Koryu Sato Seminar: "Understanding the Realities of Modern Society Through Economics and Data"

2025.05.08

Koryu Sato, Senior Assistant Professor, Faculty of Policy Management

Areas of Expertise: Health Economics, Social Epidemiology

My specialty is using statistical methods to clarify how environmental factors, such as socioeconomic status, affect people's health.

The purpose of my seminar is for students to acquire the skills and knowledge to quantitatively analyze various problems in modern society using the methods of applied microeconometrics and the statistical software R. It is run jointly with the seminar of Professor Makiko Nakamuro , which has been around for some time, and the content is quite demanding.

Each seminar session centers on reports of individual research, and students are required to complete one research project per semester. Presentations are divided into four or five sections: research motivation, literature review, descriptive statistics of the data, estimation, and discussion. Students take turns presenting once every two weeks. Although my own specialty is medicine and health, seminar students are "free" to choose presentation topics from fields such as economics, culture, education, and policy, and are expected to conduct empirical research of a publishable quality.

For each presentation, fellow students, Professor Nakamuro, specially appointed faculty, and I ask questions and provide comments. Presenters are expected to act professionally, and phrases like "I don't know," "I don't understand," "I hadn't thought about that," or "I'm sorry" are forbidden. Any presentation that shows a lack of effort will be met with relentless academic criticism. Unexcused absences from a presentation will result in being kicked out of the seminar without exception. Although they are students, we treat them as equals during presentations, and faculty members also contribute seriously to the discussion. Many students are sleep-deprived the day before their presentation due to preparation.

As mentioned above, this is an extremely demanding seminar, so students must be prepared to dedicate a significant amount of time and effort. Completing one research project in a single semester (three and a half months) is a challenge even for professional researchers. I once suggested to the students, "How about we slow down the pace and spend about a year carefully researching one theme?" However, the students rejected the idea, saying, "We don't want to slow down the pace of completing one study per semester" (laughs). Rather than being led by the faculty, the seminar is driven by the students themselves, who are voracious in their pursuit of research.

The research results are presented at an "inter-seminar" (in-zemi) held jointly with the seminars of Professor Fumio Ohtake of Osaka University and Professor Yasuyuki Sawada of the University of Tokyo. From among the student presentations, Professor Ohtake and Professor Sawada select a Best Presentation Award winner, who receives a grand prize. Because their research, which they have worked on seriously for a whole semester, is evaluated by leading economists, the student who wins the award gets to taste the literal "sweet wine of victory" (soft drinks for those underage) at the post-event gathering, while the other students are left feeling quite disappointed. However, my enjoyment comes from listening to the presentations of those same students in the following semester, as they channel that disappointment and reflection into remarkable growth.

Many of our seminar students go on to work in the private sector. However, the reason we approach the seminar with such academic rigor is our belief that the experience of dedicating oneself to research will be valuable in the professional world. The ability to explain things logically and clearly, the ability to discern the truth from data, and the ability to get things done within a tight schedule—first- and second-year students who initially gave presentations full of holes become seasoned presenters with airtight arguments by the time they are in their fourth year. I send the students who have completed this seminar out into the world with the confidence that they will surely be fine wherever they go.

Koryu Sato, Senior Assistant Professor, Faculty of Policy Management - Faculty Profile