Date: 2nd July 2015, 16:30 – 19:00
Venue: Basement Floor, “Mizuho Hall”, Faculty of Law and Faculty of Economics, East Bldg. Yoshida Campus, (No.5 building in the map)
http://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/access/yoshida/main.html

Speaker 1
Touchanun.Kompaisarn　(Lecturer, Faculty of Economics, Chulalongkorn University University）
Title : “The Health Benefit Effect of the Universal Coverage Scheme in Thailand”
(in English)

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Abstract:
This study takes advantage of the “natural experiment” features of the 2002 health care reform in Thailand to estimate its impact on health outcomes among Thai people. The scheme intends to increase the accessibility to quality healthcare for Thai people who had no financial protection against high healthcare expenditures before the reform. The scheme were claimed to tremendously raise healthcare utilization rate at public hospitals nationwide. Higher accessibility to necessary healthcare services could potentially benefit the health status of these people or it could yield an opposite outcome if people choose to exploit the system. This paper employs data from the surveys conducted by the National Statistical Office of Thailand in 1996, 2006, and 2009 to analyze the scheme’s possible benefits. The difference-in-differences and the propensity scores technique are combined to identify the effect of the reform on various health outcomes. The findings reveal that those who directly benefited from the scheme seem to have higher chance of getting sick, higher chance of getting day offs from illness, and higher chance of getting hospitalized than those who did not benefit from the reform. JEL Classification Codes: I130, I120, I180, C130, C140, C190 Keywords: Health Insurance, Causality, Difference-in-Differences, Propensity Scores, Non-Parametric Bootstrapping

Speaker 2
Xu Gang　(Graduate Student, Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University）
Title : “Can Corruption Really Function as ‘Protection Money’ and’Greasing Money’? Evidence from Chinese Firms”
(in English)

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Abstract:
This paper directly investigates the “greasing money” and “protection money” effect of corruption based on 12400 Chinese manufacturing firms from 2005 Investment Climate Survey. We use the entertainment and travel cost (ETC) as a proxy for firm-level corruption. First, we identified a significantly positive effect of bribes on firm profitability for the full sample as well as non-state firms, but not for SOEs. Then regarding the “protection money” effect, our empirical results show that ETC can significantly reduce effective tax rate (ETR) for non-state firms, whereas ETC tend to significantly increase ETR for SOEs. With respect to the “greasing money” effect, on one hand, we find out a significantly negative relationship between ETC and red tape, measured by the time CEO spends on government assignments and communications, only for non-SOEs. On the other hand, we also empirically demonstrate that bribes can significantly increase the probability of obtaining government procurement for non-state firms while bribes seem not to have any effect on helping firms ease their financial constraints or obtain bank loans, regardless of the ownership types. Therefore, “protection money” and greasing money” hypothesis basically hold in China, which provides a new insight into the growth model of the non-state sector.

Organizers:Mieno(CSEAS), Yano(GSE), Kono(GSE), Souksavan(GSE)