Sophia Magazine vol.2 / WINTER 2015

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Comparative StaticsResultsOptimal Solution fromReference Model1) to the right of E1’ => E12) to the left of E1’ => @lcOptimal solutions vary according to where lc stands.“When I was a doctoral student, I happened to have an op-portunity to work with Professor Urushi as a researcher and read a thesis on the peculiarities of the medical care market written by Nobel Prize laureate Kenneth Arrow, whom I re-spect, which made me want to apply the methodology that I had acquired to this realm,” he said.In those days, the 1990s, it is safe to say that health econom-ics was still an emerging field in Japan. For this reason, he was able to build close connections with the core researchers, including Professor Urushi, from the very beginning and to be involved in pioneering studies, which was extremely fortu-nate, he added, looking back on the past. The Faculty of Economics at Sophia University features re-search and education that applies economic approaches to a wide array of specific issues, not only in medicine but also in the financial, fiscal and environmental areas. The size of the school is not too large and the distance between the faculty and students is close.“For example, there are quite a few teachers who conduct research on sought-after themes, such as biodiversity. You should be able to find a research realm that you can commit yourself to depending on how strongly motivated you are at this university, as I did,” said Professor Aoki. At present, the focus of his work(*) is on verifying how re-lated measures introduced by the government for the increas-ingly stringent medical and insurance budget are affecting hospitals or the health care service market as a whole. “The number of studies that I cannot handle by myself any longer is on the rise,” said Professor Aoki. “I would like to form an interdisciplinary team, centered on my department, to continue to conduct research which can lead to the mainte-nance and improvement of Japan’s already outstanding medi-cal system. It would be great if I could thereby contribute to improving or expanding health care systems overseas, includ-ing developing countries as well.” patients with unnecessary services. However, it is quite diffi-cult to verify this and even more difficult to devise the mecha-nisms to curb it if that is the case,” Professor Aoki said. The issue of the economics of morality in medicine, the be-nevolent art, vexes economists.While Professor Aoki was a graduate student at Sophia, his adviser was the late Professor Hiroo Urushi, who specialized in health economics. At that time, Professor Aoki’s interest was more in the field of orthodox economics. The Fun of Dissecting ContemporaryIssues with Economics◆ The negative correlation between d and l is caused by:–– technological constraints in the proposed model; and–– changes in the exogenous variable d in the reference model.15Research