Hitotsubashi University

This course examines various issues facing sports in modern society, mainly from the perspective of sports sociology. What kind of social background are the sports we enjoy based on? Also, sports are generally considered to be "good," however, students learn that sports also have disadvantages. While analyzing various problems that sports in modern society is facing, students are expected to acquire the basic ideas of sports sociology.

This course introduces Chinese and Japanese literature through the works of best-known 20th-century poets (including songwriters) writing in Chinese or Japanese primarily to students from outside Chinese or Japanese-speaking cultures majoring in East Asian studies. East Asian Studies majors are encouraged to use this course as a complement to more specialized courses in Chinese and/or Japanese literature in their portfolio. 

Knowledge of Japanese and/or Chinese would be of great use, but is not a prerequisite for taking this course.

In recent years, various concepts such as ESG, SDGs, and CSV have been published to realize a sustainable society and economy. These concepts have become an indispensable theme for corporate management. For example, governments are considering requiring companies to disclose sustainability information. This course explains the theory on sustainability and its application to practice for the purpose of understanding sustainability and the latest management trends. 

This class examines the relationship between food, our bodies and our socio-cultural lives; the essential elements that bring the taste out of bland food, and how technology has reshaped food consumption. The course also looks at how food figures in global politics as well as how Asian food has become globalized, even as Asia accommodates Western fast food.

This course examines the evolution of global internet governance. It focuses on the changing role of key actors and conflicts between them – the conflict between private or public oversight, the rise of multistakeholderism, and the attempts of democratic as well as authoritarian states to increase their regulatory grip. It also focuses on key issues of global internet governance such as privacy protection, content control, or cyber security. The course starts from the assumption that despite its dynamics, internet governance is politics like any other and can be understood with standard social science tools, particularly with concepts from international relations and political science.

This course covers methodologies of empirical regional/development economics, such as: 

(1) How to conduct field surveys;

(2) How to use RCTs and micro-econometric methods, and 

(3) How to read journal articles and how to prepare referee reports.

Course Prerequisites: Intermediate/advanced microeconomics and econometrics.

This course explains that language has a role other than communication. It aims to understand that human language has both diversity and universality. The course discovers areas related to linguistics using comprehensible examples.

This course is a very practical introduction to quantitative analysis in International Relations. Students learn the elements of causal inference methods, computational skills for R statistical software, and examples in International Relations (ex. conflict studies, among others).

This course introduces analytical tools and recent topics in industrial organization related to the digital economy.

It provides students with theoretical tools for equilibrium analysis of oligopolistic competition, both useful for research in both empirical and theoretical industrial organization. These tools include discrete choice models, basic contract theory, and some theories of particular games such as aggregative games and supermodular games.  Additionally, it provides students with theoretical frameworks to analyze recent market phenomena in the digital economy such as platform’s business strategies and competition in online markets.

This course introduces undergraduate students to the empirical aspects of international trade. It analyzes the causes and consequences of international trade both in developed and developing countries, with a special emphasis on the role of firms.  After an introduction on key stylized facts of international trade, the course studies the published-work in international trade: trade from the point of view of individual firms. The course discusses various topics such as trade policy, trade liberalization, inequality and Global Supply Chains. 

Recommended prerequisites: 2nd year basic microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics. Basic understanding of applied-microeconomics is desirable (not essential).