Researchers

YAMADA Katsunori

YAMADA Katsunori
Professor
Faculty Department of Economics / Graduate School of Economics
Researchmap https://researchmap.jp/kyamada

Education and Career

Education

  • 1996/04 - 2000/03 , Kyoto University, Department of Economics,
  • 2001/04 - 2006/03 , Kyoto University, Graduate School of Economics,

Academic & Professional Experience

  • Apr. 2021 - Today , Kindai University Faculty of Economics Professor
  • Apr. 2014 - Mar. 2021 , Kindai University Faculty of Economics Associate Professor
  • Apr. 2011 - Mar. 2014 , Osaka University The Institute of Social and Economic Research 講師
  • Aug. 2013 - Nov. 2013 , Academia Sinica Visiting researcher
  • Nov. 2012 - Jul. 2013 , Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona Visiting researcher
  • Oct. 2008 - Mar. 2011 , Osaka University The Institute of Social and Economic Research 特任研究員（常勤）
  • Oct. 2010 - Oct. 2010 , Paris School of Economics Visiting researcher
  • Apr. 2006 - Sep. 2008 , Osaka University Graduate School of Economics 日本学術振興会特別研究員(PD)
  • Apr. 2000 - Dec. 2000 , Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi

Research Activities

Research Areas

  • Humanities & social sciences , Economic policy
  • Life sciences , Neuroscience - general

Research Interests

行動経済学, Neuro economics, 脳プロ, マクロ経済学

Published Papers

  1. Feeling rich or looking rich? Self-perceived vs socially-perceived relative income
    Nicolas Bottan; Ricardo Perez-Truglia; Hitoshi Shigeoka; Katsunori Yamada
    Journal of Public Economics  262  , 105778-105778, Oct. 2026  , Refereed
  2. The Constructive and Destructive Power of Social Norms in the Presence of Authoritative Influence
    Shuhei Kitamura; Katsunori Yamada
    American Psychologist  80  (3)  , 345-358, Aug. 2025  , Refereed
  3. A periodic split attractor reconstruction method facilitates cardiovascular signal diagnoses and obstructive sleep apnea syndrome monitoring
    Ze Zhang; Kayo Hirose; Katsunori Yamada; Daisuke Sato; Kanji Uchida; Shinjiro Umezu
    Heliyon  10  (15)  , e35623-e35623, Aug. 2024  , Refereed

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MISC

  1. Misperceived Social Norms and Political Accountability: Evidence and Theory , Shuhei Kitamura; Ryo Takahashi; Katsunori Yamada , 20, Sep. 2025
    Summary:<p>Electoral accountability is a cornerstone of democratic governance, yet whether voters effectively punish corruption remains theoretically and empirically contested. While canonical models predict that corruption revelations reduce incumbent support, strategic voting considerations—especially beliefs about others’ behavior—can yield ambiguous accountability outcomes. We exploit a major corruption scandal involving Japan’s ruling party during a national election to examine how social information shapes electoral responses to misconduct. In a pre-registered field experiment, we randomly provided voters with information about prevailing social norms of intolerance toward the scandal. This intervention significantly increased overall turnout and challenger support, particularly among swing voters, consistent with enhanced accountability. Yet the same treatment increased incumbent support among ruling-party loyalists. We show that these heterogeneous effects are systematically driven by voters’ prior beliefs about others’ voting intentions: those expecting others to punish sanctioned more when learning they would not, whereas those expecting tolerance defended more when learning others would punish. These findings reconcile conflicting evidence on electoral accountability by showing how strategic considerations fundamentally shape democratic sanctioning, and suggest that information campaigns can either strengthen or undermine accountability depending on the distribution of voter expectations, with important implications for anti-corruption interventions.</p>
  2. Why Default Nudges Work: Identifying Cognitive Mechanism with fMRI , Junichi Chikazoe; Kohei Kawaguchi; Kanji Suzuki; Kosuke Uetake; Yasutora Watanabe; Katsunori Yamada , 1, Sep. 2025
    Summary:<p>Default nudges are widely used and effective, but their mechanisms remain unclear. We test whether ease, endowment, or endorsement effects drive choices. In an online randomized experiment, the endowment channel emerges as the principal driver. We then use a novel fMRI approach that constructs brain activity maps of cognitions and uses them to trace their variation in each cognition during decision-making. This approach validates treatments by confirming they elicit the intended cognitions and uses them as instruments to identify the causal effect of cognition on choice. Results show that endowment drives default nudge effectiveness, suggesting policy designs should leverage it.</p>
  3. Feeling Rich or Looking Rich? Quantifying Self-Image and Social-Image Motives , Nicolas Bottan; Ricardo Perez-Truglia; Hitoshi Shigeoka; Katsunori Yamada , NBER working paper , 34094 , Aug. 2025

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Awards & Honors

  1. Jul. 2013, Osaka University, Presidential Awards for Encouragement

Research Grants & Projects

  1. 日本学術振興会, 科学研究費助成事業, 談合など自律的協調に関する理論モデルの実証分析 , 京都大学
  2. Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Research on the Optimal Design of Survey Questionnaires , Kindai University
  3. Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, A Field Experiment on Anticompetitive Behavior

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