Research

Job Market Paper

Supply and Demand of Medical Knowledge, Megumi Murakami 

This research uses a signaling game to study two millennia of medical history and its stagnant development compared to other natural sciences. Upon observing signals, two senders/physicians choose either old or new technologies. Then, a unit mass of receivers/patients select one of the two physicians. Three mutually exclusive types of pure strategy equilibria exist, corresponding to the three stages in the evolution of medical technology. Our results identify three contributing factors to the stagnant development of medicine: bias in patients' beliefs toward the old method, the limited accuracy of physicians' signals, and intense competition. In particular, intense competition is detrimental to the dissemination of medical knowledge because the physicians tend to stick to the old technology to attract biased patients.

Publications

Deferred acceptance algorithm with retrade 

(with Akihiko Matsui, 2022,Mathematical Social Sciences, 120, 50-65.)

Rare Diseases and Medical Institutions in Meiji Japan:Policies of Imperial Army and Navy on Beriberi

(with Akihiko Matsui, 2021, Economic Analysis, 203) in Japanese 

Working Papers

The Role Of An Expert In The Evolution Of Conventions (International Journal of Game Theory, revise and resubmit)

Abstract:This paper explicitly introduces one expert, who makes public recommendations, and analyzes this expert's influence on the evolution of conventions in a two-by-two coordination game. An equilibrium concept, E-BRD, is defined by utilizing the best response dynamics to study a stable convention. The combination of the expert's recommendations and the belief updates of individuals leads to unique outcome, in which emerged the Pareto superior convention.

Work in Progress

Modernizing Medicine: Spatial Distributions of Physicians in Japan, 1872-2000 (with Chihiro Inoue, Chiaki Moriguchi and Yoko Okuyama)