Research

Publications

Abstract

This study estimates the Aid-for-Trade (AfT)-export elasticity from the donor perspective, focusing on the top-five donor countries: Japan, Germany, France, US, and UK. We find the elasticity for Japan is large, suggesting that the Japanese AfT generates a net export expansion, in contrast with the other top donors. We examine the potential mechanism behind the export creation effect of Japanese AfT using unique contract data on infrastructure-related projects worldwide. The results suggest that Japanese AfT, highly concentrated in economic infrastructure, works as an informal tying arrangement, closely linking aid to donor exports associated with capital goods for infrastructure construction.

Working Papers

Abstract

Improving environmental quality while sustaining economic growth is an important challenge. Civil liability can give firms incentives to reduce pollution, but whether it improves environmental quality and health, and at what cost to manufacturing, is less well understood. This study examines these questions using evidence from Japan’s four landmark pollution lawsuits during the early 1970s. We use difference-in-differences designs to compare changes in the lawsuit prefectures with changes in other prefectures. Using fog days as a proxy for historical air pollution, we find that fog days declined in the lawsuit prefectures over the judgment year and the following ten years. Annual all-cause deaths also declined by an average of 3.9% relative to comparison municipalities over the same period. Manufacturing shows no broad contraction: employment, shipments, and gross value added average 13.5%, 9.1%, and 10.2% higher relative to the comparison group over the same period. These findings suggest that pollution litigation can contribute to environmental and health improvements while maintaining manufacturing activity by encouraging firms to undertake pollution abatement and process change.

Abstract

This study estimates the causal effect of wildfires on health at birth by using lightning strikes as an instrumental variable. In the birth month, a one standard deviation increase in natural-caused wildfire size from its sample mean increases the incidence of low birth weight by 1.1 per 1,000 births. Alongside the existing evidence on wildfire smoke, the results provide suggestive evidence of a local-disruption channel, including stress-related responses. Finally, the estimated adverse birth-weight effect is smaller in counties where more land had previously been treated to reduce wildfire fuels through prescribed burning or mechanical vegetation removal.

Working Papers in Japanese

Work in Progress

  • Wildfires and the Labor Market

  • The Impact of Children’s Cafeterias on Child Development with Kengo Igei and Makiko Nakamuro