Kobe University · Graduate School of Economics · 講師

Research keywordsmarriage and divorce dynamics・fertility bargaining・gender convergence・household labor supply・causal inference

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• A Quantitative Model of Non-Marriage and Fertility: Bargaining over Leisure2019 · This paper introduces a new factor contributing to the decline in marriage and fertility: the growth of leisure technology. Over recent decades, high-income countries have experienced two notable shifts in household and family dynamics. First, there has been a significant decline in marriage rates and fertility. Second, time has increasingly been allocated to leisure activities. This paper presents a unified model of marriage and fertility, incorporating intra-household bargaining dynamics. The model, calibrated using data from Japan between 2019 and 2023, is employed to assess the impact of leisure technology growth on marriage and fertility during 2005-2009. The findings highlight that leisure technology growth makes single life relatively more appealing compared to marriage and parenthood. The model explains 21.1% of the decline in marriage and 73.1% of the decrease in fertility.
• Marriage and Divorce in Continuous Time2009 · This paper reformulates the Greenwood and Guner (2009) marriage and divorce model in continuous time using the HACT methods of Achdou et al. (2022). Replacing the AR(1) match quality process with an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process yields a tridiagonal generator, reducing the computational complexity of both the value function and stationary distribution calculations from quadratic to linear in the number of grid points. The continuous-time model closely replicates the discrete-time equilibrium across all key outcomes, including the share of married households, the marriage rate, and the divorce rate, while achieving substantial gains in computation time and memory usage.
• On Causal Inference with Model-Based OutcomesWe propose a causal framework for applications where the outcome of interest is a unit-specific response to events, which first needs to be measured from the data. We suggest a two-step procedure: first, estimate unit-level event studies (ULES) by comparing pre- and post-event outcomes of each unit to a suitable control group; second, use the ULES in causal analysis. We outline the theoretical conditions under which this two-step procedure produces interpretable results, highlighting the underlying statistical challenges. Our method overcomes the limitations of regression-based approaches prevalent in the empirical literature, allowing for a deeper examination of heterogeneity and dynamic effects. We apply this framework to analyze the impact of childcare provision reform on the magnitude of child penalties in the Netherlands, illustrating its ability to reveal nuanced positive relationships between childcare provision and parental labor supply. In contrast, traditional regression-based analysis delivers negative effects, thereby emphasizing the benefits of our two-step approach.
• Barriers to Gender Convergence: The Interactive Effects of Job Inflexibility and Social NormsThis paper investigates the barriers to gender convergence using Japan as a salient environment to explore the interactive effects of labor market structures and social norms. I develop a quantitative model of household labor supply where couples jointly decide their occupations and working hours. The model features a labor market with inflexible "regular" jobs with convex pay schedules and flexible "non-regular" jobs, interacting with social norms regarding spousal earnings. The calibrated model successfully reproduces observed gender gaps in participation, occupation, and working hours, and explains 48% of the gender wage gap. The model also accounts for cross-regional differences in gender gaps solely through variation in social norms. Counterfactual simulations show that while increasing job flexibility substantially reduces wage and occupational gaps, the working hours gap persists due to the unequal burden of domestic work. Closing this remaining gap requires policies such as affordable household services. Furthermore, the model suggests that the effects of structural reforms can depend on the strength of gender norms, with larger reductions in gender gaps in more conservative environments.

• 余暇技術の向上やサーチ摩擦に着目した未婚化, 晩婚化と少子化の分析 柳本 和春 日本学術振興会, 科学研究費助成事業, 研究活動スタート支援, 神戸大学, 2025年07月31日 - 2027年03月31日2025 · KUID parsed section
• 余暇技術の向上やサーチ摩擦に着目した未婚化, 晩婚化と少子化の分析

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