized empirical studies to write academic papers, four papers are published in academic Journals, and three papers are discussion papers which are opening to public through the web side of Hitotsubashi University.

Naoki Aiwaza(University of Minnesota), Yukiko Asai(The University of Tokyo), Yasuo Urakawa(Kyusyu University), Ryo Kambayashi(IER), Satoshi Tanaka(Queensland University), Yuki Hashimoto(Kyushu University), Kyoji Fukao(IER), Shintaro Yamaguchi(McMaster University)

We mostly worked on establishing the main micro-level dataset; 

We first extracted the firm accounting data from ‘the Basic Survey of Business Structure and Activity’, provided by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. This was merged to ‘the Basic Survey on Wage Structure’ by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, using the establishment data from the Economic Census of the Ministry of Finance as the identifier. Based on the constructed dataset, we found that an increase of wage variations between establishments outweighted a contraction of wage inequality within establishments. We continue to work on this dataset by merging foreign born workers and patent data.

Reiko Aoki(Kyushu University), Yukiko Abe(Hokkaido University), Yuka Ohno(Hokkaido University), Miki Kohara(Osaka University), Emiko Usui(IER), Keiko Yoshida(St. Andrew’s University), Anamaria Takahashi(Kobe University), Shingo Takahashi(International University of Japan)

We held a mentoring workshop for young economists where attendees presented their research and received feedbacks. In addition, we made data to analyze gender wage gap in Japanese university and proofread a paper about Japanese gender wage gap.

Katsumi Takahashi(NTT Secure Platform Labs.), Hitoshi Ito(NTT Secure Platform Labs.), Yusuke Kira(NTT Secure Platform Labs.), Dai Ikarashi(NTT Secure Platform Labs.), Koki Hamada(NTT Secure Platform Labs.), Ryo Kikuchi(NTT Secure Platform Labs.), Atsushi Doi(NTT Secure Platform Labs.), Satoshi Tanaka(NTT Secure Platform Labs.), Satoshi Takahashi(NTT Secure Platform Labs.), Yoshiyuki Kobayashi(Statistical Research and Training Institute), Hitoshi Mikami(National Statistics Center), Nobuyuki Sakashita(Statistical Research and Training Institute), Ken Nakamatsu(Takumi Information Technology Corporation), Kiyomi Shirakawa(IER), Yutaka Abe(IER)

・As an experimental study to achieve a safe use of microdata for official statistics, we constructed the secure computation system ver.2 developed by NTT into the server room of Hitotsubashi Univ. and demonstrated some statistical operations using microdata for official statistics while keeping the microdata encrypted.

・We evaluated a method of linear regression analysis using the secure computation system ver.2 and implemented it.

・We performed tau-ARGUS, which is a SDC (Statistical Disclosure Control) software, to verify its usability regarding general data protection rule for tabular data.

・As the outcome of study described above, we made presentations in 3 seminars and the two manuscripts submitted to UNECE2017 have been accepted.

Mikio Suga(Hosei University), Kiyomi Shirakawa(IER), Tsunenori Ashiya(Hyogo Prefectural Government), Tatuo Oi(Wakayama University), Shinsuke Ito(Cyuo University), Yutaka Abe(National Statistics Center)

The objective of this research is to estimate consumption by tourists in local areas, and identify the impact of tourism on regional economies. This research determines tourist destinations using GIS based information and investigates behavioral patterns of overseas tourists. This research also estimates GDP by railway lines and by industry using municipal input-output tables created based on the individual data from the “Economic Census”. Partial results of this research were presented at the fiscal year 2016 workshop ‘Actual Situation of the Social Economy Based on Microdata’ held at Hitotsubashi University in March 2017, and will be published as a “Discussion Paper” by the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University and in other publications.

Mark Koyama(George Mason University), Chiaki Moriguchi(IER)

With the support of this grant, Mark Koyama and I (Tuan-Hwee Sng) have visited IER, Hitotsubashi University, for one week. During the visit, we worked with Chiaki Moriguchi to extend our theoretical and empirical analyses. We also held one-day workshop on economic history at IER and had insightful discussions with participants. We have produced one working paper, which is currently under review.

Minoru Hayashida(The University of Kitakyusyu), Naomi Kodama(Hitotsubashi University), Takashi Unayama(IER), Takahisa Degima(Sophia University), Shinsuke Ito(Chuo University)

This research investigates the potential of machine learning for the prediction of household assets using individual data from "Family Income and Expenditure Survey”. This research also determines the impact of residential area and real estate prices on employment using individual data from the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure. Partial results of this research were presented at the fiscal year 2016 workshop ’Actual Situation of the Social Economy Based on Microdata’ held at Hitotsubashi University in March 2017, and will be published as a "Discussion Paper" by the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University and in other publications.

Harry X. Wu(IER)

In this project, with substantial data work on long-run industrial output and employment data, many of which did not exist, we compared China with Japan and the US on a century of industrial growth to assess China's recent growth slowdown. We empirically explored whether China entered a stage of new normal, returned to the underlying “old normal”, or underwent a great recession. We also quantified growth regimes and successfully identified “taking off” periods in China as in Japan and the US, important for understanding the process of catch up.

Yukinobu Katamura(IER), Takeshi Maru(IER)

We have reviewed the exiting literature regarding Japan's agricultural industrialization. All of them can only provide case studies and conceptual framework on evaluation of the policy of Japan's agricultural industrialization. This suggests the importance of a systematical and empirical investigation of the topic to be done by using nationwide survey data. However, we are not able to complete the empirical analyses as we received the dataset from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in February of 2017 due to a late permit. Therefore, this project will be continued in EY2017.

Cameron Lapoint(Columbia University), Takashi Unayama(IER)

The motivation of this project is to answer the following question:

Are tax rebates more effective at stimulating aggregate demand when they are enacted at the onset or in the middle of a recession?

We examine two stimulus tax cuts implemented by the Japanese government in 1994 and 1998. The tax cuts are similar in terms of the aggregate and average payments distributed to working taxpayers, and so our project represents a natural case study for evaluating whether timing relative to the beginning of the recession plays any role in determining the effectiveness of government stimulus policy.

Our initial results suggest that the expenditure response to payments from the 1994 stimulus tax cut were economically small. We obtained a marginal propensity to consume (MPC) food of approximately 0.05 upon receipt of the tax cut, and a marginally significant estimate of approximately 0.1 for strictly non-durable goods upon receipt. We also found that the response of durable goods is quite large in real expenditure terms, but that this point estimate ultimately translates to a small MPC of less than 0.1.

These findings of a small MPC relative to the MPC out of tax credits of similar aggregate amounts distributed in the U.S. motivate us to consider alternative identification strategies to the Euler equation estimation approach commonly adopted in this literature. We will exploit timing and geographic variation in land price drops over the period 1990-1993 to construct a land price shock, and then document regional heterogeneity in the effectiveness of each stimulus tax cut according to the severity of this price shock. One explanation of our finding of low MPC estimates for the 1994 tax cut is that many of the households receiving a tax cut during this period were “balance sheet” households (Sahm et al. 2016). Balance sheet households attempt to maintain a constant amount of saving and debt payments each month, and thus would have prioritized using the tax cut payments to restore their financial security at the expense of current consumption. We will confirm whether a substantial portion of households fit this description during the first half of the Lost Decade and compute an MPC for this subpopulation.

In our immediate future work, we aim to improve our imputed estimate of the 1994 tax credit amounts and obtain results for the consumer response to a similar stimulus tax credit distributed in 1998. To do this we will consult the withholding tax table for local and national income taxes stipulated by the National Tax Agency during this period.

Yukinobu Katamura(IER), Takeshi Miyazaki(Kyushu University), Taro Ohno(Shinsyu University), Yoko Morita(Nagoya City University)

We presented the paper "Fiscal Consolidation and Income Inequality: Evidence from Japan" at the conference of Japan's Social and Economic Situation from a Microdata Viewpoint，”The impact of women’s employment behavior on the socio-economic mobility" and received beneficial comments on estimation, data, and alternative viewpoints of the analysis. We published as a DP the paper ”Tax Reforms, Redistribution and Population Aging: Evidence from Japan.”，and ”Women’s Career Decisions and Earnings Disparities among Married Couples in Japan”.

Takashi Kurosaki(IER), Abu Shonchoy(IDE-JETRO), Kazushi Takahashi(Sophia University)

This project aims to follow up and collect information from the households we have previously collected data. In this project, we target the ultra poor residing on the river islands of Northern Bangladesh and attempt to measure the impacts of micro credit and its heterogeneity by the managerial capacity. We randomly assigned credits (at individual level) and randomly introduced managerial supports (at group level) that will vary the managerial capacity requirement of borrowers. We are currently checking the integrity of data.

Yoshiko Nagano(Kanagawa University), Konosuke Odaka(Hitotsubashi University), Yoshihiro Chiba(Health Sciences University of Hokkaido)

The organizer of this project team, Yoshihisa Godo, visited Manila in January 2017 to collect various data including school statistics. The collected data make us available to update our series up to around 2015. In Godo’s visit to Manila, Godo also got information on history of Filipino laborers in Japan. Other members conducted refinement of their data series. All the members have reached a common view that researchers should exercise sufficient caution in consistence between basic data series.

Kyoji Fukao(IER)

On November 2016 and March 2017, I visited Hitotsubashi Institute of Economic Research and discussed the progress of the project with Professor Fukao. I also visited the Research Centre for Information and Statistics of Social Science and studied the availability of microeconomic data. In particular, I sought the possibility of empirical research using manufacturing census (organized by Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry) and found the promising research agenda for future. For example, using the establishment-level data, I can estimate a production function with detailed information on inputs and prices and obtain the accurate estimates for firm-level markup ratios.

Firm-level markup ratio is an important indicator to understand the degree of product differentiation and market power. By having markup ratios and production function parameters, I can study how firm-level characteristics such as product quality and globalization can impact not only markup ratios but also excess labor supply. During this grant period, it is not possible to get access to this confidential database. Therefore, I used JIP and KLEMS industry-level databases to prepare the manuscript titled ”Globalization and the Evolution of Markups around the World" and presented the paper at Hitotsubashi IER on March 29, 2017.

Sauimk Paul(IER), Takashi Kurosaki(IER)

We have reexamined the effects of land reforms on agricultural productivity in India. First, we have revised our synthetic-control analysis focusing on the effect of 1978 tenancy reform in West Bengal on rice productivity. Under the synthetic control approach, weighted averages of unaffected districts are used as counterfactuals to measure the treatment impact. The revised results are reflected in the working paper mentioned below. We then extended the synthetic-control analysis for the multiple treatment cases. This is because most of 16 major Indian states experienced several episodes of land reforms, comprising tenancy reforms, abolition of intermediaries, ceilings on landholdings, and consolidation of land holdings. The extended methodology has been applied to a few states and the results appear promising. We are currently applying the extended methodology to all major states so that we can answer two research questions: (1) how land reforms varied across states that experienced different colonial institutions, and (2) to what extent the colonial institutions curbed the efficacy of the land reform programs.

Kiyomi Shirakawa(IER), Yutaka Abe(IER), Naoko Matsuda(Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry), Kenta Ikeuchi(Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry), Ryuichiro Tsuchiya(Toyo University)

Using statistical micro data from 1979 to 2012, we identified those who wish to start up own business and who prepare for that. We analyzed the effects of individual, household, and current job factors and their changes over time and found that especially the willingness to start up own business declined over time and that it can be partially ascribed to changes in age structure and generation. We also found that the effects of individual and current job factors on the willingness weakened over time.