October 31, 2013
At the 65th Annual Conference of the Japan Society of Educational Sociology, Associate Professor Makiko Nakamuro received the International Award for Encouragement of Research. The Japan Society of Educational Sociology is an academic society dedicated to the development and dissemination of the sociology of education.
The society holds an annual research conference every autumn, where general research presentations are given in sessions divided by theme. Associate Professor Nakamuro received the award in recognition of her active dissemination of the outstanding research results from her presented paper to an international audience in languages other than Japanese.
Comment from Associate Professor Makiko Nakamuro
I received the Japan Society of Educational Sociology's International Award for Encouragement of Research for the paper "Estimating the Returns to Education Using a Sample of Twins - The Case of Japan-" (RIETI Discussion Paper, 12-E-076). This paper, which I co-authored with Professor Tomohiko Inui (Faculty of Economics, Nihon University / RIETI), estimates the rate of return on education in Japan using large-scale twin data and methods from the economics of education.
This paper was also featured prominently in the education section of the Asahi Shimbun on January 10, 2013, which suggests a high level of public interest in the question of what returns can be expected when education is viewed as an investment. I would like to express my gratitude for the support I received in writing this paper to the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) project on "Economic Analysis of Service Industries: Productivity, Economic Welfare, and Policy Evaluation" and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A)) project on "Quality Assessment and Productivity Measurement of Non-Market Services" (Principal Investigator: Professor Takeshi Hiromatsu, Institute of Information Security).