Hospitals in Japan have complete autonomy in deciding whether to admit COVID-19 patients, similar to that of the US. Taking this into account, we estimated the effect of admitting COVID-19 patients on hospital profits, using instrumental variable (IV) regression. Using IVs related to government...

To control the spread of COVID-19, the national government of Japan abruptly announced the closure of elementary schools on March 2, 2020, but preschools were exempted from this nationwide school closure. Taking advantage of this natural experiment, we examined how the proactive closure of...

This paper examines whether tax mimicking occurs among municipalities in the setting of health insurance tax levels in Japan. To uncover the effects of strategic mimicking behavior among neighboring municipalities, we exploit the fact that insurance tax levels sharply dropped when municipalities...