Stanford Conference on "The Political Economy of Japan under the Abe Government"

February 8 - February 9, 2018

Philippines Conference Room

Sponsored by: Japan Society for Promotion of Science, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (Stanford University), and Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (Stanford University)

Organizers: Takeo Hoshi and Phillip Lipscy

Program

2/8/2018

8:30am     Breakfast
 

9:15am     Welcome remarks
                 Gi-Wook Shin (Stanford University)
                Toru Tamiya (Japan Society for Promotion of Science)
 

9:30am  "Transformation of the Japanese Political System: Expansion of the Power of the Japanese Prime Minister", Harukata Takenaka (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)

Discussant:
Saori Katada (University of Southern California)
 

10:30am  Break
 

10:50am  "Constitutional Revision Under the Abe Administration", Kenneth McElwain (University of Tokyo)

Discussant:
Yu Jin Woo (Stanford University)

11:50am  Lunch
 

1:00pm    "Do election results reflect voters' policy preferences? Evidence from the 2017 Japanese general election", Yusaku Horiuchi (Dartmouth College), Shiro Kuriwaki (Ph.D, Harvard University), Daniel Smith (Harvard University)

Discussant:
Rob Weiner (Naval Postgraduate School)

2:00pm   "Japan's Security Policy in 'the Abe Era': Radical Transformation or Evolutionary Shift?", Adam Liff (Indiana University)

Discussant:
Ashten Seung Cho (Stanford University)

3:00pm  Break
 

3:20pm   "Abenergynomics: The Politics of Energy and Climate Change under Abe", Trevor Incerti (Yale University) and Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University)

Discussant:
Kent Calder (Johns Hopkins SAIS)

4:20pm   "Innovation Policy", Kenji Kushida (Stanford University)

Discussant:
John Zysman (University of California, Berkeley)
 

5:20pm     Adjourn
 

6:30pm     Group Dinner

2/9/2018

9:00am   Breakfast
 

9:30am   "Abenomics, Monetary Policy, and Consumption", Joshua Hausman (University of Michigan), Takashi Unayama (Hitotsubashi University), and Johannes Wieland (University of California, San Diego)

Discussant:
Huiyu Li (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)
 

10:30am  Break

10:50am "The Great Disconnect: The Decoupling of Wage and Price Inflation in Japan", Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University) and Anil Kashyap (University of Chicago)

Discussants:
Joshua Hausman (University of Michigan)
Johannes Wieland (University of California, San Diego)
 

11:50pm  Lunch
 

1:00pm  "Corporate Governance Reform", Hideaki Miyajima (Waseda University)

Discussant:
Curtis Milhaupt (Stanford University)
 

2:00pm   "Womenomics", Nobuko Nagase (Ochanomizu University)

Discussant:
Steve Vogel (University of California, Berkeley)
 

3:00pm  Break
 

3:20pm  "Japanese Agricultural Reform Under Abe Shinzo: Two Steps Forward, A Half-Step Back?", Patricia Maclachlan (University of Texas at Austin) and Kay Shimizu (University of Pittsburgh)

Discussant:
Takatoshi Ito (Columbia University and National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)
 

4:20pm   "Yen Depreciation and Competitiveness of Japanese Firms", Kyoji Fukao (Hitotsubashi University) and Shuichiro Nishioka (West Virginia University)

Discussant:
Katheryn Russ (University of California, Davis)
 

5:20pm  "Next Step", Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University) and Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University)
 

5:50pm  Adjourn

Confronting a declining population and increased aging, the government of Japan currently implements measures for Regional Revitalization (chiho sosei), a policy to vitalize local economies by shaping “a social framework more amenable to bearing and raising children.” One of the most important policy issues to shape such a framework is to secure employment opportunities in regional economies, and establishment of new firms, or startups, plays a significant role in providing new employment opportunities.

For the success of startups, money (fund raising) is the chief obstacle because startups are rarely creditworthy and have significant asymmetry of information on its repayment ability with lenders. Such firms have difficulty in raising funds, or financial constraint, and cannot help but depend on internal funds from their CEOs or families. Whether and to what extent do startups confront with financial constraint? How does finance matter for the performance of startups? And first of all, how do various types of startups raise funds?

To answer these questions, Uchida currently leads a research project on startup finance in Japan with support from a large-scale research grant in Japan (JSPS Kakenhi). In this seminar, he reports findings from this ongoing project. He presents an overview of, and some empirical results on, the current statu of startups firms and startup finance in Japan using publicly available data and data from original surveys that his research team has conducted. He also provides some findings from international comparisons with findings from the U.S., which he currently undertakes as a visiting scholar at APARC (with support from Abe Fellowship).

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Hirofumi Uchida joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2017-2018 academic year from the Kobe University’s Graduate School of Business Administration where he serves as a professor of Banking and Finance.

Uchida’s research interests focus on banking, financial institutions, and financial system architecture. During his stay at Shorenstein APARC, Uchida will conduct research on startup finance in the U.S. from the perspective of an international comparison with Japan. For this research, he receives Abe Fellowship (Social Science Research Council).

Uchida's research has been published in International Economic Review, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Economica, and Journal of Banking and Finance, among others. He is also an associate editor of Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, and a member of the Study Group for Earthquake and Enterprise Dynamics (SEEDs) and the Money & Finance Research Group (MoFiR). 

Uchida received his M.A. in Economics in 1995 and his Ph.D. in Economics in 1999, both from Osaka University. Prior to joining Kobe University in 2009, Uchida was with the Kyoto Institute for Economic Research at Kyoto University, and the Faculty of Economics at Wakayama University. He was also a visiting scholar at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University as a 2003 Fulbright Scholar.

Japan is commonly regarded as a country that is closed against migrants. It does not allow their entries in a large size, granting restricted rights. As an attempt to understand this tendency, this research claims that Japan’s citizenship law, jus sanguinis (by ancestry) principle, sets a fundamental frame for its migration policymaking. To test this claim, it examines how the citizenship law influences attitudes of the general public as well as those of politicians. Specifically, Japan under a strong emphasis on blood ties is more likely to impose a restrictive migration policy, because (1) the general public tends to reveal a greater distance toward migrants (societal nature); and (2) migrant groups are excluded from electorate, and thus, politicians are less inclined to impose generous policies for them (electoral nature).  In order to demonstrate these mechanisms, this research traces Japanese public attitude and political incentives, which have governed its migration policy until today.

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