Speaker:

Prof. Chihiro Shimizu, School of Social Data Science, Hitotsubashi University

Chihiro Shimizu, Ph.D., is a professor at School of Social Data Science, Hitotsubashi University and an expert advisor to the Statistics Commission in Japan. His areas of expertise include Index Theory, Real Estate Economics, Applied Econometrics, and Machine Learning. Before joining Hitotsubashi University, Dr. Shimizu held professorships at The University of Tokyo, Nihon University, and Reitaku University, and was a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Hong Kong. He was also a research affiliate at the Center for Real Estate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US. Prof. Shimizu has served as an advisor for various research councils within the Ministry of Finance, the Financial Services Agency (FSA), the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in Japan. He has contributed over 55 theses to international academic journals and published more than 250 theses and books in Japan. His research has received numerous awards from academic and public bodies. Born in 1967, Prof. Shimizu received his doctorate from The University of Tokyo.

Abstract:

The estimation of property price indexes is a common research subject in big data analysis. Japan experienced the largest property bubble of the 20th century, followed by prolonged economic stagnation. Consequently, the Japanese government has conducted studies on property price indexes for many years. The Tokyo property market has proven to be an ideal real-world environment for examining many theoretical and practical issues due to the rich array of data available in terms of time, space, property quality, and information about buyers and sellers. With the aid of this wealth of data, Dr. Shimizu succeeded in obtaining several important conclusions regarding the relative strengths of various index formulas and ways to improve current practices to better capture the underlying reality. Prof. Shimizu chaired the Advisory Board for the Japanese Official Property Price Index and was an author of the Handbook on Residential/Commercial Property Price Indexes, a project led by the IMF, OECD, and BIS. His seminar will focus on the “estimation method selection” and “database selection” issues, which are important research topics in the estimation of property price indexes, and he will present his recent research findings.