Working papers

Empowering Women Through Radio: Evidence from Occupied Japan (latest version: October 2024, R&R Journal of Development Economics) 

I study the impact of women’s radio programs that the US-led occupying force aired nationwide in Occupied Japan (1945-1952) to dismantle the prewar patriarchal norms. From the perspective of the economics of identity, the radio messages can be viewed as attempts to alter gendered identity norms, and thus to shift women’s political, economic, and family outcomes. Using local variation in radio signal strength driven by soil conditions as an instrumental variable, I show that greater exposure to women’s radio programs increased women’s electoral turnout, and the vote share for female candidates, highlighting women’s votes matter. I find no effects on women’s labor market outcomes, but exposure to women’s radio programs accelerated the postwar fertility transition. Overall, disseminating pro-gender-equality messages can have significant implications for both women's lives and society at large, potentially paving the way for rapid economic growth that would follow.

In Japanese: 週刊東洋経済 経済学者が読み解く現代経済のリアル（2021年3月20日号）

Women's Labor Market Opportunities and Equality in the Household (September 2024 with Erik Grönqvist, Lena Hensvik and Anna Thoresson. R&R Journal of Public Economics)

We examine how changes in couples' pay gap impact their division of childcare responsibilities. Theoretically, we expect that changes in parents' comparative advantage should reallocate their childcare time, the degree to which depends on the substitutability of their time. Empirically, we exploit shifts in household relative wages stemming both from unpredicted female wage shocks and from a wage reform. A higher female relative wage reduces the childcare time gap, which is primarily driven by women's reduced contribution. Importantly, traditional couples make smaller adjustments. Our findings emphasize that policies addressing female pay can foster household equality, contingent on prevailing gender attitudes.

Intrahousehold Welfare: Theory and Application to Japanese Data (with Pierre-André Chiappori and Costas Meghir. Under review)  current version: February 2025, NBER Working Paper No. 32645 (revised February 2025) 

In this paper we develop a novel approach to measuring individual welfare within households, recognizing that individuals may have both different preferences (particularly regarding public consumption) and differential access to resources. We construct a money metric measure of welfare that accounts for public goods (by using personalized prices) and the allocation of time. We then use our conceptual framework to analyse intrahousehold inequality in Japan, allowing for the presence of two public goods: expenditures on children and other public goods including housing. We show empirically that women have much stronger preferences for both public goods and this has critical implications for the distribution of welfare in the household.

Unpacking the Child Penalty Using Personnel Data: How Promotion Practices Widen the Gender Pay Gap (with Shintaro Yamaguchi and Takeshi Murooka. Under review) February 20205,  IZA Discussion Paper No. 17673

We estimate the child penalty using detailed personnel records that enable decomposition into distinct pay components. Our analysis reveals that the penalty is initially driven by reductions in time-based pay following childbirth. However, job-rank-based pay becomes increasingly significant over time, emerging as the dominant factor by the 15-year mark. These effects are interconnected: reduced working hours lead to lower performance evaluations, which subsequently limit promotion opportunities. Our theoretical model demonstrates that current promotion practices, which reward extended hours at entry-level positions, can generate production inefficiency. This finding suggests that addressing promotion practices could simultaneously reduce gender inequality and improve talent allocation, making a compelling business case for organizational reform.

Electoral institutions, women's representation, and policy outcomes (2022, with Ayumi Sudo. Draft available upon request) 

Do electoral institutions affect the degree to which female legislators address women’s interests in legislative processes? While the growing literature has examined whether increased women’s representation causally affects policy outcomes, whether electoral institutions mediate the effect is less known. To fill the gap, this study tests whether proportional representation (PR) encourages female representatives to address women-specific interests more than a single-member district (SMD) does. To elicit the causal impact of electoral institutions, we leverage the unique “best loser” provision of the mixed electoral system in the Japanese House of Representatives elections, where a marginal candidate may win an SMD seat or PR seat by chance. To fully account for the complex structure of the mixed electoral system, we apply the simulation-based regression discontinuity design. Across different legislative activities, we consistently find a significant effect of holding a PR seat: female PR representatives more frequently affiliate with women-related committees, submit question memorandums on women’s issues, and endorse petitions regarding women’s interests than their male counterparts, but significantly less so when they stand as SMD representatives. The institutional effect likely arises because a SMD representative has higher incentives to address issues both male and female voters care about. Such a vote-seeking strategy is not necessarily compatible with representing women-specific interests. Meanwhile, a PR representative earns their party’s reputation from female voters by addressing women-specific interests. Overall, our results suggest that electoral institutions do affect the relationship between women’s nominal representation and their policy consequences. More broadly, our findings bring forward the research agenda in political economics to better understand the political institutions and policy choices and, in particular, underscore the importance of institutional environments in leveraging diverse voices in policymaking.

Selected work in progress 

Agree to Disagree? The Effect of Policy Alignment and Voice Pitch on Gendered Perceptions of Politicians (with Seiki Tanaka and Reiko Kage) AER RCT registry  AEARCTR-0013374

Modernizing Medicine: Changing Spatial Distributions of Physicians in Japan, 1874-2020  (with Chiaki Moriguchi, Megumi Murakami and Chihiro Inoue)  

Publications 

“Land and Real Estate Price Sensitivity to a Disaster: Evidence from the 2011 Thai Floods"

“The Long-Run Socio-Economic Consequences of a Large Disaster: The 1995 Earthquake in Kobe”