Yukiko Asai

Yukiko Asai serves as an Assistant Instructional Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and holds a faculty appointment at the Center for East Asian Studies. She joined the Harris School in 2022 after previous academic appointments at Waseda University, the University of Tokyo, and UC Berkeley, where she conducted research on labor market policies and taught economics courses.

Her research concentrates on labor and personnel economics with rigorous empirical analysis of family leave systems, childcare policy impacts, and gender disparities in employment. She specializes in quasi-experimental evaluations of Japanese social policies, examining how childcare subsidies, parental leave reforms, and daycare availability affect maternal labor supply, child development, and household economic decisions. Her methodological approach combines microeconometric techniques with large-scale administrative data.

Analysis of her publication record (2014-2023) reveals consistent focus on gendered labor market outcomes in Japan, particularly the intersection of childcare infrastructure and women's workforce participation. Her work demonstrates how policy design elements like rationing mechanisms and benefit structures critically determine employment impacts, challenging assumptions about universal policy effectiveness.

• 2025 Outstanding Faculty of the Year Award at Harris

Asai maintains an active teaching profile at the Harris School since 2019 while previously instructing labor economics at UC Berkeley and statistics at Japanese institutions. Her research program has been sustained through competitive fellowships including the Fulbright Doctoral Dissertation Program and institutional support from the University of Tokyo's Institute of Social Science, reflecting significant scholarly recognition in labor economics.