The poor live paycheck to paycheck and are repeatedly exposed to strong cyclical income fluctuations. We investigate whether such income fluctuations affect risk preference among the poor. If risk preference temporarily changes around payday, optimal decisions made before payday may no longer be...

In Japan, as in other developed countries, smoking rates have been decreasing among men but it has been increasing among women. The prevalence of smoking may relate to accompanying gender differences in the labor market. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine how occupation affects...

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a fact-finding study on how differences in the supply of medical care affect the cause-specific mortality among children aged 1 to 4 years in Japan. We find that the supply of emergency medical care in hospitals has a significant negative effect on the...

Informal care by adult children remains the most common source of caregiving for elderly parents in Japan, even after the introduction of long-term care insurance in 2000. We estimate how the potential supply of child caregivers affects the use of formal care of elderly parents, focusing on the...

There are some problems with the standard errors of QALY weights proposed by Groot (2000, Journal of Health Economics 19). The standard errors show smaller values than those of Groot when we recalculate using his method. Moreover, we correct the derivation of his approximation and derive...

There are some problems with the standard errors of QALY weights proposed by Groot (2000, Journal of Health Economics 19). The standard errors show smaller values than those of Groot when we recalculate using his method. Moreover, we correct the derivation of his approximation and derive...