IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dpr/wpaper/0695.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Koizumi Carried the Day: Did the Japanese Election Results Make People Happy and Unhappy?

Author

Listed:
  • Yoshiro Tsutsui
  • Miles Kimball
  • Fumio Ohtake

Abstract

This paper investigates whether Japanese people were happy and unhappy with the general election conducted on September 11, 2005, in which the Prime Minister, Koizumi, won a landslide victory. We conducted a large survey just after the election to ask people how happy they were and which party they had supported. Although there are consistent tendencies that supporters of ruling parties were happier and supporters of opposition parties were unhappier, the effect was not significant. Considering the results of a previous study that showed that Americans demonstrated significant responses to the result of a presidential election, this study suggests that Japanese people are indifferent to politics.

Suggested Citation

  • Yoshiro Tsutsui & Miles Kimball & Fumio Ohtake, 2007. "Koizumi Carried the Day: Did the Japanese Election Results Make People Happy and Unhappy?," ISER Discussion Paper 0695, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    • Handle: RePEc:dpr:wpaper:0695
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iser.osaka-u.ac.jp/library/dp/2007/DP0695.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hindriks, Jean & Lockwood, Ben, 2009. "Decentralization and electoral accountability: Incentives, separation and voter welfare," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 385-397, September.
    2. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2002. "What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 402-435, June.
    3. Clémence Vergne, 2009. "Democracy, elections and allocation of public expenditures in developing countries," Post-Print hal-00368509, HAL.
    4. Miles Kimball & Helen Levy & Fumio Ohtake & Yoshiro Tsutsui, 2006. "Unhappiness after Hurricane Katrina," NBER Working Papers 12062, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Vergne, Clémence, 2009. "Democracy, elections and allocation of public expenditures in developing countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 63-77, March.
    6. Andrew E. Clark & Paul Frijters & Michael A. Shields, 2008. "Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(1), pages 95-144, March.
    7. Rafael Di Tella & Robert MacCulloch, 2006. "Some Uses of Happiness Data in Economics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 25-46, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yamamura, Eiji & Sabatini, Fabio, 2014. "Superstars in politics: the role of the media in the koizumi regime," MPRA Paper 56178, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Eiji Yamamura & Yoshiro Tsutsui & Fumio Ohtake, 2016. "Relative Income Position and Happiness: Are Cabinet Supporters Different from Others in Japan?," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 67(4), pages 383-402, December.
    3. Kinari, Yusuke & Ohtake, Fumio & Kimball, Miles & Morimoto, Shoko & Tsutsui, Yoshiro, 2019. "Happiness before and after an election: An analysis based on a daily survey around Japan’s 2009 election," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 187-194.
    4. Yoshiro Tsutsui & Shoko Yamane & Fumio Ohtake, 2015. "Why Are Cabinet Supporters Happy?," ISER Discussion Paper 0923, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    5. Daniel J. Benjamin & Ori Heffetz & Miles S. Kimball & Alex Rees-Jones, 2010. "Do People Seek to Maximize Happiness? Evidence from New Surveys," NBER Working Papers 16489, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Eiji Yamamura & Fabio Sabatini, 2014. "Superstars in politics: the role of the media in the rise and success of Junichiro Koizumi," Papers 1407.1726, arXiv.org.
    7. Miles Kimball & Helen Levy & Fumio Ohtake & Yoshiro Tsutsui, 2006. "Unhappiness after Hurricane Katrina," NBER Working Papers 12062, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Chadi, Adrian, 2015. "Concerns about the Euro and happiness in Germany during times of crisis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PA), pages 126-146.
    9. Yamamura, Eiji & Sabatini, Fabio, 2015. "The impact of the media on voters’ attitude toward Junichiro Koizumi and his policy," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34, pages 24-32.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kinari, Yusuke & Ohtake, Fumio & Kimball, Miles & Morimoto, Shoko & Tsutsui, Yoshiro, 2019. "Happiness before and after an election: An analysis based on a daily survey around Japan’s 2009 election," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 187-194.
    2. Abel Brodeur, 2012. "Smoking, Income and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Smoking Bans," Working Papers halshs-00664269, HAL.
    3. Senik, Claudia, 2009. "Direct evidence on income comparisons and their welfare effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 408-424, October.
    4. Guven, Cahit & Senik, Claudia & Stichnoth, Holger, 2012. "You can’t be happier than your wife. Happiness gaps and divorce," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 110-130.
    5. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/7fst0pcf5j8cr99e1nuobt97rn is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Brodeur, Abel & Connolly, Marie, 2013. "Do higher child care subsidies improve parental well-being? Evidence from Quebec's family policies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 1-16.
    7. Hajdu, Tamás & Hajdu, Gábor, 2011. "A hasznosság és a relatív jövedelem kapcsolatának vizsgálata magyar adatok segítségével [Examining the relation of utility and relative income using Hungarian data]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(1), pages 56-73.
    8. T. Lakshmanasamy, 2022. "Money and Happiness in India: Is Relative Comparison Cardinal or Ordinal and Same for All?," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 20(4), pages 931-957, December.
    9. Chun-Hung A. Lin & Suchandra Lahiri & Ching-Po Hsu, 2017. "Happiness and Globalization: A Spatial Econometric Approach," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 18(6), pages 1841-1857, December.
    10. Sergei Guriev & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2009. "(Un)happiness in Transition," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(2), pages 143-168, Spring.
    11. Deckers Thomas & Falk Armin & Schildberg-Hörisch Hannah, 2016. "Nominal or Real? The Impact of Regional Price Levels on Satisfaction with Life," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 16(3), pages 1337-1358, September.
    12. William Betz & Nicole Simpson, 2013. "The effects of international migration on the well-being of native populations in Europe," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-21, December.
    13. Welsch, Heinz & Kühling, Jan, 2015. "Income comparison, income formation, and subjective well-being: New evidence on envy versus signaling," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 21-31.
    14. Koen Decancq & Marc Fleurbaey & Erik Schokkaert, 2015. "Happiness, Equivalent Incomes and Respect for Individual Preferences," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 82, pages 1082-1106, December.
    15. Dickerson, Andy & Hole, Arne Risa & Munford, Luke A., 2014. "The relationship between well-being and commuting revisited: Does the choice of methodology matter?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 321-329.
    16. Susana Ferreira & Mirko Moro, 2013. "Income and Preferences for the Environment: Evidence from Subjective Well-Being Data," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(3), pages 650-667, March.
    17. Ólafsdóttir, Thorhildur & Ásgeirsdóttir, Tinna Laufey & Norton, Edward C., 2020. "Valuing pain using the subjective well-being method," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    18. Zhang, Yinjunjie & Xu, Zhicheng Phil & Palma, Marco A., 2017. "Misclassification Errors of Subjective Well-being: A New Approach to Mapping Happiness," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258553, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    19. Martin Berlin & Niklas Kaunitz, 2015. "Beyond Income: The Importance for Life Satisfaction of Having Access to a Cash Margin," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 16(6), pages 1557-1573, December.
    20. Juncal Cuñado & Fernando Gracia, 2013. "Environment and Happiness: New Evidence for Spain," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 112(3), pages 549-567, July.
    21. Nguyen, Ha & Duncan, Alan, 2015. "Macroeconomic fluctuations in home countries and immigrants’ well-being: New evidence from Down Under," MPRA Paper 69593, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Feb 2016.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dpr:wpaper:0695. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Librarian (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isosujp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.