mini传媒

Published on October 24, 2018
Job titles and other details are as of the time of publication.
(The interview was conducted in Japanese and was thereafter translated into English.)

Development economics applies the tools of economics, including RCTs, to examine developing economies

My expertise lies in development economics, which examines how individuals in developing economies can overcome poverty and thrive. I utilize the tools of economics, including field experiments, to examine ways to enhance agricultural productivity, develop industries, and improve education and health services. In recent years, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been widely used to evaluate the impact of interventions.

1. Individuals are randomly divided into “beneficiaries” or “non-beneficiaries” of an intervention.
2. The outcomes of both groups are compared to assess the pure effect (causality) of the intervention.

I am currently involved in projects across eight countries worldwide, including Senegal and Bangladesh, where we have utilized this analytical tool to assess the effectiveness of Asian-style rice cultivation training in C?te d’Ivoire. My job is to distill the lessons learned into a format that can be applied more broadly and published in international academic journals, thereby making them useful to policymakers, international aid agencies, and academic researchers. I view my role as providing “knowledge as global public goods.” I will discuss our research in C?te d’Ivoire in more detail later.

Simply put, my goal is to think about what people in impoverished countries or regions need to ensure that they have three meals a day, that their children can go to school, and that they can pursue their dreams, and what kind of support can really help people. Even when people are facing the same problem of poverty, the specific challenges they face can be very different. We need to see what is really happening on the ground and hear what the local people have to say in order to truly understand the nature of their problems. That is why I spend several months abroad each year, conducting research based on what I see and hear for myself.

Economics is a toolbox that helps us understand reality and think about how we can help people

I was in my second year of college when I first encountered development economics, which focused on collecting field information to understand reality. While many of the other courses I attended at that time were primarily textbook-based, one professor stood out by sharing his own research and experiences in the field during his lectures. This was Professor Keijiro Otsuka, currently a specially appointed professor at the Kobe University Graduate School of Economics, who later became my mentor.

At the time, Professor Otsuka was traveling across Asia and Africa to explore methods for preventing deforestation. In the past, community forests worldwide were degraded by local people who overharvested them for firewood, charcoal, or grass. Some forest areas began to recover after the introduction of collective management and the reduction of overharvesting. However, farmers were hesitant to care for the trees, which is crucial for producing high-quality timber. There was no motivation to care for the trees since the profits from timber sales were distributed equally. They started giving ownership of the trees to the individuals who planted and cared for them. This encouraged farmers to invest more effort in caring for the trees, ultimately leading to the protection of the forests. Professor Otsuka discussed such episodes using slides he had taken in Ghana or Nepal.

His lectures shattered my perception of economics as merely a subject found in textbooks. I realized that economics serves as a toolbox to help us understand complex realities that we might not have been able to recognize. It encourages us to think about how we can assist others, which led me to explore the field of development economics.

The reality of significant fertilizer application could only be truly understood by visiting Vietnam

A situation can never be fully understood unless we go there and observe things for ourselves. Another example is the “Vietnam fertilizer project” I am collaborating on with Dr. Yutaka Arimoto from the Institute of Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University and others.

Recent media reports indicated that some fertilizer producers in Vietnam were manufacturing and selling adulterated fertilizers. Japan has faced this issue in the past, and it is also believed to be one of the reasons why farmers in sub-Saharan Africa do not use sufficient fertilizer on their crops. However, the data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) revealed that Vietnamese farmers used significant quantities of fertilizer, which contrasts with the trend observed in Africa. Did this imply that they were using large quantities to make up for the reduced nutrient content in the adulterated fertilizers?

When we visited Vietnam, we found that this was not the case. First, based on interviews with officials from the Ministry of Agriculture, farmers, and distributors, the problem of adulterated fertilizers has decreased significantly after the government tightened regulations and manufacturers increased efforts to maintain the fertilizer quality. Meanwhile, in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, rice crops are grown three times a year, which was made possible some 20 years ago when dikes were constructed along the Mekong River to prevent flooding. Triple rice cropping may have depleted the soil, while dikes halted flooding to bring nutrients into the delta from upstream areas. In other words, farmers were applying large amounts of fertilizer for reasons other than the adulterated fertilizer problem.

The best way to grasp these puzzles is to visit and see for yourself. I intend to keep flying to Vietnam and Africa to collect fertilizer and soil samples and share the findings of our research on the current state of adulterated fertilizers and possible solutions.

Thanks to the farmers’ understanding and cooperation, the rice cultivation training in C?te d’Ivoire has produced valuable knowledge

My research is not something I can do alone. It typically takes the form of a project and may require many years of experimentation and investigation with the collaboration of numerous individuals.

The most important aspect is earning the understanding and trust of the local people from whom I am trying to learn. In C?te d'Ivoire, West Africa, I participated in a project to evaluate the effectiveness of Asian-style rice cultivation training alongside Professor Otsuka and Professor Kazushi Takahashi from Sophia University. In C?te d’Ivoire and many other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, urbanization and population growth have created a situation where people consume more rice than they produce, necessitating imports from Tropical Asia.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) decided that, as part of an international cooperation effort, Japanese agricultural experts would go there to teach the local farmers Asian-type rice production technologies, such as levelling, bund construction, and straight-row transplanting, along with the use of improved varieties and inorganic fertilizers. To verify the impact of this technology transfer, we needed to randomly create two groups of farmers – farmers with training and farmers without training (i.e., farmers who continue to use conventional methods) – and to compare their outcomes.

We visited around 20 villages with the project members and talked to the local farmers to explain the project's purpose. We emphasized that farmers not invited to the training program would be requested not to participate in the training or imitate the technologies.

We explained that if everyone cooperated, we would better understand the training's impact, ultimately benefiting rice farmers in C?te d’Ivoire as well as those across sub-Saharan Africa. Ultimately, eight villages were chosen for the study. After a year-long experiment, it was confirmed that the training helped farmers adopt the technologies, thereby improving rice production and increasing their income from rice farming. In the following year, a spillover effect was also observed, as trained farmers taught the practices they had learned to untrained farmers.

We obtained these results because the farmers recognized the significance and purpose of the project and cooperated with us.

A seminar field trip to an impoverished area of the Philippines to help students realize the importance of seeing things for themselves

Because I believe that seeing and hearing things for oneself is essential for research, I hope that students in my undergraduate seminar will also be able to verify facts and think for themselves instead of blindly accepting information presented in newspapers, books, or on the internet. In my spring/summer seminar for third-year students, I ask them to choose an article from an international academic journal that captures their interest and to present on it.

This summer (2018), we traveled abroad for our seminar field trip to the Kasiglahan resettlement area on the outskirts of Manila, Philippines. I am conducting an educational intervention experiment in this underprivileged area in collaboration with Professor Yasuyuki Sawada (University of Tokyo, Asian Development Bank) and Associate Professor Makiko Nakamuro (Keio University).

Kasiglahan is a place where poverty has persisted for generations. Many parents have dropped out of elementary or junior high school, making it difficult for them to find jobs and causing them to struggle to make ends meet. It is not unusual for their children to drop out of school as well, often becoming street children or scavengers, or taking on other jobs to earn minimal income. Dropping out of school not only denies them an education. Basic life skills, such as hard work, keeping promises, listening to others, and getting along with people, are learned not just in family life, but often also in school. These life skills also serve as a crucial foundation for further academic study and for navigating life and work in society.

To break the cycle of poverty, we focus on life skills education and have been conducting a joint study with Salt Payatas, a certified non-profit organization that has supported children in the area for many years. We collaborate not only with the elementary and junior high schools in Kasiglahan but also with the Department of Education and, of course, with the local residents. With the assistance of experts in Japan and the Philippines, the project offers children the chance to enjoy drawing, listening to stories read aloud, or taking e-learning courses in arithmetic and mathematics, based on the child’s grade level. Parents are informed about the significance of education through seminars and brochures. We evaluate the effect of these initiatives on the children’s life skills, school attendance, and grades, along with their further education or employment.

My seminar students visited the homes of local residents for interviews, and they seemed particularly shocked by the harsh living conditions. I hope my students will understand the importance of seeing and hearing things for themselves and that they become interested in the realities of the world. I also hope that they will learn how to use the analytical tools of economics to understand reality and help solve society's problems.