Structural Estimation and Counterfactual Analysis in Models of Human Capital Formation

Research Project

Project/Area Number	19K13715
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Review Section	Basic Section 07050:Public economics and labor economics-related
Research Institution	The University of Tokyo
Principal Investigator	グリフェンアンドリュウ東京大学, 大学院経済学研究科(経済学部), 准教授 (10645055)
Project Period (FY)	2019-04-01 – 2023-03-31
Project Status	Granted (Fiscal Year 2020)
Budget Amount *help	¥4,290,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥990,000) Fiscal Year 2022: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000) Fiscal Year 2021: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000) Fiscal Year 2020: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000) Fiscal Year 2019: ¥1,560,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥360,000)
Keywords	Structural estimation / Human capital / RCT / Counterfactuals / Prenatal care / Technological change / Wage structure / Antenatal care
Outline of Research at the Start	The research will consist of two projects. The first project is on the effects of technological change on wage inequality in the US taking into account the endogenous formation of education, location, occupation, and retirement decisions, and how they affect wage inequality. The second project examines clinic choice for antenatal care in the DRC and tradeoffs between price and distance and the extensive measures of providers’ quality. We hope to understand why households choose clinics that are not productive for health outcomes especially given the high infant death rates.
Outline of Annual Research Achievements	This year was very difficult for research progress because of coronavirus. I wasn't able to visit my co-authors in Europe so our coding has been delayed. We did recently make some progress with estimating our model on technological change and wage inequiality. Hopefully we should have estimates soon and can make progress on coding. For the project on clinic choice and prenatal care in DRC, the experiment and data collection by the World Bank has also been delayed because of the coronavirus. The data collection should hopefully resume soon and my co-author has been working on training enumerators for the next data collection round.
Current Status of Research Progress	Current Status of Research Progress 3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed. Reason Because of coronavirus it was impossible to visit co-authors this year.
Strategy for Future Research Activity	As of right now there is no fundamental change to the research plan and we still perceive that we can accomplish all of the research goals.