Let me inform you of the following research seminar.

Date: July 1, 2022
Time: 17:15-18:45
Venue: Seminar Room B, 11th floor, Bldg. No. 2, & Zoom
Speaker: Munechika Katayama (Waseda University)
Organizer: Gabriel Fuentes-Cordoba
Language: English

Title: Nightless City: Impacts of Policymakers’ Questions on Overtime Work of Government Officials

Abstract: We quantify the impact of questions submitted by policymakers on the overtime work of Japanese government officials. We use mobile phone location data to measure the nighttime population in the government-office district at hourly frequency. Our measure is much less vulnerable to measurement errors than reported overtime working hours. Exploiting the institutional constraints, we estimate responses of the nighttime population to an exogenous increase in the number of questions submitted by using the method of local projection. We find that, on average, overtime work significantly increases and persists by midnight one week after the submission of the question. Based on our results, government officials, who are male in their 20s and female in their 40s, are the most heavily affected by the question. Furthermore, the effect on overtime work is estimated to be more pronounced when everything is paper- based, suggesting that improved efficiency using information technology can mitigate overtime work.

The full paper is available at https://www.waseda.jp/fpse/winpec/assets/uploads/2022/03/E2125_version.pdf

* Please contact the organizer via email, if you'd like to participate in the online seminar.
   If you are interested in upcoming seminars, please visit the website of SIHS Seminar Series.