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

Enhancing School Quality in Vietnam through Participative and Collaborative Learning
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-08-15) Parandekar, Suhas D.; Yamauchi, Futoshi; Ragatz, Andrew B.; Sedmik, Elisabeth K.; Sawamoto, Akiko
The Vietnam Escuela Nueva (VNEN) program incorporates and integrates several innovative and globally recognized practices including: (a) Participative and collaborative learning; (b) Self-paced learning guides; (c) Student government; (d) Formative assessment; (e) Application or real-life oriented learning, with community integration; and (f) Teacher professional networks. The combination of these elements is intended to spur a transformative and powerful learning experience that produces the kinds of new skills and competencies expected of children in the 21st century. This report presents the findings and conclusions of an Impact Evaluation (IE) study of the VNEN program. The study compares the experience of students and school communities from VNEN schools with the experience from a randomly selected comparators group of traditional schools. The cohort comparison of children from third grade to fifth grade shows that the VNEN program positively impacted both non-cognitive and cognitive skills of the students.
Toward Labor Market Policy 2.0: The Potential for Using Online Job-Portal Big Data to Inform Labor Market Policies in India
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-02) Imaizumi, Saori; Nomura, Shinsaku; Areias, Ana Carolina; Yamauchi, Futoshi
Economists and other social scientists are increasingly using big data analytics to address longstanding economic questions and complement existing information sources. Big data produced by online platforms can yield a wealth of diverse, highly granular, multidimensional information with a variety of potential applications. This paper examines how online job-portal data can be used as a basis for policy-relevant research in the fields of labor economics and workforce skills development, through an empirical analysis of information generated by Babajob, an online Indian job portal. The analysis highlights five key areas where online job-portal data can contribute to the development of labor market policies and analytical knowledge: (i) labor market monitoring and analysis; (ii) assessing demand for workforce skills; (iii) observing job-search behavior and improving skills matching; (iv) predictive analysis of skills demand; and (v) experimental studies. The unique nature of the data produced by online job-search portals allows for the application of diverse analytical methodologies, including descriptive data analysis, time-series analysis, text analysis, predictive analysis, and transactional data analysis. This paper is intended to contribute to the academic literature and the development of public policies. It contributes to the literature on labor economics through application of big data analytics to real-world data. The analysis also provides a unique case study on labor market data analytics in a developing-country context in South Asia. Finally, the report examines the potential for using big data to improve the design and implementation of labor market policies and promote demand-driven skills development.
Reflections of Employers' Gender Preferences in Job Ads in India: An Analysis of Online Job Portal Data
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) Chowdhury, Afra R.; Areias, Ana C.; Imaizumi, Saori; Nomura, Shinsaku; Yamauchi, Futoshi
Using online job portal data and probabilistic regression estimations, the paper investigates the explicit gender bias and salary gap in the Indian job market, reflected in more than 800,000 job recruitment advertisements. Exploring formal and informal sector occupations, the study finds high existence of employers' gender bias in hiring. Explicit gender preferences are highly job specific, and it is common to mention the preferred gender in job ads, which, in general, favor men over women. Although ads for professional occupations exhibit less explicit gender bias, they are not gender neutral. In all types of professional jobs, irrespective of the share of ads with preference for men or women, on average, ads targeting men specify/offer much higher salary. Employers in elementary sectors as well as blue-collar jobs express more segregated gender preference. The findings support the existing research that argues women are more preferred in low-quality, low-status, typically low-paid informal jobs. Targeting women for low-quality jobs explains half of the mean offered salary gap specified in ads; the rest is direct gender bias. The paper also suggests that, with the rise of new technology and sectors, gender bias in hiring in those new types of jobs is expected to decline.
School Resource and Performance Inequality : Evidence from the Philippines
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-01) Parandekar, Suhas; Yamauchi, Futoshi
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.
The Effects of Improved Roads on Wages and Employment Evidence from Rural Labor Markets in Indonesia
(Taylor and Francis, 2016-03-30) Yamauchi, Futoshi
This paper examines the impact of road quality on labour supply and wages using household panel data from rural Indonesia. The analysis uses fixed-effect instrumental variable estimation by first differencing two-round panel data. First, road projects are found to increase the transportation speed. Second, the empirical results from intra-village variations of household endowments and labour-market behaviour show that an increase in transportation speed raised wages in both non-agricultural and agricultural employment, and was associated with a decline in working time in agricultural employment, for the households whose members are relatively educated. The findings support potential complementarity between road quality and education, implying that the government’s public investments in roads and education should be coordinated to capture cross-augmenting positive impacts in the long run.
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.
Impacts of an Early Stage Education Intervention on Students' Learning Achievement : Evidence from the Philippines
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-10) Liu, Yanyan; Yamauchi, Futoshi
This paper examines the impact of a large supply-side education intervention in the Philippines, the Third Elementary Education Project, on students' national achievement test scores. It finds that the program significantly increased student test scores at grades 4 to 6. The estimation indicates that two-year exposure to the program increases test scores by about 4.5 to 5 score points. Interestingly, the mathematics score is more responsive to the education reform than are other subjects. The analysis also finds that textbooks, instructional training of teachers, and new classroom construction particularly contributed to these outcomes. The empirical results imply that early-stage investment improves student performance at later stages in the elementary school cycle, which suggests that social returns to such an investment are greater than what the current study demonstrates.
Asymmetric Information on Noncognitive Skills in the Indian Labor Market: An Experiment in Online Job Portal
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) Imaizumi, Saori; Yamauchi, Futoshi; Areias, Ana; Nomura, Shinsaku; Chowdhury, Afra
This paper examines the impact of noncognitive (socio-emotional) skills on job market outcomes, using a randomized control trial implemented in an online job portal in India. Job seekers who registered in the portal were asked to take a Big-Five type personality test and, for a random subsample of the test takers, the results were displayed to potential employers. The outcomes are measured by whether a potential employer shortlisted a job seeker by opening (unlocking) his/her application and background information. The results show that the treatment group for whom test results were shown generally enjoyed a higher probability of unlock. That is, employers are more interested in those for whom they can see personality test results. Such a relationship was not seen in the pre-test period, which confirms that the results are unlikely to be spurious. The study also finds a significant impact among organized, calm, imaginative, and/or quiet applicants (no effect is detected among easy-going, sensitive, realistic, and/or outgoing applicants), which seems to display employers' preference.
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.
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.