Journal of the Japanese and International Economies最新文献

This study investigates the causal effect of school vouchers on high school dropout behavior. In 2010, the Japanese government began offering free tuition for public high schools and financial support for students attending private high schools in response to the international movement toward free education and dramatic changes in the government. Since then, approximately half of all prefectures have made private high schools tuition free by 2019 under certain income restrictions. We use this variation to examine the preventive effect of the free tuition policy on student dropout behaviors. By analyzing prefecture-level panel data and performing difference-in-differences analysis, this study finds that the policy is effective in reducing dropouts. However, we find no statistically significant change in the college enrollment and employment rates of high school graduates before and after policy implementation.

This study explores the effect of bequests on wealth inequality in Japan. We construct a heterogeneous life cycle model incorporating the transmission of physical and human capital from parents to their children, particularly bequests transfer and the positive correlation of productivity between them. Our model generates more realistic wealth dispersion in Japan compared to a canonical life cycle model which does not include such capital links. The bequest motives, that is, the desire to leave bequests, increase savings in old age. However, the expectation of receiving bequests in the future leads to a decline in savings when young. Moreover, bequests increase lifetime income, inducing wealth accumulation for achieving more consumption over the life cycle.

This study investigates the effects of heterogenous fiscal policies on Japan's labor market amidst increasing national debt and economic downturns. We develop a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model incorporating labor market search friction, staggered wage negotiation, price stickiness and productive government employment. This model is used to compare the impacts of multiple fiscal policies—including government employment spendings, direct government expenditures, and tax cuts—on employment. The model, estimated with macroeconomic data of Japan spanning 1985 to 2019, offers a detailed look at how fiscal policies influence employment dynamics.

Our analysis shows that increasing employment within the government sector significantly lowers unemployment rates, with a long-term unemployment reduction effect (multiplier) of −0.4. Collectively, all fiscal policies contribute to 23.96 % of the employment rate fluctuations, with government employment policies playing a dominant role, accounting for 8.55 % of these variations. This underscores the significant stabilizing effect of government employment policies in the labor market and their capacity to boost private sector employment through enhanced household income and increased private sector productivity. This research not only sheds light on the critical role of public sector interventions during economic downturns but also enhances our understanding of the effectiveness of Japan's fiscal policies.

Recent advances in AI represent improvements in prediction. We examine how decision-making and risk management strategies change when prediction improves. The adoption of AI may cause substitution away from risk management activities used when rules are applied (rules require always taking the same action), instead allowing for decision-making (choosing actions based on the predicted state). We provide a formal model evaluating the impact of AI and how risk management, stakes, and interrelated tasks affect AI adoption. The broad conclusion is that AI adoption can be stymied by existing processes designed to address uncertainty. In particular, many processes are designed to enable coordinated decision-making among different organizational actors. AI can make coordination even more challenging. However, when the cost of changing such processes falls, then the returns from AI adoption increase.

Employing a novel dataset on Tokyo condominium resales with details regarding their equipment and renovation status, this study provides a background for the rapid depreciation of Japanese condominiums, particularly due to obsolete housing equipment and weak renovation. Condominiums over the age of 20 years tend to lack contemporary equipment and exhibit severe economic obsolescence. This is measured as a greater rate of price decline caused by the lack of contemporary equipment for old condominiums than new condominiums. While intensive renovation can slow down depreciation by adding contemporary equipment to old condominiums, only around half of such condominiums undergo intensive renovation. These trends are consistent across the Tokyo metropolitan area. The results imply the potential to shift to a society where properties can attain longer economic lives through appropriate renovations and contemporary housing equipment is provided through frequent new constructions, as often seen in Asian countries.

This study considers the retrogression event of convenience for bank users as a natural experiment and analyzes the effect of this event on cash demand. Using bank account transaction data, we find that branch/ATM consolidations reduce the amount of cash withdrawals by past users considerably. Particularly, older or less wealthy users were severely affected by the discontinuation of branches. However, we find that branch/ATM consolidations reduce the total expenditure and inflows that include non-cash transactions almost by the same amount, which implies that the retrogression in convenience possibly caused users to shift to other banks for their daily payments. We also document facts about cash withdrawals from ATMs using bank account transaction data.

We examine the impact of COVID-19-related school closures on student learning and screen time. We find that between January 2020 (pre-COVID-19) and May 2020, as the length of a COVID-19-related school closure increased, there was a decrease in learning time and an increase in screen time. These adverse effects tend to be more pronounced for students in low-income households, low academic achievers, and elementary school students living in single-parent households. Moreover, these adverse effects might have persisted until January 2021 for elementary school students in single-parent households. On average, while live online classes might mitigate the effects of decreased learning time for junior high school students, that effect is not found for low academic achievers.

This study examines the effects of the Bank of Japan's (BOJ) large-scale equity purchases on the Nikkei 225 during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Although the BOJ started equity purchases in 2010, the purchased amount reached unprecedented levels when the pandemic broke out. The large-scale purchases provide a natural experiment to examine how effective the central bank's equity purchases were in the crisis. Unlike previous studies, we use intra-day data and investigate the purchase effects allowing for endogeneity. We first derive the BOJ's intra-day reaction function by estimating probit models. From this reaction function, we then calculate the BOJ's unexpected and expected purchases and examine their effects on the Nikkei 225 returns in the Tokyo Stock Exchange's afternoon session. We find that the BOJ's unexpected large-scale purchases had large positive instantaneous impacts on intra-day returns during the pandemic. However, the large positive impacts arose because most of the purchases came as big surprises to the markets. We argue that the policy would be effective only if the BOJ continues to surprise the market. We also argue that the BOJ's purchases increased the volatility of the Nikkei 225.

This study examines the effects of public investment on the stock market between the zero lower bound (ZLB) and the non-ZLB periods using Japanese sectoral panel data. The empirical results first show that while public investment shocks have stimulating effects on stock returns during the ZLB period, this is not the case outside of the ZLB. Furthermore, the impulse responses for the manufacturing industry are estimated to be positive and significant regardless of model specification. Our results suggest that the government is recommended to increase public investment under the ZLB to prop up the stock market but cut back once the economy is no longer in a liquidity trap.

After the late 2000s, there were substantial fluctuations in unemployment during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), Abenomics, and COVID-19 crisis, and their impact was uneven by gender and industry. This study examines the property of worker flows in Japan by focusing on gender and industry perspectives using monthly data from the Labour Force Survey. During the COVID-19 crisis, the transition probability from employment to inactivity rose sharply compared to the period of the GFC, mainly driven by women in the service sectors. The contribution of inflows to the dynamics of unemployment was on the rise for both men and women until around 2018, and the decreased unemployment rate during Abenomics can be accounted for by the decline in separation rates.