April 1, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Hiroyuki Kasahara (The University of British Columbia)

Do Importing and Exporting Increase the Demand for Skilled Workers? Plant-level Evidence from Indonesia?

This paper estimates the impact of importing and exporting on skill demand when their effects vary across plants and plants self-select into importing and exporting with some knowledge of their gains from importing and exporting. Using the Indonesian manufacturing data set that contains the detailed plant-level information on worker's education level, we apply the framework developed by Heckman and Vytlacil to identify the average effect of importing and exporting on skill demand across different sub-groups of plants, such as importers, non-importers, exporters, and non-exporters. We find that the effect of importing on skill demand among importers is substantially larger than among non-importers, providing evidence that the effect of importing on skill demand is heterogeneous and that plants self-selection into importing based on the gains from importing. On the other hand, we provide some mixed evidence for the effect of exporting on skill demand.

特別セミナー

April 4, 2013 (Thursday) 12:00-13:15　※日時にご注意下さい。

※応用統計ワークショップと共催。　

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Sokbae Lee (Seoul National University)

The Lasso for High-Dimensional Regression with A Possible Change-Point 　(joint with Myung Kwan Seo and Youngki Shin) [PDF]

We consider a high-dimensional regression model with a possible change-point due to a covariate threshold and develop the Lasso estimator of regression co- efficients as well as the threshold parameter. Under a sparsity assumption, we derive nonasymptotic oracle inequalities for both the prediction risk and the l₁ estimation loss for regression coefficients. Since the Lasso estimator selects variables simultaneously, we show that oracle inequalities can be established without pretesting the existence of the threshold effect. Therefore, the Lasso estimator not only selects covariates but also accomplishes model selection between the linear and threshold regression models. Furthermore, we establish conditions under which the unknown threshold parameter can be estimated at a rate of nearly n^-1 when the number of regressors can be much larger than the sample size (n). We illustrate the usefulness of our proposed estimation method via Monte Carlo simulations and an application to real data.

April 8, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Jessica Pan (National University of Singapore)

Gender identity and relative income within households (joint with Marianne Bertrand and Emir Kamenica) [PDF]

We examine causes and consequences of relative income within households. We establish that gender identity { in particular, an aversion to the wife earning more than the husband - impacts marriage formation, the wife's labor force participation, the wife's income conditional on working, marriage satisfaction, likelihood of divorce, and the division of home production. The distribution of the share of household income earned by the wife exhibits a sharp cli at 0.5, which suggests that a couple is less willing to match if her income exceeds his. Within marriage markets, when a randomly chosen woman becomes more likely to earn more than a randomly chosen man, marriage rates decline. Within couples, if the wife's potential income (based on her demographics) is likely to exceed the husband's, the wife is less likely to be in the labor force and earns less than her potential if she does work. Couples where the wife earns more than the husband are less satised with their marriage and are more likely to divorce. Finally, based on time use surveys, the gender gap in non-market work is larger if the wife earns more than the husband.

April 15, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Jean-Etienne de Bettignies (Queen's University)

Product Market Competition and the Financing of New ventures (joint with Anne Duchene)

※　当日配付資料のみ。(Only hardcopies are available in the seminar.)

This paper examines the interaction between venture risk, product market competition and entrepreneurs' choice between bank financing and venture capital (VC) financing. Under bank financing, a debt-type contract emerges as optimal, which allows the entrepreneur to retain full control of the venture and thus yields strong effort incentives, as long as she can service the debt repayment; but leads to liquidation in case of default, making the venture's success quite sensitive to exogenous, even temporary shocks that may hinder debt repayment. Under VC financing an equity-type contract emerges as optimal, which is not sensitive to exogenous shocks, but requires the entrepreneur to share a fraction of the rents with the financier, thus yielding lower effort incentives for the entrepreneur. There exists a threshold level of venture risk such that bank financing is optimal if and only if venture risk is below that threshold. Product market competition increases the value of stronger entrepreneurial incentives, and thus increases the maximum level of risk the entrepreneur is willing to take before switching from bank financing to VC financing. This is a robust result that is shown to hold in various models of competition, including Hotelling, Salop, and Dixit--Stiglitz.

May 8, 2013 (Wednesday) 16:40-18:20 　※日時にご注意下さい。* Schedule Changed

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Haruo Iwakura (Kyoto University)

Deriving Information Bounds for Nonlinear Panel Data Models with Fixed Effects When Both N and T are Large

※　当日配付資料のみ。(Only hardcopies are available in the seminar.)

This paper studies the asymptotic efficiency of estimates in nonlinear panel data models with fixed effects when both the cross-sectional sample size and the length of time series tend to infinity. The efficiency bounds for regular estimators in general panel data models are derived using the infinite-dimensional convolution theorem by van der Varrt and Wellner (1996). It should be noted that the number of fixed effects increases with the sample size and hence they constitute an infinite-dimensional nuisance parameter. The presence of fixed effects makes our derivation of the efficiency bounds non-trivial, and the techniques to overcome the difficulties caused by fixed effects will be discussed in detail. Our results include the efficiency bounds for models with interactive fixed effects and models containing unknown functions (for instance, a distribution function of error terms). We apply our results to assess the efficiency of various estimators existing in the literature.

May 13, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Koichiro Ito (Stanford University)

Using Dynamic Electricity Pricing to Address Energy Crises: Evidence from Randomized Field Experiment (joint with Takanori Ida and Makoto Tanaka)　[PDF]

This paper uses randomized filed experiments to investigate how consumers respond to the marginal price of dynamic pricing when they are well informed about their hourly prices in advance. Consumers in our experiments receive one-day ahead notices about the marginal price of electricity for each hour of the next day, which ranges from 15 to 150 yen (15 to 150 cents) per kWh. To compare this economic incentive to non-economic incentives that are often implemented during energy crises, we create another treatment group that receive one-day ahead notification of conservation-warning without any economic incentive. We find that 1) consumers significantly reduce consumption in response to the changes in hourly marginal price, 2) higher hourly marginal prices produce larger reductions in consumption but incremental reductions diminish with further increases in price, 3) conservation warning only (without price incentives) also reduces peak-hour consumption by 3%, 4) however, the magnitude of the reduction is much larger for the dynamic pricing, which produces reductions in consumption by 5% (with the lowest marginal price) to 18% (with the highest marginal price), 5) the effect of conservation warning is larger for high-income households, while the effect of dynamic pricing is larger for low-income households, 6) high electricity users and those who have older air conditioners have a larger response to the dynamic pricing.

May 27, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

※Tokyo Workshop on International Developmentと共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Yasuyuki Todo (University of Tokyo)

How Do Supply Chain Networks Affect the Resilience of Firms to Natural Disasters? Evidence from the Great East Japan Earthquake (joint with Kentaro Nakajima and Petr Matous) [PDF]

This paper examines how supply chain networks affected the resilience of firms to the Great East Japan earthquake, particularly the time that passed before firms resumed operations after the earthquake and sales growth from the pre- to post-earthquake period. The results indicate that the expansion of supply chain networks has two opposing effects on resilience of firms to disasters. On the one hand, when firms are connected with additional firms through supply chain networks, they are more likely to experience disruption of supplies and demands, which delays recovery. On the other hand, firms can benefit from diversified networks with suppliers and clients because they can substitute surviving firms in the network for damaged partners and receive support from surviving partners. Our results indicate that networks with firms outside the impacted area contributed to the earlier resumption of production after the earthquake, whereas networks within the region contributed to sales recovery in the medium term, implying that the positive effects of supply chains on recovery typically exceed the negative effects. We conclude that diversified supply chain networks contribute to the resilience of firms to natural disasters.

June 3, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Naoaki Minamihashi (Bank of Canada)

How Would Hedge Fund Regulation Affect Investor Behavior? Implications for Systemic Risk (joint with Naoki Wakamori) [PDF]

This paper studies investors' demand for hedge funds to examine the effect of regulation being considered by policymakers that aims to enhance financial stability. Using data on fund-level characteristics, we estimate a hedge fund demand that takes into account investors' heterogeneous tastes for using leverage. Our estimation results demonstrate that some of investors positively evaluate using leverage. We then conduct a policy simulation in which regulators put a cap on the hedge funds' leverage, as proposed by the Financial Stability Board in 2012. Simulation results suggest that regulation would lower the total demand for hedge funds. In particular, regulation would lead to lower investments for highly leveraged funds and for risky strategies, which, in turn, would reduce systemic risk.

June 10, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Takashi Kurosaki (Hitotsubashi University)

Impact of Flexible Microcredit on Repayment, Migration, and Food Consumption: Experimental Evidence from Rural Bangladesh (joint with Abu Shonchoy) [PDF]

The mismatch between credit repayments and income seasonality implies a challenge for microfinance institutions (MFIs) working in developing countries. For instance in northern Bangladesh, income and consumption downfalls during the lean season after the transplanting of major paddy crops are a serious threat to the household economy. Poor landless agricultural wage laborers suffer the most due to this seasonality as they face difficulty to smooth their consumption. In designing microcredit products, MFIs do not usually provide any flexibility or seasonal adjustment during the lean season, however. This is mainly because MFIs are afraid of the possibility that such flexibility might break the repayment discipline of borrowers, resulting in higher default rates. We thus conducted a randomized controlled trial in 2011-12 in northern Bangladesh to test empirically whether flexible microcredit leads to an increase in repayment problems for MFIs and whether it can increase and stabilize consumption of borrower households. Our results suggest no statistically discernible difference among the treatment arms in case of default, overdue amount, or repayment frequency. This is in favor of flexible design of microcredit. On the other hand, we find no positive impact of the repayment flexibility on food consumption, either. This could be due to the possibility that the main problem for the ultrapoor is consumption smoothing between the lean and non-lean seasons, the insignificant difference in income changes across the credit schemes studied, or the treated households' perception of the transient nature of the intervention.

June 11, 2013 (Tuesday) 12:10-13:10　※　曜日に注意

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Tetsushi Sonobe (GRIPS)

KAIZEN for Industrial Development in Developing Countries [PDF]

In recent years, managerial capital has received attention as one of the major determinants of enterprise productivity, growth, and longevity. This paper attempts to assess the impacts of a management training program on the business performance of small enterprises in a metalworking cluster in Nairobi, Kenya. A previous study of this cluster observed that while several enterprises had successfully expanded operation, the majority had been experiencing declining profits due to increasing competition with imported products and with new entrants in the cluster. Based on the observed differences in management between successful and less successful enterprises, we designed a management training program featuring the basics of KAIZEN, an inexpensive, commonsense approach to management emphasizing the reduction of wasted work and materials, for the less successful enterprises. Although our initial intention was to use this training program as a randomized experiment, we had to abandon randomization and allow every business owner interested in the program to participate in it, due to circumstances beyond our control. This paper finds that business owners operating smaller enterprises tended to be self-selected into training participation. The training effects combined with the self-selection effect, which we estimate with panel data, were statistically significant and particularly stronger on profits than on sales revenues, while other training programs that did not teach KAIZEN had positive effects on sales revenues, not profits. As a result, the participants caught up with and overtook the non-participants in terms of average sales revenues and average profits, respectively.

 

June 17, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Hitoshi Shigeoka (Simon Fraser University)

School Entry Cutoff Dates and the Timing of Births [PDF]

This is the first paper that documents that school entry cut-off date affects the timing of births. Many countries require children to reach a certain age by a specified date in the calendar year in order to start primary school. There is a clear tradeoff for parents to time a birth either before or after the school entry cut-off date; births just before cut-off date benefit parents by avoiding a year of child care costs through sending their children to school at a relatively young age, while births just after cut-off date may benefit children from being in the oldest among the school cohort, which is shown to provide the children with academic advantage. Using the universe of birth during 1974-2010 in Japan, I find that more than 1,800 births per year are shifted roughly a week before the cut-off date to a week following the cut-off date. The overall shifts in births, however, mask heterogeneous responses of mothers. I find that non-working mothers are more likely to delay births than working mothers. Also male births and higher parity births are more likely to be delayed. Interestingly among those working mothers, mothers with low skilled jobs are more likely to shift births before the school entry cut-off dates, suggesting that for those mothers financial burden of child care outweighs the importance of future academic advantage of children. This study may have implications for growing literature that assumes births around the school entry cut-off dates are random.

June 24, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Yoshito Takasaki (University of Tsukuba)

Why don't the poor receive antenatal care?: Evidence from incentive and information experiments in rural Nigeria (joint with Ryoko Sato) [PDF]

This paper examines why promoting antenatal care among the poor is difficult based on randomized experiments in rural Nigeria. Treatment effects are strongly differentiated by individual history. First, cash incentives conditional on fast uptake are effective only among women who received care before. Others who are less likely to receive care but could learn most from their first visit are irresponsive; we fail to promote their follow-up visits through learning. Second, the combination of lack of experience and low cognitive ability (illiteracy) can adversely affect information intervention (negative effects); though information combined with incentives does not alter the incentive effects.

July 8, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Yoshiro Miwa (Osaka Gakuin University)

Do Wild Fluctuations in Quarterly Inventory Investment Data Matter?: A Study of Japanese GDP Statistics, 1994-2010 [Paper] [Slides]

For more than half a century, inventory investment has attracted wide attention as a major cause of short-term macroeconomic fluctuations, and the mechanisms involved have been the focus of many major studies. Yet microeconomists and business people familiar with corporate behavior have frequently expressed misgivings about the enterprise.

Using Japanese quarterly GDP inventory investment statistics both by commodity and by category, 1994~2010, I investigate the nature of quarterly inventory statistics and the inventory investment behavior, and draw two conclusions. First, statisticians estimate the quarterly statistics under severe time constraints, and their resulting figures incorporate seasonal variations which dominate the quarterly fluctuations. This fluctuation mostly disappears in annual data. Secondly, when I examine the inventory variation after the Lehman shock in the autumn of 2008, I find neither a notable increase in inventory stock nor a long-run stock adjustment process. Given the size of this unforeseen exogenous shock, most observers expected a large inventory stock accumulation to follow. That the accumulation did not follow suggests that the focus on inventory variation may be misplaced.

For inventory investment data estimation, Japan is an ideal OECD country, with generous source statistics availability. The conclusions of this research, drawn from the quarterly GDP inventory statistics, will stimulate the interest both in the study of inventory data in other countries focusing on its estimation process and source statistics, and in the great variety of inventory investment. At the same time, the conclusions pose a grave implication not only for re-evaluation of the literature in inventory investment variations but also for other research topics in macroeconomics like monetary transmission mechanisms including "financial accelerator" theory.

July 12, 2013 (Friday) 12:00-13:00 　※ 日時に注意、Schedule Changed　

※ Tokyo Workshop on International Development　と共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

 

Nobuhiko Fuwa (Waseda University)

Revisiting Sectoral Growth Linkages (and Other Sources of Non-farm Development) in the Rural Philippines

 

While the conventional wisdom in development economics tends to hold the view that agricultural growth facilitates diversification of rural economies (from mainly agricultural to rural nonfarm development), empirical evidence showing such a causal relationship appears to be relatively scarce. Furthermore, theoretical work in the past two decades demonstrates that agricultural growth and non-agricultural growth can be either positively or negatively related, depending on the extent of mobility of the goods and services and of the factors producing them. This paper revisits the question empirically in the context of rural Philippines. It examines the sources of rural non-farm sector growth, which has become the main driver of rural poverty reduction. Based on a dynamic panel analysis using system GMM and applied to provincial panel data covering the period 1985-2006, we find that agricultural growth is (contemporaneously) significantly and positively associated with service sector growth, with elasticity ranging between 0.20 and 0.30, but not with manufacturing growth. This appears to suggest that either rural labor force is sufficiently mobile or capital is relatively immobile across provinces in the Philippines. We find no evidence of causal relationship in Granger's sense, however. We also find different roles played by national road networks, on the one hand, and local roads, on the other; local road appears to facilitate rural nonfarm sector development while national road to facilitate agricultural growth.

August 13, 2013 (Tuesday) 12:10-13:10　※曜日にご注意下さい。

※応用統計ワークショップと共催。　

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Yuya Sasaki （Johns Hopkins University)

A Closed-Form Estimator of Nonparametric Regression Models with Measurement Errors (joint with Yingyao Hu)

This paper provides a closed-form estimator of nonparametric regression models with two measurements of the latent explanatory variable. The error in one measurement is required to have zero conditional mean, but the other measurement can have systematic errors. For this setting, we derive a closed-form solution through an explicit mapping from the observed distribution to the unknown nonparametric regression function, which leads to a well-behaved closed-form estimator. Because of its closed form, our estimator does not rely on numerical optimization, which often fails to find the global maximum unless the model is parsimoniously parameterized. We derive its asymptotic rate of convergence. Monte Carlo simulations and an empirical illustration suggest that the estimator performs well even with a small sample.

September 30, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10 *Schedule Changed

Dainne Wie (GRIPS)

上記セミナーは11月18日へ延期されました。/ The seminar has been postponed to November 18.

October 18, 2013 (Friday) 16:40-18:20　※日時に注意
*応用統計ワークショップと共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

三輪芳朗 (Yoshiro Miwa) (Osaka Gakuin University)
Improving Economic Statistics in Japan for More Active Use: Prologue and Invitation, or kanjin-cho *Presentation in Japanese [PDF1] [PDF2]

October 24, 2013 (Thusday)　12:10-13:10　※曜日に注意
※ Tokyo Workshop on International Developmentと共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Nazmul Chaudhury (World Bank)
The Elephant Vanishes: The reality of classroom learning, or lack thereof

October 28, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10　*Schedule Changed
※Tokyo Workshop on International Developmentと共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

澤田康幸 (Yasuyuki Sawada) (University of Tokyo)
Incentives and Social Preferences in a Traditional Labor Contract: Evidence from Rice Planting Field Experiments in the Philippines (joint with Jun Goto, Takeshi Aida, and Keitaro Aoyagi)

November 11, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

John Giles (The World Bank)

A Pension to Protect Against Poverty in Old Age: The Impact of China's New Rural Pension Program on Poverty and Household Decisions (joint with Chuanchuan Zhang (Central University of Finance and Economics) and Yaohui Zhao (National School of Development, Beijing University))

November 11, 2013 (Monday) 16:40-18:20　※時間にご注意下さい。

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

John Giles (The World Bank)

Village Political Economy, Land Tenure Insecurity and the Rural to Urban Migration Decision: Evidence from China (joint with Ren Mu (Texas A&M University) )

November 15, 2013 (Friday) 16:40-18:20　※日時・会場にご注意下さい。

※Tokyo Workshop on International Developmentと共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 ２階小島コンファレンスルーム
in Kojima Conference Room on the 2nd floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Shahidur Khandker (The World Bank)

Are Microcredit Participants in Bangladesh trapped in poverty and debt? [PDF]

This paper addresses whether microcredit participants in Bangladesh are trapped in poverty and debt, as many critics have argued in recent years. Analysis of data from a long panel survey over a 20-year period confirms this is not the case, although numerous participants have been with microcredit programs for many years. The results of the analysis suggest that participants derive a variety of benefits from microcredit: It helps them to earn income and consume more, accumulate assets, invest in children's schooling, and be lifted out of poverty. This is not to say that non-participants have failed to progress over the same period. Both participants and non-participants have gained as the economy has grown; however, the rates of poverty reduction have been higher for participants. Testing the net effect of microcredit programs requires applying an econometric method that controls for why some households participated and others did not, conditional on their initial characteristics. In addition, the method must control for time-varying, unobserved heterogeneity that affects everyone over time, albeit in possibly different ways. The paper's econometric estimates show significant welfare gains resulting from microcredit participation, especially for women. They also show that the accrued benefits of borrowing outweigh accumulated debt. As a result, households' net worth has increased, and both poverty and the debt-asset ratio have declined.

November 18, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10 *Schedule Changed

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Dainn Wie (GRIPS)

 

Legal Entitlement and Social Status of Mail Order Brides in Korea

November 25, 2013 (Monday) 16:40-18:20　

※日時にご注意下さい。応用統計ワークショップと共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Roger Koenker (University of Illinois)

 

Unobserved Heterogeneity in Longitudinal Data: An Empirical Bayes Perspective （Joint with Jiaying Gu） [paper]

Empirical Bayes methods for Gaussian and binomial compound decision problems involving longitudinal data are considered. A new convex opti- mization formulation of the nonparametric (Kiefer-Wolfowitz) maximum likelihood estimator for mixture models is used to construct nonparametric Bayes rules for compound decisions. The methods are illustrated with some simulation examples as well as an application to predicting baseball batting averages. Comparisons with nonparametric Bayesian methods based on Dirichlet process priors are also provided.

November 28, 2013 (Thursday) 16:40-18:20

※日時にご注意下さい。マクロワークショップと共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Krislert Samphantharak (University of California, San Diego）

Risk and Return in Village Economies (joint with Robert M. Townsend)

We present a theoretical model for the study of risk and return of household enterprise in developing economies. We make predictions from two polar benchmarks: (1) an economy with Pareto optimal allocations under full risk sharing, and (2) an economy in which each autarky household absorbs risk in isolation. The full risk-sharing benchmark delivers the prediction that only aggregate covariate risk contributes to the risk premium of asset returns while idiosyncratic risk is fully diversified, consistent with analogous results derived from the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) in the finance literature. The economy with autarky households predicts that overall variance at the household level is the only concern. Our model allows us to empirically decompose the total risk in production technologies operated by households into aggregate and idiosyncratic components and provides us with a practical procedure to compute risk premium for each component separately. We apply the model to monthly panel data from a household survey in rural Thailand where there are active risk-sharing and kinship networks. We find that there is nontrivial aggregate risk and there is a positive relationship between the expected returns on assets and the comovement of asset returns with the aggregate returns, as predicted by the full risk sharing economy. There is residual idiosyncratic risk and it also contributes to the total risk premium, as predicted by the autarky benchmark. However, although idiosyncratic risk is the dominant factor in total risk, our study shows that it accounts for a much smaller share of total risk premium. Our findings suggest that the risk sharing benchmark captures the larger part, though not all, of what is going on in the Thai village economies in our sample. We also find that exposure to aggregate and idiosyncratic risk is heterogeneous across households.

December 2, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Yusuke Jinnai (International University of Japan)

 

The Impact of Charter Schools' Entry on Traditional Public Schools: New Evidence from North Carolina

December 16, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Hiroaki Matsuura (University of Oxford)

 

Evaluating the Effect of EMTALA to Assure Indigent Access to Hospital Emergency Care Services in the United States

December 20, 2013 (Friday) 16:40-18:20

※日時にご注意下さい。応用統計ワークショップと共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Yoon-Jae Whang (Seoul National University)

 

Testing for a General Class of Functional Inequalities (joint sith Sokbae Lee and Kyungchul Song)

In this paper, we propose a general method for testing inequality restrictions on nonparametric functions. Our framework includes many nonparametric testing problems in a unified framework, with a number of possible applications in auction models, game theoretic models, wage inequality, and revealed preferences. Our test involves a one-sided version of L_p-type functionals of kernel-type estimators (1≤p<∞), and it is easy to implement in general, mainly due to its recourse to the bootstrap method. The bootstrap procedure is based on a nonparametric bootstrap applied to kernel-based test statistics, with estimated "contact sets." We provide regularity conditions under which the bootstrap test is asymptotically valid uniformly over a large class of distributions. Our bootstrap test is shown to exhibit good power properties in Monte Carlo experiments, and we provide a general form of the local power function. As an illustration, we consider testing implications from auction theory, provide low-level conditions for our test, and demonstrate its usefulness by applying our test to real data. We supplement this example with the second empirical illustration in the context of wage inequality.

January 17, 2014 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

※応用統計ワークショップと共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Toru Kitagawa (University College London)

Estimation and Inference for Set-identified Parameters Using Posterior Lower Probability

In inference for set-identified parameters, Bayesian probability statements about unknown parameters do not coincide, even asymptotically, with frequentists confidence statements. This paper aims to smooth out this disagreement from a robust Bayes perspective. I show that a class of prior distributions exists, with which the posterior inference statements drawn via the lower envelope (lower probability) of the class of posterior distributions asymptotically agrees with frequentist confidence statements fo the identified set. With this class of priors, the statistical decision problems, including the point and set estimation of the set-identified parameters, are analyzed under the posterior gamma-minima criterion.

January 20, 2014 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

※UTIPE Distinguished Research Seminar Series funded by Global 30と共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Hisam Kim (Korea Development Institute and Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University)

Status Race and Happiness: What Experimental Surveys Tell Us (joint with Fumio Ohtake)

People's concern about their relative status is regarded as an explanation to the Easterlin paradox, which reports that happiness has not increased despite continued growth in average income. The degree of relative concern varies across people. First, we examine the socio-demographic characteristics and values that lead to a strong relative concern. And then we comprehensively investigate differences in financial outcomes, health, happiness, and behaviors by the degree of relative concern. In particular, Korea is an appropriate country for this study because Koreans experienced rapid economic growth and there exists severe status race in their education system and labor market. Using data from our experimental survey of nationally representative 3,000 Koreans, we examine their preference for positional goods and various behaviors regarding herding, status seeking, and altruism. Our preliminary results show that those who have stronger relative concerns are more likely to live in richer districts and place economic values above non-pecuniary values, and, in reality, they have better financial outcomes. They also exhibit higher tendencies of overconsumption and conspicuous consumption. Their health, however, is worse than others, specifically in psychological health. Moreover, overall happiness is proved to be lower for those who have stronger relative concerns. In a series of hypothetical situations of our survey, they consistently show higher inclinations toward status race and herding but lower degrees of altruism or sympathy. In addition, we propose behavioral approaches to nudge people with a strong relative concern into desirable actions like donation or saving energy by making use of their keen sense of other people's eyes, which induce conspicuous donation or saving energy by peer pressure.

January 27, 2014 (Monday) 12:10-13:40
* Presentation in Japanese

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

博士論文ワークショップ

菊地信義 (Nobuyoshi Kikuchi) (University of Tokyo)

Essays on the Economics of Education and Program Evaluation
(教育経済学及びプログラム評価に関する研究)

※　配付資料なし (no presentation materials)

February 3, 2014 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Mari Sakudo (Development Bank of Japan)

 

Do Social Norms Matter to Energy Saving Behavior?: Endogenous Social and Correlated Effects (joint sith Toshi H. Arimura and Hajime Katayama) [PDF]

Social norms have received growing attention as a potential driver for pro-environmental behavior, partly due to ample evidence based on survey data. Using data from a Japanese household survey on energy saving behavior, we estimate a structural model of social interactions that account for methodological issues inherent in survey data, namely: simultaneity, common shocks and nonrandom group selection. We find that the influence of social norms on energy saving behavior is small or insignificant, while estimates from standard methods in the literature are found to be large and highly significant. Our results suggest that evidence in previous survey-based studies may reflect correlation in unobserved characteristics between members in a group, not the influence of social norms.

March 10, 2014 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Hideo Akabayashi (Keio University)

Early Childhood Education and Care and Cognitive and Non-cognitive Ability in Japan: Evidence from the Japan Child Panel Survey 2010-2012 (joint with Chizuru Shikishima and Jun Yamashita)

※　当日配付資料のみ。(Only hardcopies are available in the seminar.)

March 18, 2014 (Tuesday) 16:40-18:20

※日時にご注意下さい。ミクロワークショップと共催　

*　筆記具をご持参下さい。

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

David Neumark (University of California-Irvine)

Testing for Age Discrimination

March 24, 2014 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Kota Ogasawara (University of Tokyo)

The Impact of SocialWorkers on InfantMortality in Inter-war Tokyo: Bayesian Dynamic Panel Quantile Regression with Endogenous Variables (joint with Genya Kobayashi)

※　当日配付資料のみ。(Only hardcopies are available in the seminar.)

March 26, 2014 (Wednesday) 12:10-13:10　※曜日にご注意下さい。

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Hiroyuki Kasahara (University of British Columbia)

Estimation of Production Function

[特別セミナー]

March 28, 2014 (Friday) 12:00-13:00　※日時にご注意下さい。

※　応用統計ワークショップと共催 　※Presentation in Japanese

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Takahide Yanagi （Kyoto University）

Dynamic Panel Data Analysis when the Dynamics are Heterogeneous (joint with

Ryo Okui)

※　当日配付資料のみ。(Only hardcopies are available in the seminar.)