Resarch Results

◆ Books

Title:The Myanmar economy, its past, present and prospects

Author: Odaka, Konosuke

Publisher: Springer

Released Date: Printing

 

Title:Regional Inequality and Industrial Structure in Japan: 1874-2008

Author: Fukao, Kyoji, Jean-Pascal Bassino, Tatsuji Makino, Ralph Paprzycki, Tokihiko Settsu, Masanori Takashima, and Joji Tokui

Publisher: Maruzen

Released Date: March, 2015

ISBN-13: 978-4-6210-8913-2

 

Title: Korekara no Nihon no Kokusai Kyouryoku: big donor kara smart donor he (in Japanese)

Author: Takashi Kurosaki and Keijiro Otsuka

Publisher: Nippon Hyoron Sha Co., Ltd. 

Released Date: February, 2015 

ISBN-10: 4535557942

ISBN-13: 978-4-5355-5794-9

 

Title:Shinban Hikakushi no Enkinho (in Japanese)

Author:: Osamu Saito

Publisher: Shosekikobo Hayama Publishing Co.,Ltd

Released Date: February, 2015 

ISBN-10: 4904701003

ISBN-13: 978-4-9047-0100-3

 

Title:Financial Reform and Southeast Asia: Analyzing Regional Long term Trends and Gorporate Finance (in Japanese)

Author: Fumiharu Mieno

Publisher: Keiso Shobo

Released Date: February, 2015 

ISBN-10: 4326546050

ISBN-13: 978-4-3265-4605-3

 

Title:Resilience and Recovery in Asian Disasters: Community Ties, Market Mechanisms, and Governance

Author: Aldrich, Daniel P., Sothea Oum, and Yasuyuki Sawada

Publisher: Springer

Released Date: October, 2014

ISBN-10: 4431550216

ISBN-13: 978-4-4315-5021-1

 

Title: Kankyo no Keizaishi: Shinrin・Shijo・Kokka (in Japanese)

Author: Osamu Saito

Publisher: Iwanami Shoten Publishers 

Released Date: June, 2014

ISBN-10: 4000291335

ISBN-13: 978-4-0002-9133-0 

 

Title: MICROECONOMETRICS II (in Japanese)

Author: Yukinobu Kitamura

Publisher: Nippon Hyoron Sha Co., Ltd.

Released Date: March, 2014

ISBN-10: 4535557624

ISBN-13: 978-4-5355-5762-8

 

Title: Kyodai Saigai・Risk and Economy (in Japanese)

Author: Yasuyuki Sawada

Publisher: Nikkei Publishing Inc.

Released Date: January, 2014

ISBN-10: 4532134455

ISBN-13: 978-4-5321-3445-7

 

Title: Zeisei Kaikaku no Micro Jissho Bunseki: Kakei Keizai kara mita Shotokuzei・Shouhizei (in Japanese)

Author: Yukinobu Kitamura and Takeshi Miyazaki

Publisher: Iwanami Shoten Publishers 

Released Date: February, 2013 

ISBN: 978-4-00-009921-9 C3333

 

Title: History of Japan's Trade and Industry Policy (3): Industrial Policy (in Japanese)

Editor: Tetsuji Okazaki

Publisher: Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI)

Released Date: April, 2012

ISBN: 978-4-8065-2868-5

 

Title: Myanmar keizai no Atarashii Hikari (in Japanese)

Editor&Author: Konosuke Odaka and Fumiharu Mieno

Publisher: Keiso Shobo

Released Date: September, 2012

ISBN: 978-4-326-50368-1

 

Title: Financial Sector and Population Onus in the Japanese Economy: Finance and Ecnomics in an Ageing Society (in Japanese)

Author: Kunio Okina and Yukinobu Kitamura 

Publisher: Nippon Hyoron Sha Co.,Ltd.  

Released Date: May, 2011  

ISBN: 9784535556270 

ISBN: 453555627X

 

 

 

◆ Articles in Refereed Journals

Title: "Spatial Characteristics of Long-term Changes in Indian Agricultural Production: District-Level Analysis, 1965-2007"

Author: Takashi Kurosaki and Kazuya Wada

Journal: Review of Agrarian Studies

Released Year: forthcoming

 

Title: "Learning from Disaster: Community-based Marine Protected Areas in Fiji"

Author: Takasaki, Yoshito

Journal: Environment and Development Economics

Released Year: forthcoming

 

Title: "In Praise of Angus Maddison: A reviewer's informal notes on D.S. Prasada Rao and Bart von Ark, eds., World economic performance: Past, present and future, Essays in celebration of the life and work of Angus Maddison, 2013"

Author: Odaka, Konosuke

Journal: Asian-Pacific Economic Literature

Released Year: forthcoming

 

Title: "Task Polarization in the Japanese Labor Market: Evidence of a Long-term Trend"

Author: Kambayashi, Ryo and Toshie Ikenaga

Journal: Industrial Relations

Released Year: forthcoming

 

Title: "Disemployment Caused by Foreign Direct Investment? Multinationals and Japanese Employment"

Author: Kambayashi, Ryo and Kozo Kiyota

Journal: Review of World Economics

Released Year: forthcoming

 

Title: "Growth and Inequality in the Great and Little Divergence Debate: A Japanese Perspective"

Author: Saito, Osamu

Journal: Economic History Review

Released Year: forthcoming

 

Title: "Impact of Natural Disasters on Industrial Agglomeration: The Case of the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923"

Author: Imaizumi, Asuka, Kaori Ito and Tetsuji Okazaki

Journal: Explorations in Economic History

Released Year: forthcoming (2015)

 

Title: "Long-term Agricultural Growth in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh from 1901/2 to 2001/2"

Author: Kurosaki, Takashi

Journal: International Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 7

Released Year: 2015

 

Title: "Vulnerability of Household Consumption to Floods and Droughts in Developing Countries: Evidence from Pakistan"

Author: Kurosaki, Takashi

Journal: Environment and Development Economics, vol.20, issue 2

Released Year: 2015

 

Title: "How Do Supply Chain Networks Affect the Resilience of Firms to Natural Disasters? Evidence from the Great East Japan Earthquake"

Author: Todo, Yasuyuki, Kentaro Nakajima, and Petr Matous

Journal: Journal of Regional Science Vol. 55

Released Year: 2015

 

Title: "The Impact of Saving and Credit Union Program on Household Welfare in Lao PDR: Case Study in Valentine Vicinity in mid-2000s"

Author: Mieno, Fumiharu and Kongpasa Sengsourivong

Journal: Southeast Asian Studies, Vol.3

Released Year: 2015

 

Title: "Analysis of Meteorological Measurements made over Three Rainy Seasons and Rainfall  Simulations in Sinazongwe District, Southern Province, Zambia"

Author: Kanno, Hiromitsu, Takeshi Sakurai, Hitoshi Shinjo, Hidetoshi Miyazaki, Yudai Ishimoto, Tazu Saeki, and Chieko Umetsu

Journal: Japan Agricultural Research Quarterly, Vol. 49, No.1

Released Year: 2015

 

Title: "Kaihatsu Tojoukoku ni okeru community-based development to shuukeiteki shock: Pakistan no NGO no jirei yori "(in Japanese)

Author: Takashi Kurosaki and Hidayat Ullah Khan

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.65, No.2

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "How Is Disaster Aid Allocated within Poor Villages? Risk Sharing and Social Hierarchy"

Author: Takasaki, Yoshito

Journal: Journal of International Development, vol.26, no.8

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "Long-term Effects of the Cambodian Genocide on Education" (in Japanese)

Author: Kogure, Katsuo and Takasaki, Yoshito

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.65, No.1

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "Demand for Mineral Resources in Sub-Saharan Africa and Poverty Reduction among Rural Households : The Case of the Gold Rush in Burkina Faso"

Author: Takeshi Sakurai and Ryo Inoue

Journal:  Nougyo Keizai Ronbunshu (Japanese Journal of Rural Economics)

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "Agglomeration Effects of Inter-firm Backward and Forward Linkages: Evidence from Japanese Manufacturing Investment in China"

Author: Yamashita, Nobuaki, Kentaro Nakajima, and Toshiyuki Matsuura

Journal: Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Vol.34, No.5

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "How Important is Geographical Agglomeration to Factory Efficiency in Japan's Manufacturing Sector?"

Author: Fukao, Kyoji, Victoria Kravtsova, and Kentaro Nakajima

Journal: The Annals of Regional Science, Vol.52, No.2

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "Asia's Little Divergence: State Capacity in China and Japan Before 1850"

Author: Moriguchi, Chiaki and Tuan-Hwee Sng

Journal: Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 19, No.4

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "How Access to Irrigation Influences Poverty and Livelihoods: A Case Study from Sri Lanka"

Author: Sellamuttu, Sonali Senaratna, Takeshi Aida, Ryuji Kasahara, Yasuyuki Sawada, and Deeptha Wijerathna

Journal: Journal of Development Studies, Vol.50, Issue 5

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "On the Role of Policy Interventions in Structural Change and Economic Development: The Case of Postwar Japan"

Author: Esteban-Pretel, Julen and Yasuyuki Sawada

Journal: Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Vol. 40(C)

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "The Role of Infrastructure in Mitigating Poverty Dynamics: The Case of an Irrigation Project in Sri Lanka"

Author: Sawada, Yasuyuki, Masahiro Shoji, Shinya Sugawara, and Naoko Shinkai

Journal: B. E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy (Topics) , Vol. 14, Issue 3

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "Development of the Rural Economy of Burkina Faso in 30 Years : Have They Escaped from the Poverty?" (in Japanese)

Author: Takeshi Sakurai and Ryo Inoue

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.65, No.1

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "Sources of Productivity Improvement in Industrial Clusters: The Case of the Prewar Japanese Silk-Reeling Industry"

Author: Arimoto, Yutaka, Kentaro Nakajima, and Tetsuji Okazaki

Journal: Regional Science and Urban Economics, Vol.46

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "Who Faces Higher Prices? An Empirical Analysis based on Japanese Homescan Data"

Author: Abe, Naohito and Kyosuke Shiotani

Journal: Asian Economic Policy Review, Vol. 9, No.1

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "Incidence of Strict Quality Standards: Protection of Consumers or Windfall for Professionals?"

Author: Kambayashi, Ryo, Daiji Kawaguchi, and Tetsushi Murao

Journal: Journal of Law and Economics, Vol.57

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "Does Community Management Help Keep Children in Schools? Evidence Using Panel Data from El Salvador's EDUCO Program"

Author: Jimenez, Emmanuel and Yasuyuki Sawada

Journal: Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 62, No.2

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "Adopted Children and Stepchildren in Twentieth-Century America : Evidence from U,S, Federal Census Microdata" (in Japanese)

Author: Chiaki Moriguchi

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.65, No.1

Released Year: 2014

 

Title: "Dynamics of Household Assets and Income Shocks in the Long-run Process of Economic Development: The Case of Rural Pakistan"

Author: Kurosaki, Takashi

Journal: Asian Development Review, vol.30, no.2

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "The Cycle Rickshaw Sector in Delhi —An Analysis of the Informal Sector and Rural-Urban Migration—" (in Japanese)

Author: Takashi Kurosaki

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.64, No.1

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "Economic Growth and Education Stocks in East Asia" (in Japanese)

Author: Yoshihisa Godo

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.64, No.1

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "Farmers' Debt in 1930s Japan" (in Japanese)

Author: Yutaka Arimoto, Takeshi Fujie, Tetsuji Senda

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.64, No.1

Released Year:: 2013

 

Title: "Indigenous Climate Information and Modern Meteorological Records in Sinazongwe District, Southern Province, Zambia"

Author: Kanno, Hiromitsu, Takeshi Sakurai, Hitoshi Shinjo, Hidetoshi Miyazaki, Yudai Ishimoto, Tazu Saeki, Chieko Umetsu, Sesele Sokotela, and Milimo Chiboola

Journal: Japan Agricultural Research Quarterly, Vol. 47, No.2

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "An Empirical Analysis of Risks and Consumption Variation of Japanese Youth" (in Japanese)

Author: Naohito Abe

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.64, No.3

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "The Minimum Wage in a Deflationary Economy: The Japanese Experience, 1994-2003"

Author: Kambayashi, Ryo, Daiji Kawaguchi, and Ken Yamada

Journal: Labor Economics, Vol.24

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "Trends in Worker Displacement Penalties in Japan: 1991-2005"

Author: Kambayashi, Ryo and Michael Bognanno

Journal: Japan and the World Economy, Vol.27

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "Toward Myanmar's New Stage of Development: Transition from Military Rule to the Market"

Author: Mieno, Fumiharu

Journal: Asian Economic Policy Review, Vol.8, No.1

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "Modes of Collective Action in Village Economies: Evidence from Natural and Artefactual Field Experiments in a Developing Country"

Author: Sawada, Yasuyuki, Ryuji Kasahara, Keitaro Aoyagi, Masahiro Shoji and Mika Ueyama

Journal: Asian Development Review, Vol. 30, No.1

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "Disability and Returns to Education in a Developing Country"

Author: Kamal, Lamichhane and Yasuyuki Sawada

Journal: Economics of Education Review, Vol. 37(C)

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "Explaining Japan's Unproductive Two Decades"

Author: Fukao, Kyoji

Journal: Asian Economic Policy Review, Vol. 8, No.2

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "Compilation of the Regional-Level Japan Industrial Productivity Database (R-JIP) and Analyses of Productivity Differences across Prefectures" (in Japanese)

Author: Joji Tokui, Tatsuji Makino, Kyoji fukao, Tsutomu Miyagawa, Nobuyuki Arai, Sonoe Arai, Tomohiko Inui, Kazuyasu Kawasaki, Naomi Kodama, and Naohiro Noguchi 

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.64, No.3

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "How did the Cross-Prefectural Difference of Human Capital Change in Japan?" (in Japanese)

Author: Joji Tokui, Tatsuji Makino, Naomi Kodama, and Kyoji fukao

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.64, No.3

Released Year: 2013

 

Title: "How Does Credit Access Affect Children's Time Allocation? Evidence from Rural India"

Author: Fuwa, Nobuhiko, Seiro Ito, Kensuke Kubo, Takashi Kurosaki, and Yasuyuki Sawada

Journal: Journal of Globalization and Development, Vol.3, No.1, Online version

Released Year: 2012

 

Title: "How Should We Collect Data to Analyze Microeconomic Consequences of Natural Disasters in Developing Countries? A Literature Survey and the Case of Pakistan" (in Japanese)

Author: Takashi Kurosaki

Journal: Asian Economies, Vol.53, No.4

Released Year: 2012

 

Title: "Vulnerability of Microfinance to Strategic Default and Covariate Shocks: Evidence from Pakistan"

Author: Kurosaki, Takashi and Hidayat Ullah Khan

Journal: Developing Economies, Vol.50, No.2

Released Year: 2012

 

Title: "Labor Pooling as a Source of Industrial Agglomeration —The Case of the Japanese Manufacturing Industries—" (in Japanese)

Author: Kentaro Nakajima and Tetsuji Okazaki

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.63, No.3

Released Year: 2012

 

Title: "Interbank Networks in Prewar Japan: Structure and Implications"

Author: Okazaki, Tetsuji and Michiru Sawada

Journal: Industrial & Corporate Change, Vol.21, No.2

Released Year: 2012

 

Title: "Who Purchases Weather Index Insurance?:Results from a Field Experiment in Rural Zambia" (in Japanese)

Author: Ken Miura and Takeshi Sakurai

Journal: Nougyo Keizai Kenkyuu Bessatsu (Japanese Journal of Rural Economics)

Released Year: 2012

 

Title: "Child Adoption in the United States, 1950-2010: A Historical Analysis"

Author: Moriguchi, Chiaki

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.63, No.3

Released Year: 2012

 

Title: "Participatory Rural Development in 1930s Japan: The Economic Rehabilitation Movement"

Author: Arimoto, Yutaka

Journal: Developing Economies, Vol.50, No.2

Released Year: 2012

 

Title: "Transformation of the Rural Economy in the Philippines,1988-2006"

Author: Ramos, Charity Gay, Jonna Estudillo, Yasuyuki Sawada, and Keijiro Otsuka,

Journal: Journal of Development Studies, Vol.48, No.11

Released Year: 2012

 

Title: "The MDGs and Exit Time: The Case of the Philippines"

Author: Sawada, Yasuyuki and Jonna P. Estudillo

Journal: Applied Economics, Vol.44, No.26

Released Year: 2012

 

Title: "Vulnerability of Households to Village-level Aggregate Shocks —Evidence from Natural Disasters in Pakistan—" (in Japanese)

Author: Takashi Kurosaki  

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.62, No.2  

Released Year: 2011  

 

Title: "Floods, Relief Aid, and Household Resilience in Rural Pakistan: Findings from a Pilot Survey in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa"

Author: Kurosaki, Takashi and Humayun Khan

Journal: The Review of Agrarian Studies, Vol.1, No.2

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "Supplier Networks and Aircraft Production in Wartime Japan"

Author: Tetsuji Okazaki

Journal: Economic History Review, Vol.64, No.3

Released Year: 2011

  

Title: "Distributing Disaster Aid within the Village —Kinship, Mutual help, and Hierarchy—" (in Japanese)

Author: Yoshito Takasaki

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.62, No.2

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "Vulnerability and Resilience of Households —The Case of Zambia—" (in Japanese)

Author: Takeshi Sakurai, Akiko Nasuda, Akinori Kitsuki, Ken Miura, Hiromitsu Kanno and Taro Yamauchi

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.62, No.2

Released Year: 2011

  

Title: "Measuring Resilience of Household Consumption: The Case of the Southern Province of Zambia"

Author: Sakurai, Takeshi, Akiko Nasuda, Akinori Kitsuki, Ken Miura, Taro Yamauchi, and H. Kanno

Journal: Nougyo Keizai Kenkyuu Bessatsu (Japanese Journal of Rural Economics), 2011 

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "Analysis of Impact of Heavy Rainfall Shocks on Time Allocation in Rural Zambia" (in Japanese)

Author: Akiko Nasuda, Hiromitsu Kanno and Takeshi Sakurai

Journal: Nihon Nogyo Keizai Gakkai Ronbunshuu (The Special Issue of the Journal of Rural Economics Back issues), 2011 

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "Seasonal Change of Consumption and Its Composition in Rural Zambia" (in Japanese)

Author: Kitsuki Akinori and Takeshi Sakurai

Journal: Nihon Nogyo Keizai Gakkai Ronbunshuu (The Special Issue of the Journal of Rural Economics Back issues), 2011 

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "Shock and Livestock Transactions in Rural Zambia: A Re-examination of the Buffer Stock Hypothesis"

Author: Miura, Ken, Hiromitsu Kanno, and Takeshi Sakurai

Journal: Japanese Journal of Rural Economics, Vol.14

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "Marriage Promotion Policies and Regional Differences in Marriage"

Author: Kitamura, Yukinobu and Takeshi Miyazaki

Journal: The Japanese Economy, Vol.38, No.2

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "The Effect of Academic Background on Household Portfolio Selection: Evidence from Japanese Repeated Cross Section Data" (in Japanese)

Author: Yukinobu Kitamura and Taisuke Uchino

Journal: Kinyu Keizai Kenkyuu (Review of Monetary and Financial Studies), Vol.33

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "Is Credit Access Effective against Damages Caused by a Natural Disaster?--The Case of Tsunami Victims in Southern India-- " (in Japanese)

Author: Yasuyuki Sawada, Tadahiro Shoji and Sarath Sanga

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.62, No.2

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "The Stem Family and Labour Markets: Reflections on Households and Firms in Japan's Economic Development"

Author: Osamu Saito

Journal: The History of the Family, Vol.16

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "An Investigation of Price Level Dynamics at Household Level Based on Homescan Data" (in Japanese)

Author: Naohito Abe and Tadasuke Shioya

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.62, No.4

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "Dynamics of Growth, Poverty, and Inequality: A Panel Analysis of Regional Data from Thailand and the Philippines"

Author: Kurita, Kyosuke and Takashi Kurosaki

Journal: Asian Economic Journal, Vol. 25, No.1

Released Year: 2011

 

Title: "Targeting the Vulnerable and the Choice of Vulnerability Measures: Review and Application to Pakistan"

Author: Takashi Kurosaki

Journal: Pakistan Development Review, Vol.49, No.2

Released Year: 2010

 

Title: "Migration, Network, and Urban Poverty: A Case of Cycle Rickshaw Pullers in Delhi, India" (in Japanese)

Author: Takashi Kurosaki

Journal: International Journal of South Asian Studies, No.22

Released Year: 2010

 

Title: "Long-term Agricultural Growth in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh" (in Japanese)

Author: Takashi Kurosaki

Journal: Keizai Kenkyuu (The Economic Review), Vol.61, No.2

Released Year: 2010

 

Title: "Agrarian Land Tenancy in Prewar Japan: Contract Choice and Implications on Productivity"

Author: Yutaka Arimoto, Tetsuji Okazaki and Masaki Nakabayashi

Journal: Developing Economies, Vol.48, No.3

Released Year: 2010

No. 11

Takashi Kurosaki

"Wages in Kind and Economic Development: Historical and Contemporary Evidence from Asia."

Abstract: This paper investigates the function of various modes of wage payment, focusing on the role of in-kind wages in enhancing household food security when markets are underdeveloped. Historical records from Asian countries, including pre-war Japan and colonial India, demonstrate the importance of in-kind wage payment in the initial phase of economic development. However, there is a paucity of theoretical explanations of in-kind wages in terms of their function and rationale in existing literature. This paper therefore develops a theoretical model that explains labor supply under different labor contracts, by incorporating considerations of food security as the main explanation for in-kind wages. The model predicts that when food security considerations are important for workers, owing to poverty and thin food markets, they tend to work more under contracts where wages are paid in kind (food) than under contracts where wages are paid in cash. This prediction is supported by empirical evidence from rural Myanmar. Estimation results of the reduced-form determinants of labor supply show that workers supply more labor for work paid in kind when the share of staple food in the workers’ household budget is higher and the farmlands on which they produce food themselves are smaller.

March 2011 [Download:PDF 390kB]

 

No. 10

Takashi Kurosaki and Hidayat Ullah Khan

"Vulnerability of Microfinance to Strategic Default and Covariate Shocks:Evidence from Pakistan."

Abstract:This paper investigates the repayment behavior of microfinance borrowers in Pakistan using a unique dataset of about 45,000 installments/repayments covering 2,945 microfinance borrower households over the period 1998?2007. In early 2005, the microfinance institution for these borrowers adopted a new system with strict enforcement of punishment against repayment delays/defaults. This reform led to a healthy situation with almost zero default rates, overcoming the previous problem of frequent defaults. We hypothesize that strategic default under the joint liability mechanism?if one group member is hit by a negative shock and faces difficulty in repayment, the other members who are able to repay may decide to default as well, instead of helping the unlucky member?was encouraged by weak enforcement of dynamic incentives and responsible for the pre-reform failure. As evidence for this interpretation, we show that a borrower’s delay in installment repayment was correlated with other group members’ repayment delays, beyond the level explained by possible correlation of project failures due to locally covariate shocks during the pre-reform period. The post-reform period is divided into two sub-periods by an earthquake in October 2005. Analysis of repayment behavior in the post-reform period yields the results that suggest that (1) the relative success under the new system was because of the suppression of strategic behavior among group members, thereby allowing joint liability schemes to function as individual lending schemes de facto and (2) the earthquake only marginally affected the new system in terms of repayment delays.

March 2011 [Download:PDF 1.03mB]

 

No. 9

Yoshihisa Godo

"Estimation of Average Years of Schooling for Japan, Korea and the United States."

Abstract: This paper presents a new dataset of education stock for Japan, Korea and the US.  This dataset has three major advantages over exiting ones such as Barro and Lee (2000), Kim and Lau (1995) and Nehru, Swanson and Dubey (1995).  First, this paper's dataset covers nearly one hundred years while all the existing dataset do several decades in the postwar period.  Second, this paper provides more detailed information such as average years of schooling by gender, age and levels of education.  Third, more accuracy is guaranteed by exhaustive study on original dataset and careful treatments.The author hopes that future researchers use this paper's dataset as a 'public good' to analyze the macroeconomic role of education.

February 2011 [Download:PDF 589kB]

 

No. 8

Takashi Kurosaki

"Vulnerability of Household Consumption to Village-level Aggregate Shocks in a Developing Country."

Abstract: Village-level aggregate shocks such as droughts and floods cannot be perfectly insured by risk sharing within a village. Then, what type of households are more vulnerable in terms of a decline in consumption when a village is hit by such natural disasters? This question is investigated in this study by using two-period panel data for the years 2001 and 2004 from rural Pakistan. We propose a methodology to infer the theoretical mechanisms underlying the heterogeneity of households in terms of their vulnerability, and focus on the difference between the across-household-type difference in marginal response to aggregate shocks and that in marginal response to idiosyncratic shocks. The empirical results obtained indicate that the sensitivity of consumption changes to shocks differs across household types, depending on the type of natural disasters. Moreover, land and credit access are effective in mitigating the ill-effects of various types of shocks. Household heads who are educated or elderly and households with a greater number of working members bear a larger burden of the village-level shocks; however, they are not vulnerable to idiosyncratic health shocks. It is revealed that these patterns may be explained by the coexistence of unequal access to credit markets and risk sharing among heterogeneous households in terms of risk tolerance.

February 2011 [Download:PDF 338kB]

 

No. 7

Yutaka Arimoto, Kentaro Nakajima and Tetsuji Okazaki

"Thoroughly revisied as Agglomeration or Selection? The Case of the Japanese Silk-Reeling Clusters, 1908-1915."

February 2011 [Download:PDF 768kB]

 

No. 6

Takashi Kurosaki

"Compilation of Agricultural Production Data in Areas Currently in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh from 1901/02 to 2011/02."

Abstract:This paper presents estimates for agricultural production data in areas currently in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh from 1901/02 to 2001/02. A salient feature of these estimates is that they correspond to current international borders. The British Empire of India, which was broken up in 1947 (in the so-called “Partition” of the Indian subcontinent), covered areas of what are now India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Although a rich accumulation of statistical documents is available from the colonial period, there has been no rigorous attempt to compile statistics corresponding to the current borders during a period that includes years prior to 1947. This is because the Partition broke up the Empire of India not only at the provincial level (for which data are readily available) but also at the district or lower levels of administration. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap, focusing on production in crop farming in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Since neither the states of Pakistan and Bangladesh nor the concept of such nations existed during the early decades of the twentieth century, this exercise is hypothetical to some extent. Nevertheless, because farming activities are carried out on the soil of a region irrespective of its political designation, the estimates presented in this paper could shed new light on agricultural development in the three countries over the long term.

February 2011 [Download:PDF 1.06mB]

 

No. 5

Tetsuji Okazaki

"Political Economy of Trade Liberalization: The Case of Postwar Japan." (in Japanese)

Abstract: This paper investigates the sequence of trade liberalization in postwar Japan and its determinants. As the Japanese government utilized the foreign exchange allocation system as a tool for the industrial policy, especially for protecting domestic industries, in the 1950s, trade liberalization was considered to give a serious impact on those industries, and designing the sequence of trade liberalization was an important policy issue. We indentified the timing of liberalization of each commodity using original official documents, and examined what factors affected on the timing. It was found that in designing the sequence of trade liberalization, the government took into account of competitiveness of domestic industries and survivability of small and medium-sized firms.

January 2011 [Download:PDF 305kB]

 

No. 4

Masaki Nakabayashi and Tetsuji Okazaki

"The Role of the Courts in Economic Development: The Case of Prewar Japan."

Abstract: In this paper, we explore the role of the legal system in economic development, focusing on its relationship to the role of private mechanisms in contract enforcement. We use long-term prefecture-level panel data that cover the early stages of industrialization and urbanization in Japan. We found that industrialization increased the demand for civil lawsuits, but that this was conditional on urbanization. In other words, increased demand for civil suits occurred only where industrialization and urbanization simultaneously progressed. At the same time, the inefficiency of the legal system impeded industrial growth, but only conditional on urbanization. That is, the inefficiency of the legal system impeded industrialization only in urban areas. These findings suggest that community-based contract enforcement mechanisms worked in rural areas and that these mechanisms were replaced by the formal legal system as urbanization progressed and community ties declined.

January 2011 [Download:PDF 158kB]

 

No. 3

Yoshito Takasaki

"Distributing disaster aid within the village: kinship, mutual help, and hierarchy."(in Japanese)

Abstract: Distributing natural disaster aid within villages in developing countries strongly relies on village institution and governance. This paper examines mutual help and social hierarchy as self-distribution mechanisms. Using original household survey data gathered in rural Fiji, the paper compares relief/early recovery phases (food aid) and recovery/reconstruction phase (housing construction materials). When aid is distributed as part of informal risk sharing, of central importance is not targeting performance - how well it is targeted toward victims - but coping capacity determined by both aid and private transfers. Kinship-based risk sharing and hierarchy interact with each other in distributing disaster aid, giving rise to elite domination.

Januray 2011 [Download:PDF 449kB]

 

No. 2

Tue Gorgens, Xin Meng and Rhema Vaithianathan

"Stunting and Selection Effects of Famine: A Case Study of the Great Chinese Famine."

Abstract: Many developing countries experience famine. If survival is related to height, the increasingly common practice of using height as a measure of well-being may be misleading. We devise a novel method for disentangling the stunting from the selection effects of famine. Using data from the 1959–1961 Great Chinese Famine, we find that taller children were more likely to survive the famine. Controlling for selection, we estimate that children under the age of five who survived the famine grew up to be 1 to 2 cm shorter. Our results suggest that average height is potentially a biased measure of economic conditions during childhood.

October 2010 [Download:PDF 311kB]

 

No. 1

Takashi Kurosaki

"Targeting the Vulnerable and the Choice of Vulnerability Measures: Review and Application to Pakistan."

Abstract: In this paper, the concept of vulnerability of the poor’s welfare and its practical measures are scrutinized in order to derive implications for targeting poverty reduction policies toward vulnerable households. As illustration, various measures of vulnerability proposed in the literature are applied to a panel dataset collected in rural Pakistan. The empirical results show that different vulnerability rankings can be obtained depending on the choice of the measure. By utilizing these measures, we can identify who and which region is more vulnerable to a particular type of risk. This kind of information is useful in targeting poverty reduction policies. Since the nature of vulnerability is diverse, it is advisable to use the whole vector of various vulnerability measures.

October 2010 [Download:PDF 275kB]

No. 26

Fumiharu Mieno and Hisako Kai

"Do Subsidies Enhance or Erode the Cost Efficiency of Microfinance?Evidence from MFI Worldwide Micro Data?"

Abstract:A recent issue in the microfinance literature is whether microfinance institutions (MFIs) are financially sustainable without a subsidy as a prerequisite for competition policy or commercialization processes.  Although some recent studies have proposed relevant theoretical frameworks, empirical analyses are scarce. Using financial data for MFIs across a panel of 1791 observations for 2003?2006, we estimate a cost function for the MFIs and a measure of inefficiency using the stochastic frontier cost approach, and then examine the effects of subsidies, operating age and other possible factors as determinants of efficiency. We find that subsidies are generally not an impediment to cost efficiency; instead, they are generally utilized to improve cost efficiency.  We also find that the effect of a subsidy on efficiency is larger for younger MFIs, suggesting that subsidies for these institutions are effectively utilized for intensifying initial technology investment or hu  man resource development. The findings are consistent with the arguments that stress the importance of subsidies for the initial stage of development of MFIs, and partially contradictory to the claims that the subsidies generally erode MFIs’ financial sustainability.

March 2012 [Download:PDF 175kB]

 

No. 25

Yoshito Takasaki

"How is disaster aid allocated within poor villages?"

Abstract: How disaster aid is allocated within poor villages is little understood. This paper examines risk-sharing institutions and social hierarchies as village self-allocation mechanisms. Original survey data from Fiji contain rich information about cyclone damage, traditional kin status, and aid allocations over post-disaster phases, at both household and kin-group levels. The paper shows under what conditions the performance of targeting aid to victims can significantly differ from overall risk-sharing outcomes determined by private transfers and aid (i.e., targeting gap). Elite domination in aid allocation can occur not only for given damage, but also in targeting on damage (i.e., targeting bias).

March 2012 [Download:PDF 244kB]

 

No. 24

Takashi Kurosaki

"Urban Transportation Infrastructure and Poverty Reduction: Delhi Metro's Impact on the Cycle Rickshaw Rental Market."

Abstract: Based on a primary survey of cycle rickshaw pullers and rickshaw owners in Delhi, India, this paper estimates the causal impact of the opening and extension of Delhi Metro on the rental rates of cycle rickshaws. The cycle rickshaw rental market provides employment opportunities for unskilled, assetless workers who have migrated from rural areas because of poverty. A change in this market is thus expected to affect urban and rural poverty. Controlling for unobservable area characteristics using house tax information, we identify the causal impact depending on when Metro stations opened over the past decade. The regression results indicate that of the 1.6 percentage point increase in rental rates per km associated with a reduction in distance to a Metro station, approximately 1.0 point is attributable to the causal effect. Thus, Delhi Metro has increased the demand for cycle rickshaw services, which is a pro-poor consequence of the infrastructural investment.

March 2012 [Download:PDF 229kB]

 

No. 23

Motoi Kusadokoro, Takeshi Maru, and Masanori Takashima

"Asset Accumulation Behavior of Rural Households in the Reconstruction Period following the Showa Depression: A Panel Data Analysis Using the Third Period MAF Survey of Farm Household Economy."(in Japanese)

Abstract: This paper analyzes asset accumulation behavior of rural households using panel data extracted from the survey of farm household economy from 1931 to 1941 conducted by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. The years we are concerned fall under the reconstruction period following the Showa Depression. During this period, farm households were confronted with the problem how they should allocate their farm surplus to each asset. The result shows that the operational land holding size was converging to the size around 2 Cho (approximately 19,835m2), as the previous literature indicated. Households mainly adjusted their operational farm size in response to changes in the household structure; however the land ownership structure did not affect the operational size. Households placed a greater emphasis on the accumulation of relatively high-liquid assets such as cash, quasi-money, animals, and in-kind stocks. In other words, they did not actively invest in fixed assets.

  Their choice indicates the existence of precautionary saving motive.

March 2012 [Download:PDF 1.75mB]

 

No. 22

Tetsuji Okazaki

"What Did Corporate Executives, Outside Directors and Large Shareholders Really Do ?: Corporate Governance of Tokyo Marine and Taisho Marine in Mitsubishi and Mitsui Zaibatsu."(in Japanese)

Abstract: This paper addresses a fundamental question on corporate governance, “What did corporate executives, outside directors and large shareholders really do ?” Although this question is essential, it has not been fully addressed in the literature, basically due to the constraint of relevant materials. This paper overcomes this problem by using a detailed diary written by Hachisaburo Hirao, who worked for many large companies, including Tokyo Marine and Fire Insurance Co. and Taisho Marine and Fire Insurance Co. in prewar Japan. In this diary he described in detail how corporate executives, outside directors and large shareholders thought and acted. Based on this diary and other related materials, it is revealed that in Tokyo Marine and Fire Insurance Co. and Taisho Marine and Fire Insurance Co., planning and implementation of managerial policies were basically entrusted to their corporate executives. This means that there existed agency relationships between shareholders and corporate executives. Meanwhile, the agency problem was resolved through a voice mechanism from outside directors representing large shareholders and large shareholders themselves to corporate executives. Outside directors and large shareholders indeed gave advice, pressure and ratification on managerial policies. These findings imply that these companies were governed by a typical Anglo-Saxon mode of corporate governance.

October 2011 [Download:PDF 430kB]

 

No. 21

Tetsuji Okazaki and Michiru Sawada

"Interbank Networks in Prewar Japan: Structure and Implications."

Abstract: In this paper, we explore the structure and implications of interbank networks in prewar Japan, focusing on director interlocking. We find that approximately half the banks had at least one connection with another bank through director interlocking, and that a bank that had connections with other banks was less likely to fail than a bank without a network. The quality of networks also matters in the sense that the failure probability of a bank with a network was negatively associated with the profitability of the connected banks. On the other hand, there is no strong evidence of financial contagion through networks. In addition, networks of director interlocking contributed to the stabilization of the financial system through coordinating bank mergers.

July 2011 [Download:PDF 344kB]

 

No. 20

Yoshihisa Godo

"A New Database on Education Stock in Taiwan."

Abstract: This paper provides long-term detailed estimates for Taiwan’s education stock. The average number of years of schooling per person by gender, age group, and level and type of education are estimated for 1888–1940 and 1947–2000.  This is the first extension of Godo’s (2011) dataset, which contains nearly 100-year annual estimates on education stock for Japan, Korea, and the US. The definition and methodology in this paper follow those of Godo (2011).

February 2012 [Download:PDF 229kB]

 

No. 19

Takashi Kurosaki and Kazuya Wada

"Spatial Patterns of Long-term Changes in South Asian Agriculture. (in Japanese)"

Abstract: In this paper, we describe spatial patterns of long-term changes in South Asian agriculture. We investigate the spatial configurations at the macro (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) and semi-macro (Indian districts) level. Variables of concern include the land use intensity, the ratio of rice and wheat in areas under foodgrains, the ratio of non-foodgrains in gross cultivated area, the fertilizer use intensity, and individual crop shares in gross cultivated areas. We also propose a new regional classification of Indian districts based on their similarity in the initial cropping and land-use patterns, rainfall, and the initial condition and changes in irrigation. The proposed classification better explains the spatial patterns of long-term changes at the district level than existing classifications.

Januray 2012 [Download:PDF 9.32mB]

 

No. 18

Yasuyuki Sawada, Yuki Higuchi, Kei Kajisa, Nobuhiko Fuwa, Esther B. Marciano, and Jonna P. Estudillo

"The East Laguna Village: Four Decades of Studies in a Filipino Village."

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of a rich set of studies spanning the past four decades and focusing on a village in the Philippines, where recurrent surveys have been conducted by Yujiro Hayami, Masao Kikuchi, and their associates and successors. It describes the kind of information collected through successive surveys and summarizes what has been learned from those surveys. It is found that the village surveys contributed to the understanding of the dynamics of the agrarian economy and village community mechanisms. Remaining research issues to be further explored for the village economy include remittance, financial transactions among villagers, and risk-coping strategies.

Januray 2012 [Download:PDF 350kB]

 

No. 17

Yuko Mori and Takashi Kurosaki

"Does Political Reservation Affect Voting Behavior? Empirical Evidence from India."

Abstract: Using microdata from the National Election Study of the 2004 parliamentary elections in India, we empirically examine the impact of political reservation for disadvantaged castes and tribes on voting behavior. We find that in a reserved constituency, where only members of the disadvantaged castes can stand for election, voters of the disadvantaged castes are encouraged to vote. On the other hand, the system of constituency reservation does not have any impact on the turnout of voters belonging to other groups, including relatively upper caste voters. These voters, however, tend to change political party to vote for in reserved constituencies. These findings imply that there is a general acceptance of political reservation in the Indian electoral system.

September 2011 [Download:PDF 205kB]

 

No. 16

Yutaka Arimoto, Kentaro Nakajima, and Tetsuji Okazaki

"Productivity Improvement in the Specialized Industrial Clusters: The Case of the Japanese Silk-Reeling Industry."

Abstract: We examine two sources of productivity improvement in the specialized industrial clusters. Agglomeration improves the productivity of each plant through positive externalities, shifting plant-level productivity distribution to the right. Selection expels less productive plants through competition, truncating distribution on the left. By analyzing the data of the early twentieth century Japanese silk-reeling industry, we find no evidence confirming a right shift in the distribution in clusters or that agglomeration promotes faster productivity growth. These findings imply that the plant-selection effect was the source of higher productivity in the Japanese silk-reeling clusters.

December 2011 [Download:PDF 768kB]

 

No. 15

Ken Miura, Hiromitsu Kanno, and Takeshi Sakurai

"Livestock Transactions as Coping Strategies in Zambia:New Evidence from High-Frequency Panel Data."

Abstract: This study re-examines the buffer stock hypothesis regarding livestock by taking into account differences in wealth level, asset types, and periods after a shock. This paper takes advantage of a unique panel data set of agricultural households in Southern Province, Zambia. The data were collected by weekly interviews of 48 sample households from November 2007 to December 2009, covering two crop years in which an unusually heavy rainfall event took place. If we consider delayed responses to the heavy rain shock, our econometric analyses support the buffer stock hypothesis for cattle as well as small livestock. Overall, this paper suggests that conventional annual data sets used by existing literature may miss the period-dependent transactions of assets after a shock.

December 2011 [Download:PDF 604kB]

 

No. 14

Yutaka Arimoto

"Participatory Rural Development in 1930s Japan: The Economic Rehabilitation Movement."

Abstract: This paper studies an early participatory rural development program implemented during the 1930s in Japan. This program selected several villages each year to draft and implement their own original development plans. I discuss the implications of the features of the program on its effectiveness. A detailed baseline survey conducted by the villagers themselves helped them to objectively diagnose their economic situations and understand their issues. The plans defined clear numerical targets, allowing them to share goals and monitor progress. The implementation of the plan was reinforced by frequent communication and monitoring among neighbors and by an incentive scheme that involved competition within a village. I use a village-level panel dataset from the Hyogo prefecture to examine the effects, under the difference-in-differences strategy. I find suggestive evidence that the program helped foster the adoption of cattle raising and diversify agricultural production.

September 2011 [Download:PDF 248kB]

 

No. 13

Hidayat Ullah Khan, Takashi Kurosaki, and Ken Miura

"The Effectiveness of Community-Based Development in Poverty Reduction: A Descriptive Analysis of a Women-Managed NGO in Rural Pakistan."

Abstract: To assess the targeting performance of community-based development activities and deduce the impact of such activities on poverty reduction, we implemented a survey of a non-governmental organization (NGO) in northwestern Pakistan. A distinct characteristic of this NGO is that it is managed mostly by women and its interventions are conducted through community-based organizations (COs), most of whose members are also female. This characteristic is rather unusual for a male-dominated society like Pakistan. Descriptive analyses of village, CO, and household level data shows that the NGO was able to target poorer villages. Villages with COs are characterized by lower adult literacy rates, lower availability of basic amenities, and higher susceptibility to natural disasters. With regard to household-level welfare indicators—such as consumption, women’s empowerment, children’s school enrolment, and the weight-for-age of infants—we found that the consumption levels of CO member households tended to be lower than that of households in non-CO villages. However, the difference between CO member households and non-member households in CO villages was insignificant, possibly owing to the mixing of the selection effect (i.e., poorer households are served by the NGO) and the causal effect of interventions on poverty reduction. On women’s empowerment and child schooling, CO member households tend to perform better than other households, suggesting the favorable impact of the interventions and/or the self-selection of such households vis-à-vis program participation.

September 2011 [Download:PDF 517kB]

 

No. 12

Takashi Kurosaki, Humayun Khan, Mir Kalan Shah, and Muhammad Tahir

"Natural Disasters, Relief Aid, and Household Vulnerability in Pakistan: Evidence from a Pilot Survey in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa."

Abstract: Based on a pilot survey, we analyze the damages caused by floods in Pakistan, 2010, the distribution of aid, and the extent of recovery at the household level. With regard to the nature of damages, we show that flood damages had both between-village and within-village variation, and damages to houses, land (crops), livestock, and other business assets were not highly correlated. In the distribution of aid from outside, we again find substantial between-village and within-village variation − the aid distribution across villages appeared well-targeted toward the severely affected villages, while aid within villages was targeted toward households with larger house damages, but not toward households with larger damages to land, crop, or other assets. The positive aid response to house damages and the negative aid response to the initial wealth level were found but the marginal response of aid to these characteristics was not large. With regard to the recovery from flood damages, we find that aid recipients did not show higher or lower recovery than non-recipients, especially for house damages, which could be due to mixing of a recovery-promoting effect of aid and a selection effect of aid toward households that have more difficulty in recovery. We also show that households who had initially fewer assets and hit by larger flood damages had more difficulty in recovery.

August 2011 [Download:PDF 366kB]

 

No. 42

Robert Cull, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt and Jonathan Morduch

"Banks and Microbanks."

Abstract: We combine two datasets to examine whether the scale of an economy’s banking system affects the profitability and outreach of microfinance institutions. We find evidence that competition matters. Greater bank penetration in the overall economy is associated with microbanks pushing toward poorer markets, as reflected in smaller average loans sizes and greater outreach to women. The evidence is particularly strong for microbanks that rely on commercial-funding, use traditional bilateral lending contracts (rather than group lending methods favored by microfinance NGOs), and take deposits. We consider plausible alternative explanations for the correlations, including relationships that run through the nature of the regulatory environment and the structure of the banking environment, but we fail to find strong support for these alternative hypotheses.

February 2013 [Download:PDF 766kB]

 

No. 40

Ryo Kambayashi

"The Role of Public Employment Services in a Developing Country: The Case of Japan in the Twentieth Century."

Abstract: Like all developed and developing economies, Japan struggled with labor market issues in the process of industrialization. The Public Employment Service (PES) was probably the only countermeasure of the Japanese government before 1938, since other labor market policies such as minimum labor standard, unemployment insurance, and unionization were highly restricted by the political climate. In this article, we discuss the importance of the institutional arrangements of the PES by examining the developing stage of the Japanese labor market. In Japan, the PES was first institutionalized officially by the Employment Exchange Act in 1921. In the wake of the Kanto earthquake disaster in 1923, the PES played a substantial role in the recovery process, which implies the capacity of the PES to reduce unemployment even in a developing economy. However, under normal economic circumstances during the 1910s and 1920s, the institutional arrangement of the PES—namely, the financial backbone of the government and the nationwide network—was not effective as shown by anecdotes and ad hoc surveys. The statistical analysis of the matching function clearly shows that the PES, at least during the 1920s, had a fundamental problem—lacking long-term relations with other economic agents. Finally, improvements were made in the PES during the 1930s to cope with the economic crisis from the Great Depression. Such improvements were realized by incorporating already-existing networks of organizations that spontaneously emerged at the grassroots level. By 1938, when the Employment Exchange Act was revised to abolish private agencies, some PES centers had already absorbed nearby private networks and the matching technique of the PES was almost the same as that of private agencies. An ad hoc physical and financial investment by the government may not lead to the provision of efficient public services, and it is important to recognize that labor market policies are based on a long-term relationship among the PES, job seekers, and employers.

March 2013 [Download:PDF 453kB]

 

No. 39

Takashi Kurosaki

"Dynamics of Household Assets and Income Shocks in the Long-run Process of Economic Development: The Case of Rural Pakistan."

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze the dynamics of assets held by low-income households facing various types of income shocks in pre- and post-independence Pakistan. Focusing on the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province, NWFP), we first investigate the long-run data at the district level beginning from 1902. The results show that the population of livestock, the major asset of rural households, experienced a persistent decline after crop shocks due to droughts, but did not respond much to the Great Depression. In the post-independence period, crop agriculture continued to be vulnerable to natural disasters, although less substantially, while the response of livestock to such shocks was indiscernible from district-level data. To examine microeconomic mechanisms underlying such asset dynamics, we analyze a panel dataset collected from approximately 300 households in three villages in the NWFP during the late 1990s. The results show that the dynamics of household landholding and livestock is ssociated with a single long-run equilibrium. When human capital is included, the dynamics curve changes its shape but is not sufficiently nonlinear to produce statistically significant multiple equilibriums. The size of livestock holding was reduced in all villages hit by macroeconomic stagnation, while land depletion was reported only in a village with inferior access to markets. The patterns of asset dynamics ascertained from historical and contemporary analyses are consistent with limited but improving access to consumption smoothing measures in the study region over the century.

March 2013 (revised in April 2013) [Download:PDF1.29mB]

 

No. 38

Yutaka Arimoto, Takeshi Sakurai, Mari Tanaka, and Ralandison Tsilavo

"Rice Trading in Madagascar: Report on Rice Trader Survey 2011."

 

March 2013 [Download:PDF1.18mB]

 

No. 37

Takashi Kurosaki, and Hidayat Ullah Khan

"Household Vulnerability to Wild Animal Attacks in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Rural Pakistan."

Abstract: Based on a three-year panel dataset of households collected in rural Pakistan, we first quantify the extent to which farmers are vulnerable to attacks by wild boars; we then examine the impact of an intervention on households’ capacity to reduce related income losses. A local nongovernmental organization implemented the intervention as a randomized controlled trial at the beginning of the second survey year.This experimental design enabled us to cleanly identify the impact of the intervention. We find that the intervention was highly effective in eliminating the crop-income loss of treated households in the second year, but that effects were not discernible in the third year. The finding from the third year could be due to the high implicit cost incurred by the households in implementing the treatment. Regarding the impact of the intervention on a number of consumption measures, the difference-in-difference estimate for the impact on consumption was insignificant in the second year, but highly positive in the third year when estimated without other controls. A part of this consumption increase was because of changes in remittance inflows. The overall results indicate the possibility that treatment in the absence of subsidies was costly for households due to hidden costs, and hence, the income gain owing to the initial treatment was transient.

March 2013 [Download:PDF 503kB]

 

No. 36

Kazuya Wada

"Changes in Employment Structures and Investments in Children’s Education: Evidence from Rural India."

Abstract: This study investigates the effects of changes in non-agricultural sectors in India on investments in children's education. By using data from the Census of India (1981, 1991, and 2001) and the India Human Development Survey 2005 (IHDS), this study seeks to capture changes in Indian economic situation for the two decades between 1981 and 2001 and examine the effects of those changes on children's educational attainments in 2005. The results of empirical analysis suggest that changes in the first and second decades have different characteristics in terms of expansion among the non-agricultural sectors. In addition, estimation results imply that the expansion of non-agricultural sectors in the 1990s have had positive effects on investments in girls' education, leading to the alleviation of gender disparity in education. However, it should be noted that such expansion may aggravate income inequality in the future because it adversely affects children from poor households.

March 2013 [Download:PDF 676kB]

 

No. 35

Tuan-Hwee Sng and Chiaki Moriguchi

"Taxation and Public Goods Provision in China and Japan before 1850."

February 2013

(This paper has been thoroughly revised as DP No. 58, "Asia's LittleDivergence: State Capacity in China and Japan before 1850"  [Download:PDF 1.08mB])

 

No. 34

Ayako Matsuda, Takashi Kurosaki, and Yasuyuki Sawada

"Rainfall and Temperature Index Insurance in India: Project Documentation."

Abstract: As an empirical research on weather index insurance in developing countries, we conducted surveys on rainfall and temperature index insurance products in Madhya Pradesh, India. The rainfall insurance covers drought and excess rain during the monsoon season, while the temperature insurance covers against excess heat during the dry season. This paper documents the details of surveys implemented under this project and describes the key variables collected from them.

February 2013 [Download:PDF 785kB]

 

No. 33

Hangtian Xu and Kentaro Nakajima

"Highways and Development in the Peripheral Regions of China."

Abstract: This paper estimates the effects of highways (Gaosu Gonglu) on economic devel- opment in China’s county-level cities from 1998 to 2007, a period in which China experienced sharp growth in highway mileage, using a micro level data set on industry and highway place- ment and the double difference propensity score matching method. After extracting the core regions, empirical estimates indicate that highway placement promotes industrial development in related cities with higher output and more investments, and these results are robust to two different checks. However, county-level cities more than 300 km away from large cities do not benefit from new highways. Furthermore, highways tend to promote the development of heavy industry but not that of light industry. Labor productivity exhibits few positive effects.

January 2013 [Download:PDF 1.22mB]

 

No. 32

Jonathan Morduch, Shamika Ravi, and Jonathan Bauchet

"Failure vs. Displacement: Why an Innovative Anti-Poverty Program Showed No Net Impact."

December 2012

 

Revised as "Substitution Bias and External Validity: Why an Innovative Anti-Poverty Program Showed No Net Impact."(PRIMCED DP No.44)

July 2013 [Download:PDF 834kB]

 

No. 31

Yoko Sakai, Jonna P. Estudillo, Nobuhiko Fuwa, Yuki Higuchi, and Yasuyuki Sawada

"Do Natural Disasters Affect the Poor Disproportionately? The Case of Typhoon Milenyo in the Rural Philippines."

Abstract: This paper illustrates the sharp contrast in welfare impacts between the rich and the poor caused by typhoon Milenyo in a Philippine village. Fish price dropped sharply after a large volume of cultured fish was set loose due to the damage caused to fish pens near the village, leading to positive net welfare gains among the wealthy. Among the poor, however, the negative effects of food (other than fish) price increase outweighed the positive benefit of the fish price decrease, and the poor non-agricultural households (who receive their income by cash rather than by rice) were the most severely hit.

November 2012 [Download:PDF 307kB]

 

No. 30

Tetsuji Okazaki

"Productivity Change and Mine Dynamics: The Coal Industry in Japan during World War II."

Abstract: In the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese coal industry experienced huge fluctuations in production and labor productivity. In this paper, I explore the micro-aspects of labor productivity change in the coal industry during World War II, using mine-level data compiled from official statistics and original documents of the Coal Control Association (Sekitan Toseikai). The coal industry in this period was characterized by dynamic changes in market structure: a number of mines entered and exited the industry, and shares of incumbent mines changed substantially. These mine dynamics had substantial productivity implications. In the early stage of the war, many low productivity mines entered the industry, which reduced average labor productivity considerably. The government and the Coal Control Association implemented a policy to concentrate resources and production on efficient mines during the war, which curbed the decline in average labor productivity. Despite the deteriora  ting environment during the war, coal production in Japan was maintained fairly well. One of the factors that made this possible was the policy of resource reallocation.

November 2012 [Download:PDF 271kB]

 

No. 29

Yutaka Arimoto, Takeshi Fujie, and Tetsuji Senda

"Farmers' debt in 1930's Japan."(in Japanese)

October 2012 [Download:PDF 1.39mB]

 

No. 28

Takashi Kurosaki,Asit Banerji, S. N. Mishra, and A. K. Mangal

"Unorganized Enterprises and Rural-Urban Migration in India: The Case of the Cycle Rickshaw Sector in Delhi."

Abstract: In 2010/11, we conducted a survey of cycle rickshaw pullers and rickshaw owners located throughout Delhi, India. We drew a sample of 132 rickshaw owners (called Thekedars) and a representative sample of 1,320 rickshaw pullers. The survey results show that most rickshaw pullers in Delhi are short-term, temporary migrants. Most rickshaw pullers are poorly educated. The majority migrated from villages in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Social networks that extend from places of origin to final destinations facilitate migration. More than 90% of rickshaw pullers operate rental rickshaws owned by Thekedars. Rickshaw pulling involves hard physical labor. On average, a rickshaw puller works 11 hours per day, over 27 days per month. We estimate the average daily earning to be Rs. 260. A typical migrant rickshaw puller may save more than Rs. 2,000 per month. He may send these funds to his village home. This is the migrant rickshaw pullers’ contribution to rural poverty reduction. Thekedars provide the fulcrum upon which the whole cycle rickshaw transportation system of Delhi turns. In addition to the rental of cycle rickshaws to migrant rickshaw pullers, Thekedars manage the administrative and legal aspects of their rickshaw rental business throughout the year. Their occupational history shows that many of them became a Thekedar from low beginnings, including rickshaw pulling and rickshaw repair jobs. On average, a Thekedar owns 56 rickshaws, approximately two-thirds of which are rented on a daily basis. Pullers pay a fixed rental fee per day at an average rate of Rs. 34. Net of business expenditures, monthly rickshaw rental income per Thekedar is estimated at approximately Rs. 5,600 for small and medium Thekedars and Rs. 41,000 for large Thekedars. The internal rate of return on investment over 5-6 years of the working life of a rickshaw is estimated to range between 18% and 62% per year. Currently, the rules and regulations on t  he cycle rickshaw sector in Delhi are based on the principal of the one-rickshaw, one-owner, one-driver, one-license policy. However, this policy does not reflect the real-life situations we encountered in our survey. We recommend that Thekedars be endowed with legal entity status. This would result in the healthy development of urban transport in Delhi.

July 2012 [Download:PDF 452kB]

 

No. 27

Takashi Kurosaki, Humayun Khan, Mir Kalan Shah, and Muhammad Tahir

"Household-level Recovery after Floods in a Developing Country: Further Evidence from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan."

Abstract: Based on a second survey of villages and households one year after a pilot survey, we analyze the household-level recovery process from damage due to floods in Pakistan in 2010. With regard to initial recovery from flood damage, we find that households who had initially fewer assets and were hit by greater flood damage had more difficulty in recovering. After one year, the overall recovery had improved, but there remained substantial variation across households regarding the extent of recovery. Initially rich households were associated with faster recovery than other households at the time of the second survey, but the speed of recovery declined during the most recent year. The overall pattern appears to indicate that the village economy was turning towards the initial regime, where the income distribution was characterized by a large mass of households whose welfare and asset levels were around the income poverty line and a small middle class of households whose asset levels  were sufficiently high to ensure a welfare level above the poverty line.

March 2012 [Download:PDF 196kB]

No. 55

Kongpasa Sengsourivong and Fumiharu Mieno

"Impacts of Savings and Credit Union Programs on Household Welfare in Laos: Case Study of the Vientiane Vicinity during the mid-2000s."

Abstract: Based on original household survey on the six villages in Vientiane vicinity in 2005, the paper investigates the impact of Savings and Credit Union (SCU) programs on household income, expenditure and asset, applying the methodology of Coleman's (1999)  study on Thailand to address placement bias and endogeneity problem. The results revealed that SCU programs brought certain changes; SCUs boosted educational expenditures implying activation of human capital formation, increased the house asset suggesting villagers' investment reflected by possible business activation, and brought a possible shift in income sources from traditional agriculture to livestock raising. The paper interprets these results different from Coleman's (1999) in two possible ways; First the Laotian case is to an extent, free from a bias associated with seed capital allocation, therefore is more suitable to capture the effect than Thailand, and second it is since the stage of financial accessibility in Laos is far less developed than in Thailand.

March 2014 [Download:PDF310kB]

 

No. 54

Takashi Kurosaki and Hidayat Ullah Khan

"Community-Based Development and Aggregate Shocks in Developing Countries: The Experience of an NGO in Pakistan."

Abstract: This paper empirically investigates whether a community-based development (CBD) approach is effective in mitigating the ill effects of aggregate shocks. The analysis is based on a three-year panel dataset of approximately 600 households in rural Pakistan where a local NGO has implemented CBD interventions. The results show that the mitigating effect was absent when the control group included both non-member households in villages under CBD interventions and households in villages without such interventions. On the other hand, within the former type of villages, a strong spillover effect from member to non-member households was found, mitigating the ill effects of aggregate shocks. Furthermore, CBD interventions accompanied by micro infrastructure construction or microcredit provision were found to be effective in mitigating the ill effects. These results suggest the possibility that whether a CBD approach mitigates aggregate shocks depends on the type of intervention and the nature of market failures.

March 2014 [Download:PDF484kB]

 

No. 53

Akifumi Ado and Takashi Kurosaki

"Motives for Sharing in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Jakarta."

Abstract: We implemented laboratory experiments in Jakarta, Indonesia, to identify motives for sharing, including baseline altruism, directed altruism, sanction aversion, and reciprocity. The study area is located on the periphery of the Metropolis of Jakarta, many of whose residents are migrants and are closely connected with informal institutions such as Arisan, a rotating savings and credit association in Indonesia. Using data from sample households, the experimental results show that transfers based on baseline altruism accounted for the largest amount.Because the difference in the transferred amounts arising from the revelation of dictators' identities was statistically insignificant, we combined the four motives into two: preference-related motives (baseline and directed altruism) and incentive-related motives (sanction aversion and reciprocity) for the examination of their association with real world behavior regarding sharing. The empirical results suggest the importance of incentive-related motives in explaining variations in the amount of income transfers received from and sent to others.

March 2014 [Download:PDF810kB]

 

No. 52

Fumiharu Mieno and Chansathith Chaleunsinh

"Function of Savings and Credit Unions in Laos: From a Village-SCU Survey in Vientiane Vicinity."

Abstract: Savings and Credit Unions (SCUs), a type of self-help group, have been rapidly forming in Laotian villages since the early 2000s.This paper investigates their characteristics, activities, and exogenous determinants of their activity based on an original questionnaire survey.It presents a descriptive analysis of endogenous factors such as member ratios and deposit and loan amounts and exogenous factors such as SCUs' age, location, and village characteristics with descriptive analyses.The results revealed that SCUs' membership is formed early in their operating history and remains generally unchanged. Loans for production purposes are a larger percentage of SCUs' lending during their early years, shifting to consumption loans in later years. SCUs' performance features differ after five years in operation and in villages that have diversified away from agriculture. Economic diversification and SCUs' sustainability are related to immigrants settling in villages since the Laotian civil war. We conclude that SCUs serve obvious social and economic purposes and that prospects for their sustainability are greater in villages with diversified economies.

March 2014 [Download:PDF208kB]

 

No. 51

Yoshihisa Godo

"A New Database on Education Stock in the Philippines" (in Japanese)

March 2014 [Download:PDF589kB]

 

No. 50

Tetsuji Okazaki

三菱商事における店舗ネットワークの構造と機能:1928-36 年度 (in Japanese)

Abstract: This paper explores the structure and function of the intra-firm trade network in Mitsubishi Corporation (Mitsubishi Shoji) from 1928 to 1936. In this period, Mitsubishi Co. substantially expanded its global branch network. Using original documents of Mitsubishi Co., we obtained the data on the trade flow between every pair of the headquarters and branches in 1928 and 1936. While the headquarters in Tokyo maintained its position as the central hub in the intra-firm trade network in this period, some major branches, including Dalian in China, grew to be the subsidiary hubs, which resulted in a change in the network structure.

November 2013 [Download:PDF938kB]

 

No. 49

Megumi Naoi and Tetsuji Okazaki

"Political Economy of Trade Liberalization: The Case of Postwar Japan."

Abstract: How did post-War newer democracies, whose governments faced both pressures from vested special interests and voters, achieve trade liberalization ? Exploiting the case of trade liberalization in 1960s Japan, this paper addresses this question. Because the benefits and costs of trade liberalization are unequally distributed among the population, generating winners and losers, trade liberalization is inherently a highly political issue. The Japanese government and the LDP leaders used two tactics to build a coalition of legislators for trade liberalization. While they used sequencing of liberalization to buy off support from legislators of the Upper-House, they relied on side-payments for legislators of the Lower-House. This strategy choice was consistent with the difference in the sizes of electoral districts between the Upper-House and the Lower-House.

November 2013 [Download:PDF167kB]

 

No. 48

Kozo Kiyota and Tetsuji Okazaki

"Effects of Industrial Policy on Productivity: The Case of Import Quota Removal during Postwar Japan."

Abstract: This paper attempts to provide a systematic analysis on the effects of industrial policy in postwar Japan. Among the various types of Japanese industrial policy, this paper focuses on the removal of de facto import quotas through the foreign exchange allocation system. Analyzing a panel of 100 Japanese manufacturing industries in the 1960s, we find that the effects of the quota removal on productivity were limited: the effects were significantly positive but it took time before they appeared. On the other hand, the effects of tariffs on labor productivity were negative although these were insignificant. One possible reason for this is that the Japanese government increased tariff rates before removing the import quotas, and maintained high tariff rates afterward. As a result, the effects of the Japanese industrial policy in the 1960s might be smaller than widely believed in the Japanese economic history literature.

October 2013 [Download:PDF617kB]

 

No. 47

Takashi Kurosaki and Hidayat Ullah Khan

"Community-Based Development and Aggregate Shocks in Developing Countries: The Experience of an NGO in Pakistan." (in Japanese)

(See No.54 for the English version of this discussion paper.)

January 2014 [Download:PDF1.24mB]

 

No. 46

Takashi Kurosaki

"Long-term Agricultural Growth in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh from1901/02 to 2001/02."

Abstract: This paper investigates the growth performance of agriculture in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in the twentieth century. The use of unusually long-term data that correspond to the current borders for the period 1901-2002 and the focus on crop shifts as a source of growth distinguish this study from the existing ones. The empirical results show a sharp discontinuity between the pre- and the post- independence periods in all three countries: growth rates in total output, labor productivity, and land productivity rose from zero or very low figures to significantly positive levels, which were sustained throughout the post-independence period. The improvement in aggregate land productivity explained the most of this output growth, of which approximately one third was attributable to shifts to more lucrative crops.

November 2013 [Download:PDF408kB]

 

No. 45

Hangtian Xu and Kentaro Nakajima

"The Role of Coal Mine Regulation in Regional Development."

Abstract: In response to the high mortality rates and low productivity in coal mining, China began regulating coal mines in the 1990s, which has reshaped its coal economy. We empirically investigate the relationship between coal mine regulation and economic growth in China. Using two difference-in-difference approaches to compare the pre- and post-regulation periods, as well as regions with and without rich coal endowment, we find that regulation positively affects regional economy. This result is further illustrated using an OLS estimation that uses mortality rate in coal mining as a proxy for measuring the quality of regulation. The impacts are not limited only to the intra-coal industry but also spillover to the economy of related regions by relieving the crowding-out effects of coal abundance, that is, resource abundance tends to crowd out investment, human capital and innovation in non-resource sectors and thus hinders economic growth.

September 2013 [Download:PDF496kB]

 

No. 44

Jonathan Morduch, Shamika Ravi, and Jonathan Bauchet

"Substitution Bias and External Validity: Why an Innovative Anti-poverty Program Showed no Net Impact."

Abstract: The net impact of development interventions can depend on the availability of close substitutes to the intervention. We analyze a randomized trial of an innovative anti-poverty program in South India which provides “ultra-poor” households with inputs to create a new, sustainable livelihood. We find no statistically significant evidence of lasting net impact on consumption, income or asset accumulation. Instead, income from the new livelihood substituted for earnings from wage labor. A very similar intervention made a large difference elsewhere in South Asia, however, where wage labor alternatives were less compelling. The analysis highlights the roles of substitution bias and dropout bias in shaping evaluation results and delimiting external validity.

July 2013 [Download:PDF834kB]

 

No. 43

David Roodman and Jonathan Morduch

"The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence."

Abstract: We replicate and reanalyse the most influential study of microcredit impacts (Pitt and Khandker, 1998). That study was celebrated for showing that microcredit reduces poverty, a much hoped-for possibility (though one not confirmed by recent randomized controlled trials). We show that the original results on poverty reduction disappear after dropping outliers, or when using a robust linear estimator. Using a new program for estimation of mixed process maximum likelihood models, we show how assumptions critical for the original analysis, such as error normality, are contradicted by the data. We conclude that questions about impact cannot be answered in these data.

June 2013 [Download:PDF1.28mB]

 

No. 41

Ryo Kambayashi and Takao Kato

"Good jobs, Bad jobs, and the Great Recession: Lessons from Japan’s Lost Decade."

Abstract: This paper provides novel evidence on the long-term effect of the Great Recession on the quality of jobs, in particular whether the Great Recession results in the replacement of “good jobs” (characterized by high wage/benefit, job security, and opportunity for training and development) with “bad jobs” (characterized by the lack of such attributes). Unfortunately there is not yet sufficiently long data from the recent Great Recession that enable researchers to study fully its long-term consequences for the labor market structure. To this end, we examine Japan’s Lost Decade, the original Great Recession that occurred two decades ago. First, we find no evidence for a shift of male employment toward “bad jobs” during the Lost Decade. Second, for women we find a compositional change from self-employment to nonstandard employment which is, however, found to be a shift from “bad jobs” to “bad jobs” rather than “good jobs” to “bad jobs”. As such, our findings cast doubt on the popular narrative of the long-term negative effect on job quality of the Great Recession. However, for one particular group of Japanese workers—youth, we find compelling evidence in support of the popular narrative. Especially all progresses that young women made in enhancing their share of standard employment during Japan’s high growth decade in the 1980s are found to be entirely undone during the Lost Decade. The Great Recession affects the quantity of jobs and policy makers ought to pay immediate attention to such quantity effects. However, the Great Recession may also have more long-term structural effects on the quality of jobs, and such long-term effects may be heterogeneous, concentrating on a specific group of workers such as youth.

June 2013 [Download:PDF327kB]

 

No. 71

Takeshi Maru, Motoi Kusadokoro, and Masanori Takashima

"Productivity and the Growth of Japanese Agriculture in the 1930s: A Panel Data Analysis Using a Survey of the Farm Household Economy."

Abstract: In the early 1930s, the Showa Depression, which commenced in 1930 following the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, had substantial effects on urban and rural economies in Japan, and agricultural production stagnated in the 1930s. Many studies have analyzed Japanese agriculture by using production functions. However, there is variance among them. Additionally, many studies were based on the assumption of constant returns to scale (CRS) because of data limitations. Utilizing a detailed micro-level database, we re-examined agricultural production in this period. The results show that the values of the production elasticity of factors scored near the lowest of those shown by previous studies and that CRS is not supported. The results also show that the trend of the change in total factor productivity is in line with that of previous studies.

March 2015 [Download:PDF388kB]

 

No. 70

Kentaro Nakajima and Tetsuji Okazaki

"Expanding Empire and Spatial Distribution of Economic Activities: The Case of Colonization of Korea by Japan in the Prewar Period."

Abstract: After the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Japan annexed Korea in 1910. We exploit this event as a natural experiment to investigate the effect of improved market access on the population growth. It is found that the tariff reduction raised the growth rates of population, and that the impact of the tariff reduction was significantly larger in the areas close to the removed border between Japan and Korea. As predicted by spatial economics theory, market proximity was indeed a determinant of the spatial distribution of economic activities. In the context of economic history, our findings suggest that it is important to reconsider the economic consequences of imperialism from the angle of spatial economics.

March 2015 [Download:PDF376kB]

 

No. 69

Chiaki Moriguchi

"Educational Status of Non-biological Children in the United States: New Evidence from Federal Census Microdata."

Abstract: A substantial number of American children reside in adoptive or step households. Empirical research has found strong correlations between family structure and child outcomes in modern data, showing that non-biological children have lower outcomes than biological children. Few studies have examined how non-biological children fared in historical times, however. In this study, I use the public use samples of federal census microdata in 1900-1930 and 2000 to compare educational status of adopted, step, and biological children in the U.S. I find that, for both whites and blacks, non-biological children experienced major educational disadvantages compared to biological children in 1900-1930 even after controlling for child and parental characteristics. By 2000, however, the educational disadvantages of white and black adopted children have been greatly reduced or even reversed in some measures. For stepchildren, educational disadvantages have persisted for both whites an  d blacks, but their extent was smaller than in 1900-1930. For Asian children, I find no significant difference in educational status among adopted, step, and biological children in 2000 once we control for household characteristics. These findings are consistent with major transformations of adoption practices and stepfamily formation in the U.S. during the twentieth century that improved parental incentives and resources to invest in education of non-biological children.

March 2015 [Download:PDF822kB]

 

No. 68

Chiaki Moriguchi

"Pragmatic to Sentimental Adoption? Child Adoption in the United States, 1880-1930."

Abstract: Child adoption, as an alternative to childbearing, is a widely accepted means of creating a family in the U.S. today. According to the historical literature, the modern form of adoption was a U.S. innovation in the mid-nineteenth century that had profound implications for the welfare of both adopted children and adoptive parents. Due to the lack of quantitative data, however, we know little about the extent and nature of child adoption in the historical U.S. How widely was adoption practiced before its widespread social acceptance? Who adopted children, and what motivated them to adopt? In this study, using U.S. federal census microdata (IPUMS) in 1880-1930 and 2000, I first document the prevalence of adoption and the characteristics of adoptive households and trace their changes over the twentieth century. I then investigate the commonly held hypothesis that adoption evolved from "pragmatic" to "sentimental" adoption during the early twentieth century, as adoptive  parents began to demand children not for their labor value but for the utility of parenting itself. My empirical analysis indicates that, in 1880-1930, farm households were more likely to adopt children for pragmatic reasons, while households with greater socio-economic status were more likely to practice sentimental adoption.

March 2015 [Download:PDF1.12mB]

 

No. 67

Ken Miura and Takeshi Sakurai

"The Impact of Formal Insurance Provision on Farmer Behavior: Evidence from Rural Zambia."

Abstract: This study presents empirical evidence of changes in farmer behavior after offering them weather index insurance contracts. To quantify the impacts of insurance on agricultural decision-making, this study makes use of the random allocation of free insurance to small-scale farmers in rural Zambia, while endogenous insurance demands are also investigated. Our empirical results show that the provision of insurance leads farmers to sow maize seeds earlier --- a practice known to increase maize yield, but which is riskier in terms of rainfall variability. In addition, it is found that insured farmers enlarge the maize field size and use more fertilizer; that is, the provision of insurance encourages farmers to invest in maize production in a risky environment. We also report suggestive but interesting evidence that weather index insurance could substitute for small-livestock holdings, a conventional self-insurance tool used to mitigate income variation.

March 2015 [Download:PDF527kB]

 

No. 66

Jun Goto, Yasuyuki Sawada, Takeshi Aida, and Keitaro Aoyagi

"Incentives and Social Preferences: Experimental Evidence from a Seemingly Inefficient Traditional Labor Contract?"

Abstract: This paper investigates the interplay between economic incentives and social norms in formulating rice planting contracts in the Philippines. In our study area, despite the potential for pervasive opportunistic behaviors by workers, a fixed-wage (FW) contract has been dominant for rice planting. To account for the use of this seemingly inefficient contractual arrangement, we adopt a hybrid experimental method of framed field experiments by randomized controlled trials (RCT), in which we randomly assign three distinct labor contracts---FW, individual piece rate (IPR), and group piece rate (GPR)--- and artefactual field experiments to elicit social preference parameters. Through analyses of individual workers' performance data from framed field experiments and data on social preferences elicited by artefactual field experiments, three main empirical findings emerge. First, our basic results show the positive incentive effects in IPR and, equivalently, moral hazard problems in FW, which are consistent with standard theoretical implications. Second, non-monetary incentives seem to play a significant role under FW: while social preferences such as altruism and guilt aversion play an important role in stimulating incentives under FW, introducing monetary incentives crowds out such intrinsic motivations, and other non-monetary factors such as positive peer effects significantly enhance incentives under a FW contract. Finally, as alternative hypotheses, our empirical results are not necessarily consistent with the hypothesis of the interlinked contract of labor and credit transactions in mitigating moral hazard problems, the optimality of FW contract under large effort measurement errors, and the intertemporal incentives arising from performance-based contract renewal probabilities. Hence, considering the interplay of intrinsic motivations and monetary incentives as well as the monetary costs of mitigating moral hazard and free-riding problems through IPR, we may conclude that seemingly perverse traditional contractual arrangements might be socially efficient.

March 2015 [Download:PDF1.10mB]

 

No. 65

Alice Ouyang and Saumik Paul

"Skilled Emigration, Wages and Real Exchange Rate in a Globalized World."

Abstract: Building on a simple analytical model, we provide cross-country empirical evidence from 67 countries that the net skilled emigration appreciates bilateral real exchange rates in source countries. Channels of causality, when Law of One Price (LOOP) holds, are through "spending effect" and "resource allocation effect", analogous to the remittance-based Dutch disease effect. Pricing-to-market model allows pass-through for both tradable and nontradable prices when LOOP is violated. Internal (relative price of tradable to nontradable) price explains about 60% of the RER appreciation, which is mostly driven by the outcomes on developing countries. The outcomes are robust across different levels of skilled emigration, alternative model specifications and withstand placebo tests with unskilled emigration.

March 2015 [Download:PDF648kB]

 

No. 64

Hidayat Ullah Khan and Takashi Kurosaki

"Targeting Performance of Community-based Development Interventions: An Econometric Analysis of a Women-Focused and Women-Managed Non-Governmental Organization in Rural Pakistan."

Abstract: This paper investigates whether the community-based development (CBD) approach effectively reaches out to the poor. The CBD approach is expected to improve targeting performance by reducing leakage to the non-poor, elite capture, and program placement costs. However, the existing literature lacks comprehensive and innovative ways to assess the targeting performance involving women. We thus examine the targeting performance of CBD interventions adopted by a women-focused and women-managed non-governmental organization (NGO) in northwestern Pakistan. The NGO intervenes through female organizations called Community Organisations (COs), which is rather unusual for a male-dominated society like Pakistan. To assess the targeting performance, we employ rich village- and household-level survey data and compare villages with and without COs on the one hand and member and non-member households on the other hand. The comparison is in terms of poverty and vulnerability. The study shows that the NGO, with proactive involvement of women, has been able to successfully target poorer and environmentally vulnerable villages as well as households.

February 2015 [Download:PDF291kB]

 

No. 63

Alberto J. Iniguez-Montiel and Takashi Kurosaki

"Limits to Economic Growth and the Effect of Redistribution in Mexico."

Abstract: In this study, we examine the effectiveness of growth and redistribution in reducing poverty in Mexico during the period from 1992 to 2012, using repeated cross-section household data. We first decompose the observed changes in poverty reduction into components arising from growth, improved income distribution, and heterogeneous inflation. We find the component of inflation to be non-negligible, as the inflation experienced by the poor was higher than the national average. The decomposition also shows improvement in income distribution to be the main contributor to poverty reduction in Mexico. In the second part of our analysis, we compile a unique panel dataset at the state level from the household data and estimate a system of equations that characterize the dynamic relationship between growth, inequality, and poverty, being careful to avoid spurious correlation arising from data construction.

The GMM regression results show that Mexican states are characterized by income convergence and inequality convergence, and that poverty reduction in Mexican states is highly responsible to income and inequality levels in the previous period. This implies that once a small perturbation occurs in a state that reduces the inequality level, the state is expected to experience sustained poverty reduction in subsequent periods, which is consistent with the findings from the decomposition.

February 2015 [Download:PDF0.98mB]

 

No. 62

Tetsuji Okazaki and Michiru Sawada

"Measuring the Extent and Implications of Corporate Political Connections in Prewar Japan."

Abstract: This paper investigates the extent, determinants, and implications of the political connections of firms at the peak of democracy in prewar Japan, identifying a firm as politically connected if one of its directors was simultaneously a member of the House of Representatives. We analyze the data of publicly traded companies in the periods before and after the 1928 and 1930 general elections. It is found that almost 20% of publicly traded companies had political connections through politician directors. Regressions analyses reveal that smaller or badly performing firms and firms in the electric utilities and railroad industries, where government licenses were important, were more likely to have political connections. Furthermore, we find that the stock returns of firms that had new political connections improved from the pre-election period to the post-election period.

November 2014 [Download:PDF189kB]

 

No. 61

Serguey Braguinsky, Atsushi Ohyama, Tetsuji Okazaki, and Chad Syverson

"Acquisitions, Productivity, and Profitability: Evidence from the Japanese Cotton Spinning Industry."

Abstract: We explore how changes in ownership and managerial control affect the productivity and profitability of producers. Using detailed operational, financial, management, and ownership data from the Japanese cotton spinning industry at the turn of the last century, we find a more nuanced picture than the straightforward "higher productivity buys lower productivity" story commonly appealed to in the literature. Acquired firms' production facilities were not on average any less physically productive than the plants of the acquiring firms before acquisition, conditional on operating. They were much less profitable, however, due to consistently higher inventory levels and lower capacity utilization-differences which reflected problems in managing the inherent uncertainties of demand in the industry. When these less profitable plants were purchased by more profitable establishments, the acquired plants saw drops in inventories and gains in capacity utilization that raised both their productivity and profitability levels, consistent with acquiring owner/managers spreading their better demand management abilities across the acquired capital.

October 2014 [Download:PDF633kB]

 

No. 60

Takashi Kurosaki and Kazuya Wada

"Spatial Characteristics of Long-term Changes in Indian Agricultural Production: District-Level Analysis, 1965-2007."

Abstract: In this paper, we comprehensively describe spatial patterns of long-term changes in Indian agriculture at the district level. Variables of concern include the land use intensity, the ratio of rice and wheat in areas under foodgrains, the ratio of non-foodgrains in gross cultivated area, the fertilizer use intensity, and individual crop shares in gross cultivated areas. As a byproduct of the descriptive analysis, we propose a new regional classification of Indian districts based on their similarity in rainfall, the initial cropping and land-use patterns, and the initial condition and changes in irrigation. The proposed classification has a reasonable explanatory power in describing the spatial patterns of long-term changes at the district level.

January 2015 [Download:PDF2.01mB]

 

No.59

Takashi Kurosaki and Hidayat Ullah Khan

"Impact of Human Resource Development Training on Crop Damages by Wild Animals in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Rural Pakistan."

Abstract: Based on a four-year panel dataset of households collected in rural Pakistan, we examine the impact of an intervention on households’capacity to reduce income losses due to attacks by wild boars. A local NGO implemented the intervention as a randomized controlled trial at the beginning of the second year. We find that the intervention was highly effective in eliminating the crop-income loss in the second year, but that effects disappeared in the third and fourth years. Our finding suggests the difficulty in technology transfer through the training or the high implicit cost incurred by the households in implementing the treatment. Therefore, the intervention was not sustainable at the household level. Nevertheless, due to spillover effects, the intervention could have been cost-effective at the project level.

August 2014 [Download:PDF312kB]

 

No. 58

Tuan-Hwee Sng and Chiaki Moriguchi

"Asia's Little Divergence: State Capacity in China and Japan before 1850."

Abstract: This paper explores the role of state capacity in the comparative economic development of China and Japan. Before 1850, both nations were ruled by stable dictators who relied on bureaucrats to govern their domains. We hypothesize that agency problems increase with the geographical size of a domain. In a large domain, the ruler's inability to closely monitor bureaucrats creates opportunities for the bureaucrats to exploit taxpayers. To prevent overexploitation, the ruler has to keep taxes low and government small. Our dynamic model shows that while economic expansion improves the ruler's finances in a small domain, it could lead to lower tax revenues in a large domain as it exacerbates bureaucratic expropriation. To test these implications, we assemble comparable quantitative data from primary and secondary sources. We find that the state taxed less and provided fewer local public goods per capita in China than in Japan. Furthermore, while the Tokugawa shogunate's tax revenue grew in tandem with demographic trends, Qing China underwent fiscal contraction after 1750 despite demographic expansion. We conjecture that a greater state capacity might have prepared Japan better for the transition from stagnation to growth.

August 2014 [Download:PDF1.08mB]

 

No. 57

Pierre van der Eng

"Mining and Indonesia’s Economy: Institutions and Value Adding, 1870-2010."

Abstract: Indonesia has long been a major producer of minerals for international markets. Starting in 2014, it implemented legislation banning exports of unprocessed minerals and requiring producers to invest in processing facilities to add more value before export. This paper establishes what light past experiences in Indonesia with mining sheds on this recent development. It quantifies and discusses the growth of mining production in Indonesia since 1870. It analyses the institutional arrangements that past governments used to maximise resource rents and domestic value adding. The paper finds that production and exports of mining commodities were long dominated by oil, but increased and diversified over time, particularly since the 1960s. The development of the mining sector depended on changes in market prices, mining technologies and the cost of production, but particularly on the institutional arrangements that guided the decisions of foreign investors to commit to mining production and processing in Indonesia.

August 2014 [Download:PDF798kB]

 

No. 56

Konosuke Odaka

"Industrialization in Myanmar: An introductory examination" (in Japanese)

 

August 2014 [Download:PDF1.41mB]

Data archives on economic development are under construction through the PRIMCED project. Major components of the archives are introduced below.

The overview page explains the scope and coverage of each database (DB).

There are links to discussion papers (DP) and newsletter articles (NL) in which the database is employed. We plan to improve the web-based access to each DB in the near future. Meanwhile, those who are interested in each DB can contact those persons-in-charge designated in the overview page or the PRIMCED office (mail: primced[@]ier.hit-u.ac.jp, please delete [ ]) for further information.

 

1. PRIMCED Database for Pre-war Japan

The Database of the MAF Survey of Farm Household Economy in Prewar Japan

  [Overview] DP#23  NL#4

Civil Lawsuit Database for Prewar Japan

  [OverviewDP#4  NL#3

 

2. PRIMCED Database for Contemporary Developing Countries in Asia

Long-Term Estimates for Education Stock in Asia

  [OverviewDP#9, DP#20  NL#4

Long-Term Agricultural Statistics in South Asia

  [OverviewDP#6, DP#19

Database on Four Decades of Surveys in East Laguna village, the Philippines

  [OverviewDP#18, DP#31

The Cycle Rickshaw Sector in New Delhi, India

  [OverviewDP#24, DP#28

Community-Based Development under a Women-Focused NGO in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

  [OverviewDP#13  NL#1

Recovery from Floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

  [OverviewDP#12, DP#27

 

3. PRIMCED Database for Contemporary Developing Countries in Africa

Long-Term Agricultural Household Panel Data in Burkina Faso

  [Overview (in preparation)]  NL#5

High Frequency Panel Data of Agricultural Households in Zambia

  [Overview (in preparation)]  DP#15(revised and published version) NL#1

 

4. Database compiled under sister projects of PRIMCED (links only)

Japanese Large Shareholder/Board Members Database [Center for Economic Institutions] 

https://cei.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/Japanese/database/Okabunushidbs/database2.html

Hi-Stat Social Science Database Network

https://www.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/histatdb/

 

   The 8th Newsletter (October 2013) has been uploaded. (10/10/2013)

 

■ PRIMCED Newsletter No.8 (October 2013)

      Contents   Message from the Project Leader [Takashi Kurosaki] ...1-2
                      Report on Field Surveys and Data Compilation...2-6

                         No. 11 Lesson from Hayami Village [Yasuyuki Sawada]

                         No. 12 Hayami Village after His Days [Kei Kajisa]

                      Discussion Paper Series ...6

 

■ PRIMCED Newsletter No.7 (May 2013)

      Contents   Message from the Project Leader [Takashi Kurosaki] ...1-2
                      Report on International Workshop [Editors] ...2-4
                      Discussion Paper Series ...4

 

■ PRIMCED Newsletter No.6 (February 2013)

      Contents   Message from the Project Leader [Takashi Kurosaki] ...1-2

                      Report on Field Surveys and Data Compilation ...2-7

                         No.9   Humanizing data collection [Ryo Kambayashi]

                         No.10 Randomized experiments on preventive health care

                                   among pregnant women and infants in Nigeria

                                   [Yoshito Takasaki]

                       Event Announcement...7

                       Discussion Paper Series ...7

 

■ PRIMCED Newsletter No.5 (September 2012)

      Contents   Message from the Project Leader [Takashi Kurosaki] ...1-2

                      Report on the PRIMCED Workshop [Editors] ...2-3

                      Report on Field Surveys and Data Compilation ...4-12

                         No.7 Spatial Economics and Economic Development

                                 [Kentaro Nakajima]

                         No.8 On the Survey in Burkina Faso [Takeshi Sakurai]

                      Discussion Paper Series ...12

 

■ PRIMCED Newsletter No.4 (June 2012)

      Contents   Message from the Project Leader [Takashi Kurosaki] ...1-2

                      Report on Field Surveys and Data Compilation ...2-5

                         No.5 “Makapili” [Yoshihisa Godo]

                         No.6 “My Experience in Compiling a Database of a Prewar Survey of

                                  Farm Household Economy” [Masanori Takashima]

                      Event Announcement ...6

                      Discussion Paper Series ...6

 

■ PRIMCED Newsletter No.3 (March 2012)

      Contents   Message from the Project Leader [Takashi Kurosaki] ...1

                      Report on Field Surveys and Data Compilation ...2-4

                         No.3 “Law and Economic History:

                                  A Historical Approach to Comparative Economic

                                  Development” [Tetsuji Okazaki]

                         No.4 “Field Report on India” [Ayako Matsuda]

                      Discussion Paper Series ...5

 

■ PRIMCED Newsletter No.2 (November 2011)

      Contents   Report on International Workshop 〔Editors〕 ...1~4
                      Discussion Paper Series ...4
                      Project Activities ...4

 

■ PRIMCED Newsletter No.1 (May 2011)

      Contents   Message from the Project Leader 〔Takashi Kurosaki〕 ...1~2
                      Report on Field Surveys: Pakistan and Zambia 〔Hidayat Ullah Khan and

                      Akinori Kitsuki〕 ...2~4
                      Discussion Paper Series ...4
                      Project Activities ...5

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