Person:
Yamauchi, Futoshi

Agriculture and Rural Development Unit, Development Research Group, The World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Agriculture and food security; economics of education; education, skills development, and the labor market

External Links

RePEc

Departments

Agriculture and Rural Development Unit, Development Research Group, The World Bank

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Futoshi Yamauchi is Senior Economist at the Agriculture and Rural Development unit of Development Research Group. His specializations include human capital formation, the labor market, agriculture, rural development, social learning, and governance issues in developing countries. He has extensive field experience in Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Thailand, and Zambia. Recently, Futoshi has conducted analytical works to support the education sector in the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. His papers were published in major journals such as Journal of Development Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Journal of Development Studies, World Development, Demography, Economics of Education Review, and others. Prior to the Bank, Futoshi was a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, and has taught at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Yokohama National University, and Kyoto University. Born in Japan, Futoshi received his B.A. in law and M.A. in economics from Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 21

Population Pressures, Migration, and the Returns to Human Capital and Land : Insights from Indonesia

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-02) Liu, Yanyan ; Yamauchi, Futoshi

Rapid population growth in many developing countries has raised concerns regarding food security and household welfare. To understand the consequences of population growth in a general equilibrium setting, this paper examines the dynamics of population density and its impacts on household outcomes. The analysis uses panel data from Indonesia combined with district-level demographic data. Historically, Indonesia has adapted to land constraints through a mix of agricultural intensification, expansion of the land frontier, and nonfarm diversification, with public policies playing a role in catalyzing all of these responses. In contemporary Indonesia, the paper finds that human capital determines the effect of increased population density on per capita household consumption expenditure. On the one hand, the effect of population density is positive if the average educational attainment is high (above junior high school), while it is negative otherwise. On the other hand, farmers with larger holdings maintain their advantage in farming regardless of population density. The paper concludes with some potential lessons for African countries from Indonesia's more successful rural development experiences.
Wage Growth, Landholding, and Mechanization in Agriculture : Evidence from Indonesia

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-02) Yamauchi, Futoshi

This paper uses farm panel data from Indonesia to examine dynamic patterns of land use, capital investments, and wages in agriculture. The empirical analysis shows that an increase in real wages has induced the substitution of labor by machines among relatively large farmers. Large farmers tend to increase the scale of operation by renting in more land when real wages increase. Machines and land are complementary if the scale of operation is greater than a threshold size. In contrast, such a dynamic change was not observed among relatively small holders, which implies a divergence in the movement of the production frontier between Java and off-Java regions given that the majority of small farmers are concentrated in Java.
An Alternative Estimate of School-based Management Impacts on Students' Achievements : Evidence from the Philippines

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-01) Yamauchi, Futoshi

This paper aims to estimate the impact of school-based management on students' test scores in the Philippines. Estimation results using double differencing combined with propensity score matching show that school-based management increases the average national achievement test score by 4.2 points over three years. The increase in mathematics reached 5.7 points. This is larger than the estimate previously reported from the Philippines, probably because the sample schools had learned about implementation of school-based management from experiences accumulated in other provinces that introduced it earlier. The empirical results also show that schools with experienced principals and teachers are eager to introduce school-based management.
School Resource and Performance Inequality : Evidence from the Philippines

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-01) Yamauchi, Futoshi ; Parandekar, Suhas

This paper examines inequality patterns of school and teacher resources as well as student performance in the Philippines. School and teacher resources, measured by pupil classroom and teacher ratios and per-pupil teacher salary, became more unequal over time. Strikingly, a large portion of the variation is attributed to their within-division distributions, especially the non-city areas in each province (rural schools), where pupil classroom and teacher ratios have significantly positive returns in terms of student test scores. Concavity built into the education production function implies that reallocation of teachers and classrooms within a division can potentially increase average test scores. The estimates also imply that it is optimal to deploy young, inexperienced teachers to rural schools and reassign them to urban schools when the teachers are more experienced.
An Alternative Estimate of School-Based Management Impacts on Students’ Achievements : Evidence from the Philippines

(Taylor and Francis, 2014-04-14) Yamauchi, Futoshi

This paper aims to estimate the impact of school-based management (SBM) on students’ test scores in the Philippines. Estimation results using double differencing (DD) combined with propensity score matching show that SBM increased the average national achievement test score by 4.2 points over three years. The increase in mathematics was 5.7 points. The triple differencing procedure using the pre-intervention period as the baseline provides even larger impact estimates: 8.6 and 11.4 points for average and mathematics scores, respectively. These impacts are larger than the estimate previously reported from the Philippines, probably due to the fact that the sample schools had learned about SBM implementation from experiences accumulated in other provinces that introduced SBM earlier. The empirical results also show that schools with experienced principals and teachers are eager to introduce SBM.
Roads, Labor Markets, and Human Capital : Evidence from Rural Indonesia

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-12) Yamauchi, Futoshi

This paper uses household panel data from rural Indonesia to examine the impact of road quality on labor supply and wages. First, road projects are found to increase transportation speed. Second, the empirical results from intra-village variations of household endowments and labor market behavior show that an increase in transportation speed raised wages in nonagricultural and agricultural employment, and was associated with a decline in working time in agricultural employment, for households whose members are relatively educated. The findings support potential complementarity between road quality and education.
Wage Growth, Landholding, and Mechanization in Chinese Agriculture

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-12) Wang, Xiaobing ; Yamauchi, Futoshi ; Otsuka, Keijiro ; Huang, Jikun

This paper uses farm panel data from China to examine the dynamics of land transactions, machine investments, and the demand for machine services. Recently, China's agriculture has experienced a large expansion of machine rentals and machine services provided by specialized agents, which has contributed to mechanization of agricultural production. The empirical results show that an increase in nonagricultural wage rates leads to expansion of self-cultivated land size. A rise in the proportion of nonagricultural income or the migration rate also increases the size of self-cultivated land. Interestingly, however, relatively educated farm households decrease the size of self-cultivated land, which suggests that relatively less educated farmers tend to specialize in farming. The demand for machine services has also increased if agricultural wage and migration rate increased over time, especially among relatively large farms. The results on crop income support the complementarity between rented-in land and machine services (demanded), which implies that scale economies are arising in Chinese agriculture with mechanization and active land rental markets.
Natural Disasters, Self-Insurance and Human Capital Investment : Evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Malawi

( 2009-04-01) Yamauchi, Futoshi ; Yohannes, Yisehac ; Quisumbing, Agnes

This paper examines the impacts of disasters on dynamic human capital production using panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi. The empirical results show that the accumulation of biological human capital prior to disasters helps children maintain investments in the post-disaster period. Biological human capital formed in early childhood (long-term nutritional status) plays a role of insurance with resilience to disasters by protecting schooling investment and outcomes, although disasters have negative impacts on investment. In Bangladesh, children with more biological human capital are less affected by the adverse effects of floods, and the rate of investment increases with the initial human capital stock in the post-disaster recovery process. In Ethiopia and Malawi, where droughts are rather frequent, exposure to highly frequent droughts in some cases reduces schooling investment but the negative impacts are larger among children embodying less biological human capital. Asset holdings prior to the disasters, especially the household's stock of intellectual human capital, also helps maintain schooling investments at least to the same degree as the stock of human capital accumulated in children prior to the disasters.
Risks, Ex-ante Actions and Public Assistance : Impacts of Natural Disasters on Child Schooling in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Malawi

( 2009-04-01) Yamauchi, Futoshi ; Yohannes, Yisehac ; Quisumbing, Agnes

This paper examines the impacts of natural disasters on schooling investments with special focus on the roles of ex-ante actions and ex-post responses using panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi. The importance of ex-ante actions depends on disaster risks and the likelihood of public assistance, which potentially creates substitution between the two actions. The findings show that higher future probabilities of disasters increase the likelihood of holding more human capital and/or livestock relative to land, and this asset-portfolio effect is significant in disaster prone areas. The empirical results support the roles of both ex-ante and ex-post responses (public assistance) in coping with disasters, but also show interesting variations across countries. In Ethiopia, public assistance plays a more important role than ex-ante actions to mitigate the impact of shocks on child schooling. In contrast, households in Malawi rely more on private ex-ante actions than public assistance. The Bangladesh example shows active roles of both ex-ante and ex-post actions. These observations are consistent with the finding on the relationship between ex-ante actions and disaster risks. The results also show that among ex-ante actions, human capital accumulated in the household prior to disasters helps mitigate the negative effects of disasters in both the short and long runs.
Long-term Impacts of Global Food Crisis on Production Decisions: Evidence from Farm Investments in Indonesia

(Taylor and Francis, 2016-05-12) Nose, Manabu ; Yamauchi, Futoshi

This paper estimates farmers’ investment response to food price spikes using household panel data collected before and after the 2007/08 food price crisis in Indonesia. We found that an increase in farmers’ terms-of-trade allowed relatively large crop-producing farmers to increase their investments at both extensive and intensive margins. Food price spikes had a significant income effect among farmers whose production surplus is large for market sales. During the food price crisis, large farmers particularly increased machine investments, which saved some labour inputs, pointing to the importance of complementarities between land and machine investments.