Published papers

© 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: Homeownership has been the main focus of housing policies in most countries. Typical means that households use to achieve homeownership is to take out a loan and supplement this with accumulated wealth for a downpayment. This paper aims to analyze the mortgage demand behavior of households in the UK, Australia and Japan. Design/methodology/approach: Using three panel data sets, HILDA for Australia, KHPS for Japan and USS for the UK, the paper estimates three equations using ordinary least squares: mortgage demand function, housing demand function and initial loan to value ratio function. Findings: Though homeownership is a preferred tenure and the mortgages are “recourse” loans, housing markets in these three countries operate in different mortgage market institutional structures. Results indicate that income elasticity of mortgage demand differ despite income elasticity of housing demand being similar. Different mortgage institutions in countries that pose constraints for borrowers also determine mortgage demand. Other factors such as demography and economic conditions have also played an important role in determining mortgage and housing demand. Originality/value: The paper is first, to the authors’ knowledge, that explores the role of institutions in mortgage demand in a comparative framework for the UK, Japan and Australia.

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. 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 freedom to set admission criteria for public high schools within their prefecture, including the number of subjects tested on entrance exams. Using prefectural-level panel data, we estimate the effect of the number and choice of subjects tested at the time of high school entrance on the probability of college attendance three years later. We find that the variety of subjects tested has a positive effect on the later college enrollment. Our findings are broadly consistent with the incentive theory of testing (Lazear, 2006) and the empirical results from other countries.

© 2020, The Author(s). This paper examines the effects of the 2012 revisions to the damage predictions of an anticipated Nankai Trough megathrust earthquake on subsequent inter-municipality migration in Japan’s coastal areas. We find that an increase in predicted tsunami height—rather than anticipated seismic movements—after the 2012 revision is associated with a subsequent reduction in net migration. While the reducing effect of tsunami predictions on in-migration persisted throughout the study period, the effect on out-migration was only temporary. Moreover, working-age people are more likely to respond to tsunami risk and avoid moving to municipalities with a high tsunami risk after the revisions.