Can a smaller-class at school lead to a better educational outcome and more equality in achievement? We estimate the causal effects of class-size on achievement tests by using discontinuous changes in class-size under the Japanese public compulsory education system. We employ a value-added model...

Whether universal preschool education can eliminate the achievement gap among children in the long term has been debated in the United States and elsewhere. This paper offers new evidence from the experience of massive preschool education expansion in Japan. Using prefecture-level panel data, we...

type="main" <p>Can smaller classes lead to better educational outcomes and greater equality in achievement? We estimate the causal effects of class size on achievement tests by using discontinuous changes in class size under the Japanese public compulsory education system. We employ a value-added...</p>

Whether universal preschool education can eliminate the achievement gap among children in the long term has been debated in the United States and elsewhere. This paper offers new evidence from the experience of massive preschool education expansion in Japan. Using prefecture-level panel data, we...

The superstition that says women born in the year of the firehorse (Hinoeuma) are emotional and difficult to control clearly caused the fertility rate to drop sharply in Japan in 1906 and 1966. In this article, we focus on the lives of those born in the firehorse generation. We use government...

The Japanese tax system offers an opportunity to investigate the labor supply response of married women to the income tax and the intrahousehold resource allocation mechanism, since the deductible amount from the husband’s income decreases as the wife’s earnings increase. Using cross-section...

We investigate the degree to which there is a trade-off between child labour and human capital formation using time-log data of children from a Tanzanian household survey. We find that a tradeoff between hours of work and study exists, and hours of work tend to be more affected by social...

This paper provides evidence on whether mandating wider subject variety on high school entrance exams affects long-term educational achievement using Japanese historical experiences. In Japan, where high school education is non-compulsory, prefectural boards of education have retained the...

Although education voucher programs for students attending private high schools have existed in Japan for decades, to date there have been no studies that examine their effectiveness. In this study, we estimate the programs' preventative effect on dropout by using school-track level (academic or...