Jul 5, 2025

Presentation at the "15th Masahiko Aoki Award in Comparative Institutional Economic High-Level lecture" held by Tsinghua University (July 4, 2025)

I had the honor to present at the "15th Masahiko Aoki Award in Comparative Institutional Economic High-Level lecture” held by the School of Public Policy and Manangement, Tsinghua University on July 4, 2025.

You can check out the slides I used for the presentation from the link below:

"Japan’s Income Inequity and Social Security System"
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BhMpBKKn9inppQSXxWmG0qySQNuf8XqD/view?usp=sharing

Jun 4, 2025

AGI Working Paper Series “Causes of the Sharp Decline in Migration to Major Metropolitan Areas in the 1970s”

My paper has been published in the AGI Working Paper Series.

(Co-authored with Shinsuke Ikeda and Hiroki Hoshina)


Abstract:
Japan's rapid growth in the 1960s was accompanied by a massive migration from rural to urban areas. However, immediately after 1970, migration declined sharply, and at the same time, the rate of economic growth plummeted.
To explain this decline in urban-bound migration, we estimated the urban-bound migration function.
The estimation reveals that in the 1970s, the largest factor contributing to the decline in this migration was the relative increase in per capita income in rural areas. The second most important factor was narrowing regional disparities in the job-to-application ratio. In addition, the relative increase in the stock of social capital in the local regions also
contributed. However, the population change in the rural areas had negligible effects on urban-bound migration in the 1970s.
This paper also demonstrates that the relative increase in per capita income in rural areas is largely due to policy-based regional redistribution, implying that the large-scale redistribution of the fruits of rapid economic growth to rural areas halted urban-bound migration and reduced the growth rate. This suggests that for developing countries experiencing high growth, curbing the political pressure to redistribute to rural areas may be important to sustain the growth.

May 13, 2025

TIME magazine published my comments on measures to combat high rice prices

TIME Magazine published my comments on measures to combat high rice prices. They state that the government must reduce import tariff rates with appropriate compensation for farmers.

Click here for the full article.

Jun 18, 2024

Presentation at the Japan Association for Applied Economics

I gave a lecture at the Japan Association for Applied Economics: "Why did Japan's period of rapid economic growth end in the early 1970s?

You can view a revised version of the slides used on the day below.

May 30, 2024

Keynote speech at CIDEG in Tsinghua University: “Japan's Social Security System”

On May 24, 2024, Hatta gave a keynote speech on “Japan’s Social Security System” at The 34th Academic Conference of CIDEG (Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance) in Tsinghua University, Beijing.

The presentation focused on three themes: redistributive policies, the pension system, and Japan’s social security experience. It explained the current status of these systems and the direction of reform.

A revised version of the slides used in the presentation can be found at the following link:

Jun 13, 2023

Presentation at the "15th Masahiko Aoki Award in Comparative Institutional Economic High-Level lecture" held by Tsinghua University (July 4, 2025)

I had the honor to present at the "15th Masahiko Aoki Award in Comparative Institutional Economic High-Level lecture” held by the Schoo...