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I analyze factory worker households in the early 1920s in Osaka to examine idiosyncratic income shocks and consumption. Using the household-level monthly panel dataset, I find that while households could not fully cope with idiosyncratic…
This study examines the role of pawnshops as a risk-coping device in prewar Japan. Using data on pawnshop loans for more than 250 municipalities and exploiting the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic as a natural experiment, we find that the…
The paper presents findings from a comprehensive study examining the saving and credit behaviors of low-income households residing in unauthorized colonies within a metropolitan area. Utilizing a dual approach, the study engaged in…
This article reviews the economics literature of, primarily, the last 20 years, that studies the link between income shocks and consumption fluctuations at the household level. We identify three broad approaches through which researchers…
We examine the impact of livelihood diversification on food insecurity amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis uses household panel data from Ethiopia, Malawi, and Nigeria in which the first round was collected immediately prior to the…
I develop and estimate a dynamic equilibrium model of risky entrepreneurs' borrowing and savings decisions incorporating both formal and local-informal credit markets. Households have access to an exogenous formal credit market and to an…
We examine the effects of monetary policy on income inequality in Japan using a novel econometric approach that jointly estimates the Gini coefficient based on micro-level grouped data of households and the dynamics of macroeconomic…
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a massive economic shock across the world due to business interruptions and shutdowns from social-distancing measures. To evaluate the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 on individuals, a micro-economic model…
This paper demonstrates how reinforcement learning can explain two puzzling empirical patterns in household consumption behavior during economic downturns. I develop a model where agents use Q-learning with neural network approximation to…
This study quantifies the economic effect of a possible lockdown of Tokyo to prevent spread of COVID-19. The negative effect of the lockdown may propagate to other regions through supply chains because of shortage of supply and demand.…
This study investigates the impact of increased debt servicing costs on household consumption resulting from monetary policy tightening. It utilizes observational panel microdata on all mortgage holders in Israel and leverages…
We propose a simple framework to measure consumption insurance against income shocks that accounts for higher-order moments of the income distribution. We derive a nonlinear consumption function in which the extent of insurance varies with…
During the global spread of COVID-19, Japan has been among the top countries to maintain a relatively low number of infections, despite implementing limited institutional interventions. Using a Tokyo Metropolitan dataset, this study…
This 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…
This study is the first to investigate whether pawnshops, financial institutions for low-income populations, have contributed to the decline in mortality in the early twentieth century. Using ward-level panel data from Tokyo City, this…
In this paper, we consider a risk process with deterministic growth and multiplicative jumps to model the capital of a low-income household. Reflecting the high-risk nature of the low-income environment, capital losses are assumed to be…
We empirically investigate the distributional effects of inflation on workers' unemployment tail risks using instrumental variable quantile regression. We find that supply-driven inflation disproportionately raises unemployment tail risks…
We investigate the effects of stockholding on households' attention to the macroeconomy. Households' attentiveness is measured by their accuracy of inflation expectations and perceptions. Relative to non-stockholders, stockholders produce…
This paper investigates the optimal investment, consumption, and life insurance strategies for households under the impact of health shock risk. Considering the uncertainty of the future health status of family members, a non-homogeneous…
To prevent the spread of COVID-19, many cities, states, and countries have `locked down', restricting economic activities in non-essential sectors. Such lockdowns have substantially shrunk production in most countries. This study examines…