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...

This study exploits over 5,000 variations in subsidy generosity across ages and municipalities in Japan to examine how children respond to healthcare prices. We find that free care significantly increases outpatient spending, with price elasticities considerably smaller than for adults. Price...

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...

While female CEOs are under-represented, the barriers they face in the business environment remain poorly understood. This study investigates the influence of gender bias in forming CEOs' business networks. Using transaction data of 1 million Japanese firms, we find that CEOs of the same gender...

Economists have long been aware of utility externalities such as a tendency to compare own income with others'. If welfare losses from income comparisons are significant, any governmental interventions that alter such attitudes may have large welfare consequences. We conduct an original online...

We investigate whether individuals' risk preferences change after experiencing a natural disaster, specifically, the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Exploiting the panels of nationally representative surveys on risk preferences, we find that men who experienced greater intensity of the...

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,...

Exploiting new data on county-level variation in alcohol prohibition from 1933 to 1939, we investigate whether the repeal of federal prohibition increased infant mortality, both in counties that repealed and in their neighboring counties. Using a binomial fixed-effects model, we find that repeal...