Michiko Ueda

Did Firms Profit from Soft Money

This paper uses event study methodology to measure whether firms that gave soft money to political parties received excessively high rates of returns from their contributions. We measure the excess returns of firms that gave large amounts of soft money and firms that gave no soft money, and changes in those excess returns around five key events in the approval of the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act: the House of Representatives passes BCRA, the Senate passes BCRA, the President announces his intention to sign BCRA, the Supreme Court hears oral arguments, and the Court announced its decision to uphold the Act. These actions, especially the Courts decision, involved considerable uncertainty, and in some cases went against the conventional wisdom. Other studies have found that stock market prices do respond to surprising political events, such as the death of the powerful Senator Henry Jackson of Washington. We find that the five events surrounding the BCRA had no noticeable effect on the valuation of Fortune 500 firms that gave large amounts of soft money, relative to the firms that gave no soft money.

The effect of national suicide prevention programs on suicide rates in 21 OECD nations

Suicide has become a serious and growing public health problem in many countries. To address the problem of suicide, some countries have developed comprehensive suicide prevention programs as a collective political effort. However, no prior research has offered a systematic test of their effectiveness using cross-national data. This paper evaluates whether the national suicide prevention programs in twenty-one OECD nations had the anticipated effect of reducing suicide rates. By analyzing data between 1980 and 2004 with a fixed-effect estimator, we test whether there is a statistically meaningful difference in the suicide rates before and after the implementation of national suicide prevention programs. Our panel data analysis shows that the overall suicide rates decreased after nationwide suicide prevention programs were introduced. These government-led suicide prevention programs are most effective in preventing suicides among the elderly and young populations. By contrast, the suicide rates of working-age groups, regardless of gender, do not seem to respond to the introduction of national prevention programs. Our findings suggest that the presence of a national strategy can be effective in reducing suicide rates.

Party and Incumbency Cues in Voting: Are They Substitutes?

A possible explanation for the rise of the incumbency advantage in U.S. elections asserts that party and incumbency are close informational substitutes. A common claim in the literature is that, as the salience of partisan cues decreased, voters attached themselves to the next available piece of information – incumbency. Minnesota state legislative elections provide a unique setting for testing this idea. These elections switched from using non-partisan to partisan ballots and primaries in 1973. We find that, after the switch to partisan elections, party voting increased substantially. However, contrary to expectations, the incumbency advantage also increased. These patterns suggest that party and incumbency are not close substitutes for large numbers of voters, and that cue-substitution cannot explain the rise of the incumbency advantage.

Dynastic Politicians: Theory and Evidence from Japan

Dynastic politicians, defined as those whose family members have also served in the same position in the past, occupy a sizable portion of offices in many parts of the world. We develop a model of how dynastic politicians with inherited political advantages affect electoral outcomes and policy choices. Our model predicts that, as compared wit non-dynastic legislators, dynastic legislators bring more distributions to the district, enjoy higher electoral success, and harm the economic performance of the districts despite the larger amount of distributive benefits they bring. We test the implications of the model using data from Japan between 1997 and 2007.

Does the installation of blue lights on train platforms prevent suicide? A before-and-after observational study from Japan

BACKGROUND Railway and metro suicides constitute a major problem in many parts of the world. Japan has experienced an increase in the number of suicides by persons diving in front of an oncoming train in the last several years. Some major railway operators in Japan have begun installing blue light-emitting-diode (LED) lamps on railway platforms and at railway crossings as a method of deterring suicides, which is less costly than installing platform screen doors. However, the effectiveness of the blue lights in this regard has not yet been proven. METHODS This study evaluates the effect of blue lights on the number of suicides at 71 train stations by using panel data between 2000 and 2010 from a railway company in a metropolitan area of Japan. We use a regression model and compare the number of suicides before and after and with and without the intervention by the blue light. We used the number of suicides at 11 stations with the intervention as the treatment group and at the other 60 stations without the intervention as the control group. RESULTS Our regression analysis shows that the introduction of blue lights resulted in a 84% decrease in the number of suicides (CI: 14-97%). LIMITATION The analysis relies on data from a single railroad company and it does not examine the underlying suicide-mitigation mechanism of blue lights. CONCLUSION As blue lights are easier and less expensive to install than platform screen doors, they can be a cost-effective method for suicide prevention.

Maternal work conditions, socioeconomic and educational status, and vaccination of children: A community-based household survey in Japan

OBJECTIVE This study examined how maternal work-related factors, including the availability of paid maternal leave, affect childhood vaccination status. Relatively little is known about the association between the employment status of mothers and the vaccination status of their children. METHOD We examined data from the Japanese Study on Stratification, Health, Income, and Neighborhood (J-SHINE), an ongoing epidemiologic household panel study in Japan. We used surveys taken in 2010-2011 in this study. RESULTS We found that mothers who returned to work after giving birth were much less likely to follow recommended vaccine schedules for their children compared with mothers who stayed at home and those who had left the workforce by the time of childbirth. However, taking parental leave significantly reduced the risk of not being up-to-date with the vaccination schedule at 36 months of age. We also found that children whose mother was younger and less educated, and those from an economically deprived family were at a high risk of not being up-to-date with the vaccination status at 36 months of age. CONCLUSION Because vaccination is free and widely available in Japan, our findings indicate that provision of free vaccinations is not sufficient to achieve high vaccination rates.

Do multimember districts lead to free-riding

We studied the effects of districting on intergovernmental aid by state governments to local governments in the United States. We found that metropolitan areas receive relatively more aid when represented in the state legislature by an at-large delegation than when divided into single-member districts. This suggests that the free-riding that may occur with at-large representation is more than counterbalanced by other factors. The estimated effects are robust to the effects of other confounding factors as well as the choice of estimators.

The effect of public awareness campaigns on suicides: evidence from Nagoya, Japan.

BACKGROUND Public awareness campaigns about depression and suicide have been viewed as highly effective strategies in preventing suicide, yet their effectiveness has not been established in previous studies. This study evaluates the effectiveness of a public-awareness campaign by comparing suicide counts before and after a city-wide campaign in Nagoya, Japan, where the city government distributed promotional materials that were aimed to stimulate public awareness of depression and promote care-seeking behavior during the period of 2010-2012. METHODS In each of the sixteen wards of the city of Nagoya, we count the number of times that the promotional materials were distributed per month and then examine the association between the suicide counts and the frequency of distributions in the months following such distributions. We run a Poisson regression model that controls for the effects of ward-specific observed and unobserved heterogeneities and temporal shocks. FINDINGS Our analysis indicates that more frequent distribution of the campaign material is associated with a decrease in the number of suicides in the subsequent months. The campaign was estimated to have been especially effective for the male residents of the city. LIMITATION The underlying mechanism of how the campaign reduced suicides remains to be unclear. CONCLUSION Public awareness campaigns can be an effective strategy in preventing suicide.

The effects of media reports of suicides by well-known figures between 1989 and 2010 in Japan

BACKGROUND Many studies have shown that media reporting of suicide incidents can trigger suicidal behaviours in viewers and readers. Yet little is known about the exact timing and duration of the imitative effects. METHODS We estimated the Poisson regression model using original data on 109 celebrity suicides and daily suicide counts (n = 8035) in Japan from 1989 through 2010. Various fixed effects were included in the model to control for the effects of seasonal variations and time-specific shocks. RESULTS The media reports on celebrity suicides were associated with an immediate increase in total suicides. The total number of suicides increased by 4.6% (95% confidence interval (CI): 2.4-6.7) on the day that media reports on celebrity suicides were published. The increase during the post-report period lasted for about 10 days after the publication of news reports. The average effect of celebrity suicides on total suicides over the 10-day post-reporting period was estimated to be highest when the suicide by nationally recognized politicians was reported (14.8%; CI: 10.9-18.7), whereas reports on the deaths of entertainment celebrities were followed by a 4.7% increase (CI: 2.9-6.5) in suicide counts. CONCLUSIONS This study presents evidence that media reports on celebrity suicides have an immediate impact on the number of suicides in the general population. Our findings also highlight the importance of responsible and cautious media reporting on suicide.

Political knowledge and the use of candidate race as a voting cue

Do White voters use candidate race as a voting cue in biracial electoral contests? We argue that the answer to this question depends on the level of political knowledge and information that voters have rather than on their attitudes toward minorities. Our analyses of precinct- and individual-level data show that White voters who are likely to be informed about candidates vote less often for the Democratic party when the candidate is Black, whereas vote choices of White voters who are unlikely to be informed about candidates are unaffected by candidate race.