Volume 22, Number 3 (Summer) 1987
Nakata, Yoshi-fumi and Carl Mosk. 1987. "The Demand for College Education in Postwar Japan." Journal of Human Resources 22(3):377-404.
Since World War II the number of Japanese college applications has expanded at an impressive rate. This paper concentrates on evaluating the extent to which economic factors underlie this expansion. Salient among the findings are results suggesting that an important segment of the population, whom we call "marginal investors," respond sensitively to shortrun economic factors governing higher education. These factors include direct college costs, the household liquidity constraints, and the probability of entering a large firm. It also appears that the quality of college education has been an important determinant of postwar demand for college education in Japan.
Nakata is a professor of economics and finance and legal studies at the University of Alabama. Mosk is a professor in the department of economics, Santa Clara University and a member of the Graduate Group in Demography at the University of California, Berkeley. The authors are grateful to the Institute of International Studies and the Institute of Industrial Relations, both of the University of California at Berkeley, for funds that helped support this project. An earlier version of this paper was presented to a seminar in the economics department of the University of California at Davis.
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X