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YANAGIMOTO KazuharuGraduate School of Economics / Division of EconomicsAssociate Professor
Research activity information
■ Paper- 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 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.arXiv, 2026
- 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.arXiv, 2026
- 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.arXiv, 2026
- We 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.arXiv, 2026
- Asian Development Bank, May 2025, ADB Economics Working Paper Series, (781) (781), English
- Kansai Macroeconomics Workshop, Jul. 2026, Japanese, JapanComputing Alone? An Anatomy of the Marriage Decline[Invited]Oral presentation
- Seminar in Macroeconomics (Hitotsubashi University), Jun. 2026, English, JapanComputing Alone: Leisure Technology Growth and Marriage Decline[Invited]Oral presentation
- 大阪大学経済学研究会（IPP研究会共催）, Jun. 2026, English, Osaka University, Toyonaka Campus, Japan, Domestic conferenceComputing Alone: Leisure Technology Growth and Marriage Decline[Invited]Invited oral presentation
- 近畿大学経済研究会, May 2026, Japanese, Kindai University, Higashi-Osaka Campus, Japan, Domestic conferenceComputing Alone: Leisure Technology Growth and Marriage Decline[Invited]Invited oral presentation
- 慶應義塾大学経済研究所 マクロ経済学ワークショップ, Apr. 2026, EnglishA Quantitative Model of Non-Marriage and Fertility: Bargaining over Leisure[Invited]Invited oral presentation
- 国立研究機関としてのEBPM事業推進研究会, Mar. 2026On Causal Inference with Model-Based Outcomes[Invited]Invited oral presentation
- 11th Annual CIGS End of Year Macroeconomic Conference, Dec. 2025, EnglishA Quantitative Model of Non-Marriage and Fertility: Bargaining over LeisureOral presentation
- 関西労働研究会, Nov. 2025, EnglishBarriers to Gender Convergence: The Interactive Effects of Job Inflexibility and Social Norms[Invited]Invited oral presentation
- Society of Economics of the Household (SEHO) Meeting, Jun. 2025, English, Zaragoza, Spain, Spain, International conferenceA Quantitative Model of Non-Marriage and Fertility: Bargaining over LeisureOral presentation
- 76th European Meeting of the Econometric Society (ESEM), Aug. 2024, English, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Netherlands, International conferenceFlexible Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity in Event Studies: Application to the Child PenaltyOral presentation
- Society of Economics of the Household (SEHO) Meeting, Jun. 2023, English, Copenhagen, Denmark, Denmark, International conferenceTime Allocations, Social Norms, and Gender GapsOral presentation
- 47th Simposio de la Asociación Española de Economía (SAEe), Dec. 2022, English, Valencia, Spain, Spain, International conferenceTime Allocations, Social Norms, and Gender GapsOral presentation