KEIO RESEARCHERS INFORMATION SYSTEM

Profile Summary 【 Display / hide 】

Profile Summary 【 Display / hide 】

• I am an economist specializing in the study of international trade and trade rules and institutions, with emphasis on cross-border unbundling of production, or global value chains (GVC). I received my first Ph.D. from Keio University in 2011; and my second Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018. Prior to coming back to Keio as a Professor in April 2023, I was a Research Associate at Keio Economics, an Assistant Professor at Toyo University, Faculty of Business Administration, and an Assistant Professor and an Associate Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, School of International Politics, Economics and Communication (SIPEC).

Career 【 Display / hide 】

Career 【 Display / hide 】

• 2008.04

  -

  2011.03

  Keio University, Faculty of Economics, Research Associate

• 2016.04

  -

  2017.03

  Toyo University, Faculty of Business Administration, Assistant Professor

• 2017.04

  -

  2019.03

  Aoyama Gakuin University, School of International Politics, Economics and Communication, Assistant Professor

• 2019.04

  -

  2023.03

  Aoyama Gakuin University, School of International Politics, Economics and Communication, Associate Professor

• 2023.04

  -

  Present

  Keio University, Faculty of Economics, Professor

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Academic Background 【 Display / hide 】

Academic Background 【 Display / hide 】

• 2002.04

  -

  2006.03

  Keio University, Faculty of Policy Management

  University, Graduated

• 2006.04

  -

  2008.03

  Keio University, Graduate School of Economics

  Graduate School, Completed, Master's course

• 2008.04

  -

  2011.03

  Keio University, Graduate School of Economics

  Graduate School, Withdrawal after completion of doctoral course requirements, Doctoral course

• 2011.09

  -

  2018.12

  University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Economics

  United States, Graduate School, Completed, Doctoral course

Academic Degrees 【 Display / hide 】

Academic Degrees 【 Display / hide 】

• Master of Arts in Economics, Keio University, 2008.03

• Ph. D. in Economics, Keio University, 2011.05

• Ph.D. , University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018.12

Licenses and Qualifications 【 Display / hide 】

Licenses and Qualifications 【 Display / hide 】

• UNCTAD Certified Non-Tariff Measures Data Collector Certificate, 2015.07

Research Areas 【 Display / hide 】

Research Areas 【 Display / hide 】

• Humanities & Social Sciences / Economic policy (International trade and trade policy)

Books 【 Display / hide 】

Books 【 Display / hide 】

• 不確実性とFDI : 企業戦略への影響を探る

  法政大学比較経済研究所, 倪, 彬, 日本評論社, 2025.03,  Page： x, 205p

  Scope: 第７章 国境拒否リスクと企業の輸出行動

  • CiNii Research

• 国際貿易論の包絡線 = The envelope of international trade studies

  木村 福成 , 清田 耕造 , 安藤 光代, 小橋 文子, 慶應義塾大学出版会, 2025,  Page： iv, 257p

  • CiNii Research

• Trade in goods with internationalised production activities

  Matsuura T., Obashi A., Handbook on East Asian Economic Integration, 2021.01

  　View Summary

  Trade flows are broken down by types of products within the region (defined as the RCEP members) and outside it. There are differences between primary productions, parts and components and final goods. For all categories, intra-regional trade has grown faster than both world trade in total and East Asian trade with the rest of the world. The region was therefore becoming more integrated. The surge in component trade in evident in data for the 1990s, but again component trade in East Asia grew nearly twice as fast as that in the rest of the world. Both component trade (especially so) and final product trade slowed after 2000, but East Asia internally recorded faster growth in both categories. East Asian exports to the rest of the world are dominated by final products while imports from the rest of the world are mainly primary and processed products. There are various methods of identifying the extent of activity in value chains in the regions, using data from input-output tables, rather than the categorisation of trade products. The position of various countries in value chains and the drivers of participation in value chains including location advantages, decreases in trade costs, due to tariff cuts and efforts on trade facilitation, are identified. Significant issues remain in the region with respect to non-tariff barriers. Three current issues in the evolution of regional goods trade are discussed. With respect to the impact of China, China’s growth has created opportunities for the rest of the region, rather than crowding out other exports. With respect to opportunities for small firms, an issue which is critical to the question of the inclusiveness of integration, a range of factors that might encourage participation in trade is identified. The relative importance for smaller firms of some of the barriers to exporting is noted. The durability of value chains, and the debate in the literature on the ‘trade slow down’, are reviewed.

• Non-Tariff Measures in Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea: Preliminary Findings

  Kaoru Nabeshima, Ayako Obashi, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 2020.09

  Scope: Chapter 5 Non-Tariff Measures in Japan,  Contact page： pp. 45-54

• Production Networks and Enterprises in East Asia: Industry and Firm-level Analysis (ADB Institute Series on Development Economics)

  Fukunari Kimura, Ayako Obashi, Springer Japan, 2015.12,  Page： XIII, 326

  Scope: Chapter 3: Production Networks in East Asia: What We Know So Far,  Contact page： pp. 33-64

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Papers 【 Display / hide 】

Papers 【 Display / hide 】

• Global Warming and Border Carbon Adjustments

  Sungwan Hong, Seung-Gyu Sim, Ayako Obashi, Yoshitaka Tsuruta

  Asian Journal of Law and Economics (Walter de Gruyter GmbH)  13 ( 2 ) 195 - 208 2022.08

  Accepted

  　View Summary

  Abstract
  
  This study examines the welfare implications of allowing border carbon adjustments (BCAs) in a globalized economy characterized by international trade and cross-border pollution (CBP). The model predicts that adopting BCAs is a weakly dominant strategy and global welfare is maximized when at least one country adopts BCAs in the presence of CBP, such as global warming. This is because adopting BCAs induces other countries to raise their domestic emission tax rates without concerns such as the excessive shrinkage of domestic production and aggravation of CBP.

  • Access to Document (DOI)

• Technological advancement, import penetration and labour markets: Evidence from Thailand

  Juthathip Jongwanich, Archanun Kohpaiboon, Ayako Obashi

  World Development (Elsevier BV)  151 ( 105746 ) 105746 - 105746 2022.03

  Accepted,  ISSN  0305750X

  　View Summary

  This paper examines the impact of advanced technology and import penetration on changes in employment positions and income, as well as the possibility that workers become unemployed due to such technological progress. Two proxies of advanced technology are used, ICT and the intensity of robot usage. The analysis considers changes in employment status and income, together with workers’ industrial adjustments in investigating the impact of technological advancements and imports, which are delineated into raw materials, capital goods and final products. The results show that in Thailand, the impact of advanced technology in pushing workers out of the job market is limited. Instead, it tends to affect the reallocation of workers between skilled and unskilled positions. The results vary among workers’ industrial destinations and proxies of technology. Skill upgrading is likely to occur more when workers stay or move within manufacturing sectors, while ICT usage tends to generate more favourable outcomes than robot adoption. Workers in comparatively capital-intensive industries, including the automotive and plastics and rubber sectors, tend to receive greater benefits from technological growth. Our results highlight a diminished negative impact resulting from imports, particularly those of capital and final goods, in comparison to that of technological advancements. Technology adoption and imports are likely to lower workers’ income regardless of their industrial destinations and proxies of technology.

  • Access to Document (DOI)

• International Production Networks Are Overcoming COVID-19 Shocks: Evidence from Japan's Machinery Trade

  Mitsuyo Ando, Fukunari Kimura, Ayako Obashi

  Asian Economic Papers (MIT Press - Journals)  20 ( 3 ) 40 - 72 2021.11

  Accepted,  ISSN  15353516

  　View Summary

  <title>Abstract</title>
  This paper investigates the impacts of COVID-19 on international production networks in machinery sectors by shedding light on negative supply shocks, negative demand shocks, and positive demand shocks. Specifically, we examined changes in trade in the trade-fall periods amid COVID-19 in 2020 using Japan's machinery trade at the most disaggregated level and decomposed them into two intensive margins (i.e., the quantity effect and the price effect) and two extensive margins (i.e., the entry effect and the exit effect). Our empirical results show that trade relationships for parts and components were robust even amid COVID-19 and that international production networks in machinery sectors were almost intact. They also demonstrate that COVID-19 brought positive demand shocks for specific products with special demand due to its nature in addition to negative supply shocks and negative demand shocks, which partially explains heterogeneous effects not only among sectors but also among products in the same sector. As of October 2020, Japan's machinery trade seems to have mostly recovered.

  • Access to Document (DOI)

• Impacts of additional compliance requirements of regulations on the margins of trade

  Kaoru Nabeshima, Ayako Obashi, Kunhyui Kim

  Japan and the World Economy (Elsevier BV)  59 ( 101088 ) 101088 - 101088 2021.09

  Accepted,  ISSN  09221425

  　View Summary

  It is widely known that countries export less to destination countries with greater regulatory burdens. Using finely disaggregated product-level bilateral trade value and quantity data for 98 countries, together with a new data set of detailed information on technical regulations, we answer the following question: If a country faces a greater regulatory burden in a particular destination market, is that country more likely to export a narrower set of goods (the extensive margin) and lower quantities of each good at a higher price (the intensive margin)? We find that beyond the overall trade-diminishing effect, regulatory burdens adversely affect the extensive margin of trade. With respect to the intensive margin, regulatory burdens negatively affect the quantity margin but positively affect the price margin. As the negative effect on the quantity margin is relatively larger in magnitude than the positive effect on the price margin, the result is a negative net impact on the intensive margin.

  • Access to Document (DOI)

• The impact of regulatory distance from global standards on a country’s centrality in global value chains

  Tomohiko Inui, Kenta Ikeuchi, Ayako Obashi, Qizhong Yang

  International Economics (Elsevier BV)  166   95 - 115 2021.08

  Accepted,  ISSN  21107017

  　View Summary

  We examine whether and how a country's centrality in global value chains (GVCs) is dependent upon the extent to which its regulatory regime differs from the global norm, using country and sector-level data from OECD and UNCTAD. We find that the more similar a country's regulatory regime is to global standards the more likely the country is to play a dominant role in GVCs. Our findings suggest that a country could enhance its centrality in GVCs by harmonising a set of technical regulations to the global standards.

  • Access to Document (DOI)

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Papers, etc., Registered in KOARA 【 Display / hide 】

Papers, etc., Registered in KOARA 【 Display / hide 】

• Tides generated from research on international trade : preface

  Obashi, Ayako

  Mita journal of economics (慶應義塾経済学会)  116 ( 4 ) 325 (1) - 326 (2) 2024.01

  ISSN  00266760

• "Deglobalization" revisited with data

  Obashi, Ayako

  Mita journal of economics (慶應義塾経済学会)  116 ( 4 ) 369 (45) - 382 (58) 2024.01

  ISSN  00266760

Research Projects of Competitive Funds, etc. 【 Display / hide 】

Research Projects of Competitive Funds, etc. 【 Display / hide 】

• Assessing the impacts of NTMs on Sectoral Trades

  2025.04

  -

  2030.03

  Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Kaoru Nabeshima, Etsuyo Michida, Lei Lei, Ayako Obashi, Tsunehiro Otsuki, Kunhyui Kim, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Coinvestigator(s)

  　View Summary

  基準・規制といった非関税措置（NTMs）が国際貿易に与える影響への関心が高まっているが、二か国間のNTMの影響についての産業レベルでの分析はまだ蓄積されていいない。本研究では、産業レベルにおけるNTMの影響を実証的に分析する。その中でも衛生植物検疫措置が貿易に与える影響、医療機器、半導体、自動車産業を詳細に分析する。本研究の成果に基づいて輸出国の規制遵守能力向上や輸出入に対する政策的示唆を導く。

• Transformation of the Global Value Chain and the Construction of a New International Economic Order

  2024.04

  -

  2029.03

  Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Jota Ishikawa, Kenzo Abe, Toshihiro Okubo, Ayako Obashi, Hayato Kato, Fukunari Kimura, Laixun Zhao, Taiji Furusawa, Hiroshi Mukunoki, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S), Coinvestigator(s)

  　View Summary

  グローバル・バリュー・チェーン（GVC）は、世界経済の統合や経済成長をもたらしてきたが、現在、①地政学的緊張、②経済社会の急速なデジタル化、③気候変動から深刻な影響を受けている。世界経済の更なる成長のためには、これらに適応したGVCの変容が不可欠である。本研究では、上記3つの問題、及びそれらに対する経済学的対応策がGVCに及ぼす直接的・間接的影響を明らかにする。そして、そこで得られた経済学的知見に基づいて、新国際経済秩序の確立を探究する。

• Research on assessing the impacts of NTMs on international trade and regional economy

  2022.04

  -

  2025.03

  Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Kaoru Nabeshima, Ayako Obashi, Etsuyo Michida, Lei Lei, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C), Coinvestigator(s)

  　View Summary

  近年、技術的な基準および認証制度をはじめとする規制が国際貿易に与える影響に対する関心が高まっている。国際貿易に影響を与えうる各国内における規制（非関税措置（non-tariff measures; NTMs）に対する政策的関心が高まっており、WTOにおける取り組みのみならず、二国あるいは多数国間の経済連携交渉の場においても重要な協議事項となっている。しかし、学術的には、データ不足のために、NTMsが国際貿易に与える影響についての体系的な検討が十分に行われてこなかった。本研究では、UNCTADが新しく構築したNTMデータベースを活用することで、NTMsの存在が貿易にどのような影響を与えるのかについて、体系的に検討する。UNCTADのNTMデータベースはまだ新しく、NTMsが国際貿易に与える影響を体系的にとらえた研究はまだなく、新規性が高い。また、政策実務の場においてNTMsに対する関心が高まっている中、このような研究が実際の政策立案に対して有益な示唆を提供することが求められている。以前の研究ではこの指標を使用し、規制の差異が貿易に与える影響について様々な角度から実証分析を行った。その際は2か国間での指標を使用した。近年、地域経済統合が進んできており、経済統合の深化において規制の議論も活発になってきているが、地域内での規制の差について明確に示す指標はまだない状態である。2022年度はこの地域間での指標の作成と地域内における規制・スタンダードに対しる取り組みについて検証した。また、パーム油産業における自主環境スタンダード、また食と環境問題の関係性についても検証した。

• Purpose of Trade Agreements and Reciprocal Trade Liberalization under the Progress of Cross-border Unbundling of Production

  2019.04

  -

  2024.03

  Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Ayako Obashi, Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists, Principal investigator

  　View Summary

  本研究課題では、国際的な工程間分業の進展下における財貿易を通じた国家間の経済依存関係の特異性を考慮して、通商協定の役割や必要性を分析している。とくに、通商協定が果たすべき新たな役割が生まれてくるのか、通商協定による互恵的な貿易自由化のあり方はどのように異なってくるのか、について関心を寄せている。より具体的には、これまでの研究成果を拡張させる形で、交易条件操作以外の理由で国際的な外部効果が生じるケースを検討し、その外部効果を是正するための通商協定の役割を理論的に分析している。
  <BR>
  国際的工程間分業の進展下での通商協定の役割を理論的に検討するにあたって、とくに、非関税措置の特性を考慮した分析の拡張を試みている。製品基準、技術規制といった非関税措置の重要性は近年ますます高まっているが、伝統的に分析対象とされてきた輸入関税とは異なる特殊性を考慮する必要がある。関税との重要な相違点として、(1) 非関税措置の存在そのものは必ずしも貿易制限的とは限らない点、(2) 似通った政策目的でも、多様な種類の措置が各国で異なる方法で複雑に組み合わされて実施されている点、が挙げられる。第一の点は、非関税措置を関税の代替手段としてみなす従来の分析の限界を意味している。さらに、第二の点は、国家間で異なる非関税措置体系が引き起こしうるグローバルな非効率性を示唆している。本研究では、後者に特に注目し、従来の交易条件外部性に加え、「調整外部性（coordination externality）」を内部化するために、貿易協定に新たな役割が生じるのかを検討している。

• The Impact of IT and Globalization on Firm Dynamics: A Comparative Analysis of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Firms

  2019.04

  -

  2023.03

  Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Tomohiko Inui, Naomi Kodama, Ayako Obashi, YoungGak Kim, Hyeog Ug Kwon, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Coinvestigator(s)

  　View Summary

  We measured the rate of increase in total factor productivity (TFP) for listed companies in Japan, China and South Korea, and compared the rate of increase in TFP and analyzed productivity dynamics. As a result of our analysis, we found that fluctuations in the rate of increase in TFP within firms play a major role in fluctuations in the rate of increase in TFP in the manufacturing industries of Japan and South Korea.
  We analyzed the impact of the development of AI and robotics technology on productivity, business dynamics, and the division of labor with overseas operations in Japanese firms. As a result, the introduction of advanced technologies such as AI was found to increase productivity, but there was no negative impact on employment. Regarding Chinese firm analysis, it was found that being located upstream in the global value chain has a positive impact on productivity.

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Awards 【 Display / hide 】

Awards 【 Display / hide 】

• The Kojima Kiyoshi Prize for Excellent Paper of 2021

  2021.10, The Japan Society of International Economics (JSIE), Technical Regulations and Margins of Trade: Evidence from Japanese Manufacturing Firms, KOKUSAI KEIZAI 71, 2020

Courses Taught 【 Display / hide 】

Courses Taught 【 Display / hide 】

• SEMINAR: INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS

  2025

• RESEARCH SEMINAR D

  2025

• RESEARCH SEMINAR C

  2025

• RESEARCH SEMINAR B

  2025

• RESEARCH SEMINAR A

  2025

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Memberships in Academic Societies 【 Display / hide 】

Memberships in Academic Societies 【 Display / hide 】

• The Japan Society of International Economics (JSIE), 

  2016.04

  -

  Present

• Japanese Economic Association (JEA), 

  2016.04

  -

  Present

• American Economic Association, 

  2012.02

  -

  Present

Committee Experiences 【 Display / hide 】

Committee Experiences 【 Display / hide 】

• 2025.04

  -

  Present

  Temporary Member, Fiscal System Council (Fiscal Investment and Loan Program Subcommittee), Ministry of Finance