2012_08290016.JPG
 

Pacific Ocean, August 2012

33.076° N, 139.844° E

 
 

About Yu Sasaki

I am an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Economics and the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo. I hold a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Washington, Seattle. I work on Historical Political Economy, an emerging field of empirical social science, with a focus on state capacity as well as cultural diffusion and political change by drawing evidence from early-modern Europe, particularly France. My research typically involves creating new data sets by uncovering hitherto undigitized sources and maps in published documents. I completed an MA in Global, International, and Comparative History at Georgetown University and a BA in International Studies at American University.

Talks

Previously, I worked for four years on international and homeland security and on science and technology at research institutes in Washington, D.C., and Tokyo.

For more, please see my CV.

For specific details on research, data, and teaching, please keep scrolling down.

I may be reached at

yusasaki253 AT gmail DOT com

Publications

"The Royal Consultants: The Intendants of France and the Bureaucratic Transition in Pre-modern Europe," Journal of Historical Political Economy 1(2), 2021. Special Issue - Frontiers in HPE. Open Access. Paper.

"Content with Failure? Cultural Consolidation and the Absence of Nationalist Mobilization in the Case of the Occitans in France," Social Science History 43(2), Summer 2019. Lead article. Paper + Appendix.

"Publishing Nations: Technology Acquisition and Language Standardization for European Ethnic Groups," Journal of Economic History 77(4), December 2017. Paper + Appendix.

Working Papers

"Postal Growth: How the State-Sponsored Post Affected Growth in France, 1500-1850" (March 2024, under review)

  • click here for a detailed explainer (to be updated)

"Weak States and Hard Censorship" (April 2022; rev. May 2023)

"Printed Drug: Banned Books and Political Change in Eighteenth-Century France" (March 2021)

"Ethnic Autonomy" (December 2020, APSA Preprint v3)

  • Frank L. Wilson Best ASPA Paper Award, French Politics Group, 2019.

"Language Underpinnings on Europe's Rise" (March 2019, revised manuscript)

"Continuity or Contingency? The Patterns of National-Identity Salience on Europeans' Attitudes toward Muslims" (June 2016, complete manuscript)

 

Click here for the abstracts and descriptive data of my papers.

Blogs

Here is a list of blog-like posts that explain my ongoing research as well as posts on the state-of-the-art in my research areas:

Data

Descriptive data and detailed discussion available on the RESEARCH page.

I regularly build new data sets for empirical analysis in my work and make them central to my contribution. I collect information from a variety of published, online, and commercially-available sources in economic, political, and cultural history, geography, sociology, anthropology, and linguistics. This effort enables me to not only measure the influence of historical events but also to quantify these historical events in a concrete, nuanced, and relevant fashion. Whenever possible, I seek to construct time-varying datasets.

So far, I have collected: 

  • Attributes of postal service and pre-modern growth among 341 cities in France, 1500-1800 (used in "Postal Growth") (Click here for the paper’s detailed explainer)

    • Unit: 341 cities * 5 periods (1500, 1600, 1700m 1750, 1800) = 1,705 city-years

    • Outcome variable

      • population size

    • Main explanatory variable

      • average geographical distance to “commercial hubs” via postal routes

        • The “commercial hubs” are defined as 29 cities that were top 10% most populous in 1500

        • These 29 cities include 11 cities that held medieval commercial fairs

    • Geographical variables

      • distance to nearest coast

      • distance to nearest border

    • Economic variables

      • number of canals within 50 km

    • Cultural variables

      • indicator for university

      • indicator for printing press

    • Other controls

      • Cumulative time under French rule since 1477

  • Role of illegal books in the French Revolution (used in “Printed Drug”)

    • unit: 87 départements (housing 217 cities)

    • Outcome variables

      • number of émigrés who fled from France after the revolution, observed at the département level

      • number of death sentences at post-revolutionary tribunals, observed at the département level

      • subgroups recorded in each outcome: nobility, clergy, upper middle class, and all subgroups

    • Main explanatory variables

      • illegal books diffused through nearest major bookdealer

      • illegal books diffused through highest-impact bookdealer

    • Political institutions variable

      • access to post office by 1690

    • Geographical variables

      • distance to Paris

      • distance to Neuchâtel

      • land elevation above sea level

      • terrain ruggedness

    • Economic variables

      • population size in 1750

      • number of cities holding commercial fairs within 50 km

      • number of canals within 50 km

    • Cultural variables

      • male literacy rate in 1786

  • Prosopographical attributes of 430 Intendants (the king’s representatives in provinces) in France, 1640-1789 (used in “The Royal Consultants”)

    • unit: 430 individuals * 150 years = 6,450 intendant-years

      • dataset is pooled cross-section, as not all observations have an appointment in each time period

    • Biographical information

      • last name (100% of all observations covered)

      • given name (<100%)

      • date of birth (87%, mostly down to the day)

      • date of death (92%, mostly down to the day; not reported in the paper)

      • marriage: 87% married at least once, 75% with known date of marriage and name of wife/wives; names of children if married

    • Career information

      • number of appointment: at least once, up to six

      • location of appointment

      • duration of appointment

      • age of appointment (confined to those with date of birth)

      • Maîtres des requêtes: whether individuals held this mid-ranking position before becoming intendants

    • Colleague information

      • kinsman: whether an intendant has a colleague from his own kin member before or after appointment (40% of all observations)

      • “endogamy”: whether an intendant is connected to another intendant through marriage

        (25% of all observations)


  • Attributes of 171 European ethnic groups, 1400-2000 (used in "Publishing Nations")

    • Outcome variable

      • first publication year of comprehensive vernacular dictionaries

    • Main explanatory variable

      • year of printing press adoption

    • Political variables

      • war frequency

      • indicators for the Russian Empire/Muscovy, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Empire,

      • Roman legacy (Roman roads, hub Roman roads)

    • Economic variables

      • urban potential

      • access to oceanic port

    • Geographical variables

      • land elevation above sea level

      • terrain ruggedness

      • island indicator

    • Social variables

      • university (year of university founded)

      • bishoprics (year of bishoprics erected)

      • effect of the Protestant Reformation (closer distance to either Wittenberg or Zürich)

    • Instrumental variable

      • geographical distance to Mainz (the German city where the Gutenberg press was invented around 1450)

Teaching

My pedagogical goal is that students not only acquire knowledge but also become able to evaluate critically hypotheses using data and scientific methods and effectively convey their opinions orally and in writing. To facilitate students' learning, I strive to make my classroom experience as interactive as possible by using a variety of tools, including visuals-heavy slides, videos, and podcasts. I like to draw research puzzles on current events and everyday material, along with descriptive data and maps to promote intuitive grasp, highlight academic relevance to contemporary politics and society, and put substantive inquiry in a wider context.

As the primary instructor, I taught introductory-level courses on comparative politics and political economy at Kanazawa University, Waseda University, and the University of Washington. I incorporated major events that took place during the course into lecture and class discussion.

In addition, I begin to teach HPE as a graduate seminar and undergraduate-level economic history courses at the University of Tokyo.

  • SIS 16450 & 16451 Introduction to Political Economy (Fall 2022-Winter 2023, Kanazawa University)

    • Main theme: institutions, property rights, economic history.

    • First half (8 weeks worth): basic principles and assumptions used in political economy, including price discrimination, opportunity cost, property rights, rents, Coase theorem, public goods.

    • Second half: economic history with a focus on geography, culture, institutions, based on Mark Koyama & Jared Rubin, How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth (Polity, 2022).

  • SIS 52019 & 52519 Introduction to Comparative Politics (last taught Spring 2022, Kanazawa University, syllabus)

    • Main theme: democracy, democratization, and de-democratization in the contemporary world.

    • I combine main subfields of comparative politics with country-case studies in this class.

    • I emphasize how major theories of democracy helps understand ongoing events.

    • Major topics include political development/state formation, nationalism, democratic regimes and democratization, non-democratic regimes, ethnicity/political salience of ethnic identity.

    • Country-case studies covered:

      • Russia (lasting authoritarianism)

      • The United States (ethnicity/race and Civil-War monuments)

      • Poland (role of the rule of law in democratization)

      • South Africa (role of leadership in democratic transition)

  • Research Seminar in Comparative Politics (Juniors & Seniors, Spring 2021-Winter 2023, Kanazawa University)

  • Freshmen Seminar (“Academic Skills”) (Spring 2021, Kanazawa University)

  • POLX231L Seminar in Comparative Politics (Bunken-Kenkyu), Spring 2019 (syllabus - Japanese, Waseda University)

    • Intended for sophomores and juniors

    • Class will revolve around two major pillars: (1) Politics of property rights; and (2) Tragedy of the Commons and its discontents

    • Readings draw on both classical works and cutting-edge empirical studies across social-science fields. Classics include:

      • Ellickson, Robert C. 1991. Order without Law.

      • Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons.

      • Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State.

  • POl S 270 Introduction to Political Economy (last taught Summer 2017, University of Washington, syllabus)

    • Major concepts include emergent order, unintended consequences, Pareto optimality, price discrimination, rent, market mechanism design, property rights, externality, pooling/separating equilibrium, public goods, common-pool resources, basic game theory (Prisoners' Dilemma, Stag Hunt, Battle of the Sexes, Hawk-Dove game, mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium, iterated Prisoners' Dilemma).

    • Substantive topics: authoritarianism, ethnicity.

    • Main substantive topic: political economy of development (growth, poverty, inequality, foreign aid, aid debate, Universal Basic Income debate, RCTs (randomized control trials)).

    • I incorporated the following concurrent events in the course: (1) the Brexit negotiations for the Hawk-Dove game; and (2) mass protests in Russia and the constitutional referendum in Turkey for authoritarianism.

As a teaching assistant, I also taught a number of undergraduate courses in comparative politics and international relations at the University of Washington. Please see my CV for more detail.