Details of a Researcher - Okubo Toshihiro

Papers - Okubo Toshihiro

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Bonding social capital, disaster experience, and post-disaster giving in Japan

Okubo T., Noy I.

Disasters 50 ( 2 ) 2026.04

ISSN 03613666

When are people willing to donate their time or money after a disaster? We investigate the psychological and socio-economic determinants of post-disaster giving in Japan, using a nationally representative panel survey of more than 7,000 respondents, conducted repeatedly from early 2020, including after the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake. We examine how individual characteristics—including past disaster experience, social capital (trust, reciprocity, cooperation), ‘Big-5’ personality traits, and digital behaviours—influence the likelihood of engaging in various forms of post-disaster assistance, from traditional monetary donations to newer digitally-facilitated acts such as online shopping for Noto products. Our analysis finds that prior disaster experience and personal openness are consistent robust predictors of prosocial behaviour. The relationship between social capital and aid activities is more subtle. Trust and cooperation are both positively associated with post-disaster assistance, but this is not the case for reciprocity. These findings emphasise that nuanced conceptualisation of social capital is required and underscore the need for caution in assuming its universal relevance in mobilising disaster aid. We conclude by suggesting directions for future research that more precisely delineate the interplay between social, psychological, and socio-economic factors in shaping post-disaster giving.

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Quality trade and transportation costs

Toshihiro Okubo, Akira Sasahara

Economics Letters 257 2025.10

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted, ISSN 01651765

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Branch Banking and Regional Financial Markets: Evidence from Prewar Japan

Mathias Hoffmann, Tetsuji Okazaki, Toshihiro Okubo

Financial History Review 2025.10

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted, ISSN 09685650

In Japan in the 1920s, several financial crises and government policy led to bank mergers and the consolidation and expansion of branch networks. Using unique historical bank branch-level lending and deposit data, we show that branch banking integrated peripheral markets with the rest of the country, with large urban banks – those headquartered in Tokyo and Osaka – using deposit supply shocks in peripheral areas to fund lending in their core markets. While these findings support contemporary concerns about branch banking draining funds from peripheral markets, we argue that the export of liquidity by urban banks likely represented an efficient reallocation of credit, driven primarily by competition in funding markets. Faced with high-yielding lending opportunities in central prefectures, urban banks bid up deposit rates in peripheral areas, raising local banks’ funding costs. Local banks responded by lowering intermediation margins and reducing lending to traditional industries, which suggests that they shifted their lending to less risky and more efficient customers. We speculate that this competitive reallocation of capital across regions and sectors allowed banks to maintain a functional specialization in different customer segments, which may explain the continued coexistence of small relationship lenders and large integrated arm’s-length lenders in local banking markets.

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Large Fires and the Rise of Fire Insurance in Early Twentieth Century Japan

Tetsuji Okazaki, Toshihiro Okubo, Eric Strobl

Journal of Economic History 85 ( 3 ) 701 - 729 2025.06

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted, ISSN 0022-0507

We explore the role that large fires played in the early development of the Japanese fire insurance industry. Using a prefecture-level data set spanning 30 years, our econometric analysis shows that large fires led to an increase in new policies and policy renewals, consistent with historical narratives that insurance companies used these events to advertise their business. We also show that this subsequent surge in policies led to more small fires due to arson. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it is more likely to have been due to moral hazard rather than adverse selection.

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Cross-border technology licensing with R&D Opportunity and Government Intervention

Ishikawa J., Okubo T.

Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 76 2025.03

ISSN 08891583

Technology holders may have strategic incentive to offer licensing contracts that deter (potential) rivals from conducting their own R&D. This study develops a simple model of technology licensing from a foreign firm to a home firm, in which R&D serves as an alternative means for the home firm to enter the market. We first derive the optimal licensing fees with differentiated goods and two-part tariffs. Depending on parameter values, three types of licensing contracts can emerge: (i) by means of a fixed fee alone, (ii) by means of a royalty alone, and (iii) by means of a combination of a fixed fee and a royalty. We then specifically investigate intervention by the home government: withholding taxes on royalties and R&D subsidies. A withholding tax may improve home welfare without imposing any burden on the home firm and consumers. Committing itself to an R&D subsidy, the home government can reduce licensing fees without any cost.

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Vaccination Decisions and Social Capital in Japan

Toshihiro Okubo, Ilan Noy

SSM - Population Health 30 2025.02

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted, ISSN 2352-8273

The COVID-19 vaccines played a pivotal role in safeguarding many people. Yet, vaccine hesitancy remained a significant barrier to increasing coverage rates, as many high-income countries faced prolonged vaccine refusal campaigns. In Japan, vaccine doses were administered under a reservation system accessible via a website and by phone. Achieving a high vaccination coverage for a vaccine that was offered at no financial cost was surprisingly difficult in Japan as well. In many countries, vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic has been closely related to people's trust in their governments given governments' controversial social distancing mandates. In Japan, lockdowns were voluntary, and vaccinations were also not mandated. As there were no significant political conflicts about the government's policies, vaccination acceptance was influenced by more basic tenets, and we focus here on social capital, defined as cohesive links that enable a society to function effectively. Social capital, in this context, refers to community trust, collaboration, and engagement that create social bonds between individuals and society. Using a uniquely large survey, administered repeatedly through the years of the pandemic, we mostly find support, for the hypothesis that social capital matters for the vaccination decision; and that it matters even once we control for institutional trust (especially trust in the medical system). However, this general association between trust in other community members, belief in the willingness of community members to engage in reciprocal assistance, and belief in the more general willingness of the community to support individuals, were all associated differently with the vaccination decision, and with the views expressed about the vaccinations. From a policy perspective, this suggests that intra-community trust (i.e., bonding social capital), is important even in contexts when trust in governmental is not a significant concern.

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Work from Home and Time Allocation: Evidence from Time-use Data in Japan

Toshihiro Okubo

Journal of Labor Research 45 ( 4 ) 598 - 630 2024.12

Research paper (scientific journal), Single Work, Accepted, ISSN 0195-3613

This paper investigates the impact of work from home (WFH) on time use for work, housework, leisure, and sleep in daily life. We use time-use survey data for Japan. We find that WFH tends to reduce working hours. By WFH, females spend more time on housework, while males tend to devote more time to leisure. However, WFH involves heterogeneous impacts on time reallocation among different groups. There are less conspicuous differences in time allocation by single males and females work.

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Margins, concentration, and the performance of firms in international trade: Evidence from Japanese customs data

Keiko Ito; Masahiro Endoh; Naoto Jinji; Toshiyuki Matsuura; Toshihiro Okubo; Akira Sasahara

Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 75 2024.11

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted, ISSN 08891583

This study is the first to comprehensively investigate international trade at the firm-level using Japan's customs data for the 2014–2020 period. We first decompose international trade into the intensive and extensive margins and show that the intensive margin accounts for around 30% and 40% of the variation in partner country-specific exports and imports, respectively. We next find a substantial concentration of trading firms: in 2017, the top 10% of exporters accounted for 96.6% of all exports, while the top 10% of importers were responsible for 94.6% of all imports. Finally, we match the customs data with other firm-level datasets and estimate the performance premia of exporting firms. Our findings indicate that exporting manufacturing firms outperform non-exporting manufacturing firms in all aspects we consider: sales, value added, the number of employees, the capital-labor ratio, productivity, and wages. Interestingly, the exporter premia of manufacturing firms for value added, labor productivity, and total factor productivity decreased between 2014 and 2016 and then increased until 2019, whereas the exporter premium for the average wage steadily increased.

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Premature agglomeration?: Two phases of development with spatial sorting

Rikard Forslid and Toshihiro Okubo

Manchester School (Manchester School) 92 ( 6 ) 636 - 662 2024.05

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted, ISSN 14636786

Clusters in the developing world do, to a large extent, attract low-educated individuals, and these clusters are in some cases, characterized by urbanization without industrialization. This contrasts starkly to clusters in advanced economies that attract high-skilled individuals and entrepreneurs. In this paper, we develop a model of agglomeration and spatial sorting that is consistent with these two types of different agglomeration processes in developed and developing countries. We show that a poor country that has an agglomeration with low skilled individuals, may get stuck in this equilibrium, but that free mobility of human capital from the outset nevertheless is superior from the perspective of total social welfare.

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Non-routine Tasks and ICT tools in Telework

Toshihiro Okubo

Labour (Labour) 38 ( 2 ) 177 - 202 2023.12

Research paper (scientific journal), Single Work, Accepted, ISSN 11217081

Telework has spread during the pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Using a unique individual-level survey in Japan, we investigate how telework has changed the way people live and work and what impediments hamper telework use. As a result, we find that telework allows workers to spend more time on leisure and their families. Compared with routine task workers, non-routine (abstract) task workers are more suited to telework. However, once engaged in telework, non-routine task workers have fewer opportunities to communicate with coworkers, which is a serious impediment that tends to hamper work performance and compromise mental health.

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The Japanese Textile Sector and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1920

Ilan Noy, Toshihiro Okubo, Eric Strobl

Journal of Regional Science (Journal of Regional Science) 63 ( 5 ) 1192 - 1227 2023.07

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted, ISSN 0022-4146

The ongoing global pandemic has brought into sharp relief the possible interactions between the epidemiology of a virus, the structure of the economy and society that becomes exposed to it, and the actions chosen by government, individuals, and communities to combat it or ameliorate its economic impact. Surprisingly, there has not been sufficient research on these economic and policy interactions of the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic—the deadliest pandemic of the 20th century. This paper focuses on Japan, which as a minor participant of and was not directly affected by World War I. We exploit the diversity of experiences with the pandemic and its attendant policy responses across Japanese prefectures; and investigate the importance of the pandemic's toll (measured by excess mortality), and of nonpharmaceutical policy interventions (NPIs), in determining the pandemic's economic impact. We do so by focusing on the production and employment in the textile sector, given the availability of data and the general importance of the textile sector for emerging economies (as Japan was at the time). We find a significant adverse impact of the pandemic on textiles (almost 30% for an average prefectural excess mortality shock) and indeed find that the implemented NPIs were effective in ameliorating around one half of the pandemic's adverse economic consequences, especially for textile output (rather than employment). Furthermore, these NPIs were more effective when the excess mortality was higher. In this case, there was no trade-off between money and life, but rather the two were complimentary.

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Trade, Location, and Multi-product Firms

Toshihiro Okubo

Regional Science and Urban Economics (Regional Science and Urban Economics) 100 2023.03

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted, ISSN 01660462

In this paper we study how trade liberalization affects the location and the product scope of firms. We find that the largest and most productive multi-product firms concentrate to the larger market as a result of trade liberalization. In the presence of relocation costs, we also find that these firms will expand their product scope in the larger market while firms in the smaller market will contract their product scope or expand it to a smaller degree. The adjustment of firms’ product scope can therefore be a substitute for firm relocation, and the cost of introducing new varieties becomes an important parameter, that influences the degree of agglomeration.

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The Bright and Dark Sides of a Central Bank’s Financial Support to Local Banks after a Natural Disaster: Evidence from the Great Kanto Earthquake, 1923 Japan

Toshihiro Okubo, Tetsuji Okazaki, Eric Strobl

Journal of Money, Credit and Banking (Journal of Money, Credit and Banking) 56 ( 6 ) 1439 - 1477 2023.02

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted, ISSN 00222879

The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 caused serious damage to firms and banks in Yokohama City. We explore the role of the financial support by the Bank of Japan (BoJ) through local banks in a firm's survival and recovery from the natural disaster. We find that the small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) that had a relatively large correspondent bank with a large number of bills rediscounted by BoJ had a higher likelihood of survival but lower growth after the earthquake. Liquidity supply by the central bank for recovery from a negative shock can have both positive and negative impacts.

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Natural Disasters and Industrial Production Efficiency: Evidence from Pre-war Japan

Toshihiro Okubo

Regional Studies 2023.01

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted

Are software automation and teleworker substitutes? Preliminary evidence from Japan

Baldwin R., Okubo T.

World Economy (World Economy) 47 ( 4 ) 1531 - 1556 2023

ISSN 03785920

Digital technology is reshaping workplaces by enabling spatial separation of offices, known as telework, or remote intelligence (RI) and by facilitating automation of service sector tasks via artificial intelligence (AI). This paper is the first attempt to empirically investigate whether AI and RI are complements or substitutes in the service sector. It uses a worker-level panel of surveys collected from around 10,000 workers from pre-COVID-19 pandemic to late 2022. We find preliminary evidence that suggests that AI and RI are complements rather than substitutes. The evidence comes first from the positive correlation of investments in AI-promoting and RI-promoting software at the firm and worker level, and second from the positive correlation of workers' expectations regarding telework and software automation. The evidence is far from definitive but suggests that the complement-substitution question is a fruitful line for future research.

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Networked FDI and Third-country Intra-firm Trade

Toshihiro Okubo

International Review of Economics and Finance (International Review of Economics and Finance) 83 591 - 606 2022.10

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted, ISSN 10590560

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is networked. This is beyond vertical and horizontal FDIs. Affiliates locate across multiple countries and trade among them. This paper investigates the FDI networks, using the Japanese foreign affiliate data. First, we investigate location patterns and industry patterns of foreign affiliates and find the network structure of FDI. Then, third-country intra-firm trade is explored. The third-country sales and sourcing within the firm boundary (third-country intra-firm trade) is active, but only large firms tend to construct production networks and engage third-country intra-firm trade. Firm size (size of parent and affiliates and the number of affiliates) is crucial in understanding third-country intra-firm trade.

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Traveling and Eating Out during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Go To Campaign Policies in Japan

Toshihiro Okubo

Japan and the World Economy (Japan and the World Economy) 64 2022.09

Research paper (scientific journal), Single Work, Accepted, ISSN 09221425

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic plunged many industries of the economy into contraction, particularly the travel, hotel accommodation, and eating/drinking industries. In Japan, some demand-inducing policies targeting such industries were implemented, known as the Go To Travel and Go To Eat campaigns. Using a unique individual-level survey, we investigate what factors make people respond to these campaign policies. We find that certain socioeconomics factors (e.g., gender, income, ICT skills) as well as noneconomic factors matter. In particular, risk attitudes, and personal traits (e.g., extraversion) crucially affect whether people traveled or dined out in response to these campaigns despite the spread of COVID-19.

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The Fiscal Costs of Earthquakes in Japan

Toshihiro Okubo

International Tax and Public Finance (International Tax and Public Finance) 30 ( 5 ) 1225 - 1250 2022.06

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted, ISSN 09275940

We quantify the fiscal impacts of earthquakes in Japan. In contrast with earlier research which examined national level aggregate spending in several countries, we are able to provide a detailed examination of separate budget categories within the local governments’ fiscal accounts. We do this using detailed line-budget expenditure data, and by comparing regions and towns affected and unaffected by the damage from earthquakes. Besides the obvious - that government spending increases in the short-term (one year) after a disaster event - we observe that the share of public spending on disaster relief, at the prefecture level, increases significantly, but with no corresponding change in the other budget lines. In contrast, at the lower administrative units, we observe a decrease in the share of spending going to finance other priorities. For the bigger cities, we observe a decrease in the share of spending targeting education, while for the smaller towns, we find that spending on construction and servicing public debt goes down. This evidence suggests that while at the prefecture level fiscal policy-making is robust enough to prevent presumably unwanted declines in public services, the same cannot be said for the city/town level.

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Telework in the Spread of COVID-19

Toshihiro Okubo

Information Economics and Policy (Information Economics and Policy) 60 2022.06

Research paper (scientific journal), Single Work, Accepted, ISSN 01676245

In the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), people have been requested to work from home with information and communication technology (ICT) tools, i.e. telework. This paper investigates which factors (infection of COVID-19, individual characteristics, task characteristics, and working environments) are associated with telework use in Japan. Using the unique panel survey on telework, our estimation finds that although telework use remains low in Japan, educated, high ICT-skilled, younger, and female workers who engage in less teamwork and less routine tasks tend to use telework. Working environments such as the richness of IT communication tools, digitalized offices, and flexible-hour working systems are all positively correlated with telework use.

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Social Norms and Preventive Behaviors in Japan and Germany During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Toshihiro Okubo

Frontiers in Public Health (Frontiers in Public Health) 10 2022.04

Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted

Background: According to a recent paper by Gelfand et al., COVID-19 infection and case mortality rates are closely connected to the strength of social norms: “Tighter” cultures that abide by strict social norms are more successful in combating the pandemic than “looser” cultures that are more permissive. However, countries with similar levels of cultural tightness exhibit big differences in mortality rates. We are investigating potential explanations for this fact. Using data from Germany and Japan—two “tight” countries with very different infection and mortality rates—we examined how differences in socio-demographic and other determinants explain differences in individual preventive attitudes and behaviors. Methods: We compared preventive attitudes and behaviors in 2020 based on real-time representative survey data and used logit regression models to study how individual attitudes and behaviors are shaped by four sets of covariates: individual socio-demographics, health, personality, and regional-level controls. Employing Blinder-Oaxaca regression techniques, we quantified the extent to which differences in averages of the covariates between Japan and Germany explain the differences in the observed preventive attitudes and behaviors. Results: In Germany and Japan, similar proportions of the population supported mandatory vaccination, avoided travel, and avoided people with symptoms of a cold. In Germany, however, a significantly higher proportion washed their hands frequently and avoided crowds, physical contact, public transport, peak-hour shopping, and contact with the elderly. In Japan, a significantly higher proportion were willing to be vaccinated. We also show that attitudes and behaviors varied significantly more with covariates in Germany than in Japan. Differences in averages of the covariates contribute little to explaining the observed differences in preventive attitudes and behaviors between the two countries. Conclusion: Consistent with tightness-looseness theory, the populations of Japan and Germany responded similarly to the pandemic. The observed differences in infection and fatality rates therefore cannot be explained by differences in behavior. The major difference in attitudes is the willingness to be vaccinated, which was much higher in Japan. Furthermore, the Japanese population behaved more uniformly across social groups than the German population. This difference in the degree of homogeneity has important implications for the effectiveness of policy measures during the pandemic.

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