Using birth records in Japan, where school entry rule is strictly enforced, this paper shows that more than 1,800 births a year are shifted from one week before the school entry cutoff date to one week following the cutoff date. Because older children perform better academically than their...

This paper exploits a sharp reduction in patient cost sharing at age 70 in Japan, using a regression discontinuity design to examine its effect on utilization, health, and financial risk arising from out-of-pocket expenditures. Due to the national policy, cost sharing is 60-80 percent lower at...

Risk preferences play a fundamental role in individuals' economic decision-making. We examine whether the historical macroeconomic environment shapes individuals' willingness to take risks. Using nationally representative samples from Japan and exploiting regional variation in economic...

We examine the impact of Articial Intelligence (AI) on productivity in the context of taxi drivers. The AI we study assists drivers with finding customers by suggesting routes along which the demand is predicted to be high. We find that AI improves drivers' productivity by shortening the...

We examine the mortality effects of a 1947 school reform in Japan, which extended compulsory schooling from primary to secondary school by as much as 3 years. The abolition of secondary school fees also indicates that those affected by the reform likely came from disadvantaged families who could...

Although at least 400 million people suffer from seasonal allergies worldwide, the adverse effects of pollen on "non-health" outcomes, such as cognition and productivity, are relatively understudied. Using ambulance archives from Japan, we demonstrate that high pollen days are associated with...

Economists have long been concerned that negative attitudes about relative income reduce social welfare. This paper investigates whether such attitudes can be mitigated by a simple information treatment. Toward this end, we conducted an original randomized online survey experiment in the US and...

Classroom peers are believed to influence learning by teaching each other, and the efficacy of this teaching likely depends on classroom composition in terms of peers' ability. Unfortunately, little is known about peer-to-peer teaching because it is never observed in field studies. Furthermore,...

We evaluate the impact of government mandated proof of vaccination requirements for access to public venues and non-essential businesses on COVID-19 vaccine uptake. We find that the announcement of a mandate is associated with a rapid and significant surge in new vaccinations (more than 60%...