CIRJE Conferences 2016

The 1st International Forum on Suicide Prevention Policy
～How to Prevail Its Benefit of the Whole Communities ～

  • Organizers:
    Yutaka Motohashi (Japan Support Center for Suicide Countermeasures)
    Yasuyuki Sawada (The University of Tokyo)
  • January 22, 2017
  • Venue: Kojima Conference Room, Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall), The University of Tokyo
  • Program

The First International Forum on Suicide Prevention Policy was held in order to facilitate international academic exchange on suicide prevention policy. The keynote lecturer, Professor Ulrich Hegerl, is a prominent psychiatrist and researcher on suicide prevention. Under the strong leadership of Professor Hegerl, the monumental project of the European Alliance against Depression (EAAD) has been successfully carried out. In this Forum, the outline of EAAD project and its significance in community suicide prevention policy were presented and discussed. The latter half of the Forum was devoted to the symposium, “How to Prevail Its Benefit of the Whole Communities,” in which the proposal on comprehensive suicide prevention policy was presented by research project members of Suicide Prevention Policy funded by Japanese Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour. We hope that this Forum will contribute to build an innovative policy-making of suicide prevention in the near future, and to prevail benefits of suicide countermeasures of the whole communities.

2016 Conference on Disasters and Recovery

  • Organizers:
    Yasuyuki Sawada (The University of Tokyo)
    Daniel Aldrich (Notheastern University)
  • December 19, 2016
  • Venue: Seminar Room 1, Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall), The University of Tokyo
  • Program
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Recently, we observe increasing frequencies of natural and manmade disasters regardless of developed ordeveloping countries. In this conference, we invite leading experts in disaster mitigation and reconstruction research from viewpoints of market, state, and community mechanisms. A list of presentation is: Toru Tsuboya (Tohoku University) "Types of disaster damage and change in depressive symptoms among survivors in Iwanuma, Miyagi", Naoki Kondo (University of Tokyo) "Disasters, economic crisis, and social capital: evidence from social epidemiology", Daniel Aldrich (Northeastern University), "How social capital matters during and after disasters", Jamie Lien (Chinese University of Hong Kong) "Major Earthquake Experiences and Present-Focused Expenditures", Yuki Higuchi (Nagoya City University), "Disaster aid targeting and political connection: Evidence from the Philippines", Yasuyuki Sawada (University of Tokyo) "Disaster and Preference: A Unified Theory and Evidence from the Philippines and Japan", Tsubokura Masaharu (University of Tokyo) “Medical assistance for the 23km zone after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster", Minhaj Mahmud (BRAC) "Natural Disaster and Risk Sharing Behavior: Evidence from a field experiment in Bangladesh." We had lively discussions combining different approaches of experimental economics, empirical economics, and field experiments as well as public health and political science.

JIMF-TOKYO Conference
"The Pacific Rim and the Global Economy: Future Financial and Macro Challenges"

  • Organizers:
    Joshua Aizenman (University of Southern California)
    Shin-ichi Fukuda (University of Tokyo)
  • July 25 and 26, 2016
  • Venue:Venue: Kojima Conference Room Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall), The University of Tokyo
  • Program

The JIMF-TOKYO conference took place on 25th and 26th of July 2016 at Kojima Conference Room, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo. The theme of the conference was "The Pacific Rim and the Global Economy: Future Financial and Macro Challenges." Recent unconventional monetary policies largely succeeded at achieving their domestic goals in advanced economies. However, they had a mixed effect on the rest of the world. They buoyed asset prices globally at the time of financial turmoil. But they also depreciated currencies and increased capital flows to the rest of the world, especially to emerging markets. To analyze the causes and the consequences of these unprecedented environments is an urgent policy issue in each region. We had 16 participants from abroad. They include top economists such as Joshua Aizenman (USC and NBER), Takatoshi Ito (Columbia University), and Mark M. Spiegel (FRB of San Francisco). We had intensive and fruitful discussions on the important policy issues. The conference papers will be published as a special issue in Journal of International Money and Finance (JIMF) after review processes.

IO Conferece at University of Tokyo

  • June 4, 2016
  • Venue: Seminar Room No. 2, Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall), The University of Tokyo

The Industrial Organization Conference was held on June the 4th, 2016. Professors Patrick Rey from Toulouse School of Economics and Mike Riordan from Columbia University were invited for talks. Professor Rey presented “Prizes versus Contracts as Incentives for Innovation,” to talk on an optimal mechanism to procure innovation, and Professor Riordan presented “Privacy Protection” to construct a model to examine how to deal with privacy issues in economics on online transactions. Participates are not only from faculty members and graduate students from the University of Tokyo (Faculty of Economics, and Social Science Institutes), but also from other universities and the Ministries. Lively discussions continued long after the end of the conference.