Do university sports function as advertising in the Japanese higher education market? An analysis of the Hakone Ekiden long‐distance relay road race

The Hakone Ekiden, a university‐level long‐distance relay race, is the premier New Year's sporting event in Japan. It is held immediately prior to the university application period. Using panel data for 2001 to 2015, I examined how this race influences the number of applicants for university entrance examinations. The major finding is that applicants per intake for a particular department in a university was 0.7 points larger when that university participated in the current year's race than when it did not. However, the effect of participating in the previous year's race was not observed. Furthermore, the effect increased when the department of the university was more difficult to enter or was located in Tokyo. This reveals that prestigious universities participating in the race give students a casual motivation to take an entrance examination of the university without regard for their chances of passing.     

External adjustments and coordinated exchange rate policy in Asia

In this paper, we estimate structural VAR models with contemporaneous restrictions based on neo-classical and Keynesian theories to investigate whether the cause of current account surpluses for East Asian economies is a “saving glut” or undervalued currencies. Analytical results show that the major determinant of the current account is the real effective exchange rate for all East Asian countries with the exception of China for which the major determinant is domestic GDP. Accordingly, the recently requested revaluation of the Chinese yuan may not be an effective policy for reducing the Chinese current account surplus, and may affect other Asian current accounts. We also investigate whether a Chinese currency revaluation would contribute to the improvement of current account imbalances in East Asia and find that a revaluation would, indeed, improve the current accounts of Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand. Since the trade structures of major East Asian countries are substitutes with that of China, a Chinese currency revaluation might not lead to a decrease in East Asian current account surpluses. Coordination of currency policy among East Asian countries is, therefore, needed to solve the global current account imbalance.     

Brand and Performance in a New Environment: Analysis of the Law School Market in Japan

Using Japanese panel data for 2006–2009, this study attempts to examine how the pass rate of law school students taking the new bar examination influences the number of applicants for law school in the following years. The major finding is that the higher the law school student pass rate, the greater the number of applicants for the law school becomes. Furthermore, the positive effect of the pass rate is larger for a prestigious university’s law school than for other schools. It follows that the brand and the school’s current performance are complementary in increasing demand for places in the law school.