“An Empirical Study on the Effect of Gender Equality and Multicultural Exchange Policies Using an Economic Analysis of Law”

Key questions

• How effective are the gender equality and the multicultural conviviality systems based on an Economic Analysis of Law?
• What should we do to alter individuals’ current conducts and to improve social welfare?

Research Purpose and Approach

This project empirically examines the effect of law systems and social systems on society, economy and people’s action. We will also focus on the public welfare of the system reform regarding multicultural coexistence, gender equality, and aging society and low fertility.

In order to achieve this purpose, this project will take the following five approaches. The first is to create a social database and archives of multicultural coexistence, gender equality, and an aging society with low fertility; the second is to provide the results of the questionnaire survey to the public; the third is to prepare and publish a Japanese version of an gender equality index by region following the example of Statistics Norway; the fourth is to interpret social issues through laws and institutions using the above data, analyze them based on the economic model, and then provide the outcome to the society in the form of new law and social systems. This will be the core of our research. The fifth is to continuously disclose these processes and outcomes in the form of DP and others, and then publish the final achievements in the forms of books and educational materials.

The expecting outcome will be (1) to develop the human resources who can judge, discuss, and make policies on frontier issues basing on quantitative evidences; and (2) to build the foundations of analyzing public policies basing not on the journalistic discussions but on the evidences, and establish a field of Evidence Based Public Policy.

Research Activities

As for our activity during FY2009, 1) we had a “Questionnaire regarding Financial Crisis and College Enrolment,” which was funded by the GCOE program, and published the initial result of the questionnaire as” Impact of Financial Crisis on College Enrolment” in Financial Research University, Vol. 6 (pp. 91-109); 2) we created the “Japanese Version of Regional Gender Equality Index” and published the outcome in the GEMC journal; and 3) we put out an article on” Social Lending” in the GEMC journal as law and economics of multicultural conviviality.

With regard to our activity in FY2010, (1) we will continue to examine whether there was a shift in college-bound populations between the sexes using econometric approach based on a survey result of the questionnaire regarding” Financial Crisis and College Enrolment.” (2) We will continue to publish statistics by projecting a Japanese version of gender index for FY2010. In addition, in the area of law and economics of multicultural conviviality, we will use econometrics to verify how cross-national exchanges among countries with internationally different cultures and social structures contribute to economic growth.

Project Leader

YOSHIDA, Hiroshi

Affiliation

Professor, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tohoku University

Research Fields

Economics of Aging

Web Site

http://www.econ.tohoku.ac.jp/~hyoshida/

Member