A tremendous amount of radioactive products were discharged as a result of the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011, which resulted in radioactive contamination of the plant and surrounding areas. While geographical distribution of radioactive iodine, tellurium, and cesium in the surface soils was smoothly (but not always systematically) widespread all over the region, health risk information by the government, media, and other organizations is most likely to be given in terms of administrative boundaries (cf. prefectures, municipalities, etc.) and/or distance from the radiation source.

This paper estimates the effect of such health risk information rather than the actual health risks of radiation on land and other prices in different locations. We find that the prefecture and municipality border effects – but not the distance effect from the nuclear power plant – are significantly related to a reduction in land and other prices after the accident. This shows that people responded to health risk information based on administrative boundaries rather than the actual health risk of radiation after the disaster. Although health risk information based on prefecture and municipality boundaries has an obvious advantage of distilling large and complex risk information into a simple one, the government, media, and other organizations need to recognize and carefully examine the potential of misclassifying non-contaminated areas into contaminated prefectures. Doing so will avoid unintentional consequences to the region’s economy.

Hiroaki Matsuura is currently Departmental Lecturer in the Economy of Japan in the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford and a Junior Research Fellow of St. Antony’s College. His main interests are health economics and demography, with a special interest in the relation between laws and population health. Hiroaki received his B.A. in Economics from Keio University, M.A. in Social Science from the University of Chicago, M.S. in Project Management from Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Sc.D. in Global Health and Population (Economics track) from Harvard University’s School of Public Health. In the past, he was affiliated with Institute of Quantitative Social Sciences, Human Rights in Development, and Takemi Program in International Health at Harvard University. He also worked as a research assistant at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His doctoral dissertation research explores a right to health or to health care in national constitutions of 157 countries and state constitutions of the 50 U.S. states and estimates the impact of introducing (or removing) a right to health or to health care into national and state constitutions on health system and population health outcomes. His most recent article, “The Right to Health in Japan: Challenges of a Super Aging Society and Implication from Its 2011 Public Health Emergency” (with Eriko Sase) will be appeared on “Advancing the Human Right to Health”, edited by José M. Zuniga, Stephen P. Marks, and Lawrence O. Gostin, Oxford University Press, 2013. 

More information TBA. 

Speaker bio:

Co-sponsored by the Center of East Asian Studies, Stanford University

Prominent health policy expert—Rachel Lu from Taiwan—will share her view on recent health policy developments in the region, drawing on her extensive research and policy background.

Jui-fen Rachel Lu, Sc.D., is a Professor in the Department of Health Care Management, at Chang Gung University (CGU) in Taiwan, where she teaches comparative health systems, health economics, and health care financing and has served as department chair (2000-2004), Associate Dean (2009-2010) and Dean of College of Management (2010-2013).  She earned her B.S. from National Taiwan University, and her M.S. and Sc.D. from Harvard University, and she was also a Takemi Fellow at Harvard (2004-2005) and is an Honorary Professor at Hong Kong University (2007-2014), a guest professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (2010-2013), and an adjunct professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University (2011-2014) in China.  Her devotion to teaching driven by her firm belief in the value of education and investment in human minds was recognized by the Award of Excellence in Teaching conferred by CGU in both 2002 and 2013.

Her research focuses on 1) the equity issues of the health care system; 2) impact of the NHI program on health care market and household consumption patterns; 3) comparative health systems in Asia-Pacific region.  She is a long-time and active member of Equitap (Equity in Asia-Pacific Health Systems) research network and is currently the coordinator for the catastrophic payment component of Equitap II research project which involves 21 country teams and is jointly funded by IDRC, AusAID, and ADB.  Professor Lu has also been appointed to serve as a member on various government committees dealing with health care issues in Taiwan, such as National Health Insurance Supervisory Committee (DOH), Hospital Management Committee(DOH), and Hospital Global Budget Payment Committee (BNHI), etc.  Dr. Lu received the Minister Wang Jin Naw Memorial Award for Best Paper in Health Care Management presented by Kimma Chang Foundation in 2002 and was the recipient of IBM Faculty Award in 2009.  She has published papers in Health Affairs, Medical Care, Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics, Social Science and Medicine, Health Economics, Policy and Law, Osteoporosis International, Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, and Taiwan Economic Review etc, and is the author of “Health Economics”(a textbook in Chinese) and various book chapters.