This study investigates what factors determine students' academic performance in five major economies in East Asia, using the dataset from the 2007 survey of Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). We explicitly consider initial maturity differences, endogeneity of class...

This study examines retirement decisions in Japan, using the option value (OV) model proposed by Stock and Wise (1990) and examined by subsequent studies. This model assumes that an individual maximizes a weighted average of utility from labor income until retirement as well as that from pension...

This study examines the work capacity of older adults in Japan. First, we estimate the relationship between a variety of health indicators and work status.Work status is divided into full-time work, part-time work, and retired for those in their 50s who are not yet age-eligible for public...

Although earlier studies have demonstrated an association between perceived neighborhood characteristics and self-rated health, these studies did not control for the psychological characteristics of participants, an important consideration when using self-reported data. In this study, we...

Using panel data from two surveys in Japan and Europe, we examine the comparability of the self-rated health of the middle-aged and elderly across Japan and the European countries and the survey periods. We find that a person’s own health is evaluated on different standards (thresholds) across...

This paper explores the public pension claiming behavior of the Japanese. First, we perform financial simulations and estimate the expected utility, depicting the typical patterns of pension benefits over a life cycle. We show that the optimal retirement age depends on the beneficiaries’...

We examine how social security programs have affected the labor force participation (LFP) of the elderly over the past forty years in Japan. Using publicly available data, we construct forwardlooking incentive measures for inducing retirement, to ascertain the actual changes in the generosity of...

This paper examines whether social security programs induce a withdrawal of the elderly from the labor force and create jobs for the young in Japan. The key messages are summarized as follows. First, our historical overview suggests that young unemployment issues have not motivated social...