2022 Hosoya Prize
July 7, 2022
The recipients of the 4th Hosoya Prize
Takeshi Aida (Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization (IDE-JETRO))
Aida, T. (2020) Revisiting suicide rate during wartime: Evidence from the Sri Lankan Civil War. PLoS ONE, 15(10): e0240487.
Review comments
Dr. Aida investigated the relationship between civil war and suicide rate through a statistical approach using the Sri Lankan civil war as a case study, motivated by the classical finding in sociology by Durkheim that indicates declines in suicide rates during wartime.
He employed a spatial panel regression model with district and year fixed effects to estimate a difference-in-difference in the suicide rate between the peacetime and wartime periods as well as the contested and non-contested districts. The results indicate that the suicide rate in the contested districts in the wartime was significantly lower by 43-52%, which supports the Durkheim theory even for civil conflicts. We judge that the study confirming the Durkheim theory in the modern
context has significant contributions in sociology that deserve the prize, which aims to encourage young researchers working on data science / statistics in wide range of social sciences.
Hosoya prize selection committee
Yasumasa Matsuda (chair, Tohoku Univ.)
Kosuke Oya (Osaka Univ.)
Mototsugu Shintani (Univ. Tokyo)
Nobuhiko Terui (Tokyo Univ. of Science)
Peter M. Robinson (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Takashi Yamagata (Univ. York and Osaka Univ.)
Brief history of Dr. Takeshi Aida
BA in Economics, Univ. of Tokyo, March 2008
PhD in Economics, Univ. Tokyo, March 2014
Research Fellow of Institute of Developing Economies, April 2017 -
The 4th Hosoya prize lecture by the recipient will be held in Nov. 2022 in Tohoku Univ. Details will be shown here soon.