The Public Economics Program (PEP) at Hitotsubashi School of International and Public Policy (HSIPP) is a master program in Japan with one-year mid-career program (PEP1) and two-year program (PEP2). Our goal is to educate tomorrow's leaders who have skills in:

1. analyzing various policy issues in tax system, social security system, local public finance, and other areas of public policies, based on deep understanding of the public economics; and
2. designing politically implementable public policies to improve the quality of our life under the resource constraint of our society.

　　In the two-year program, we train students who want to work as professional policy analysts and policy makers in, for example, the national government, local governments, NGOs, NPOs, research institutes, and international organizations.

　　In the one-year mid-career program, we target mid-career people who have working experience in some public policy issues and hope to brush up their skills in policy analysis and policy making.

　　The Master of Public Policy will be awarded to the PEP students who successfully complete all the requirements for the degree. The number of required credits is the same for PEP1 and PEP2, although the required courses and works are different.

　　All courses are taught in Japanese. If you are interested in the master program for public policy in English, please visit the site of our counterpart, Asian Public Policy Program (APPP) at Hitotsubashi School of International and Public Policy, in which all the courses are offered in English mainly for mid-career people from abroad (mostly Asain countries).

　　Here are outlines of our two-year program and the one-year mid-career program. Note that there may be some changes in the curriculum of each program since we continue our effort to improve the curriculum every year.

〈Two-Year Program (PEP2)〉

- First Semester (First Year)
Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Econometrics, Public Finance are all required courses. If students were judged to have sufficient understanding of some of these courses, then they would be allowed to take other courses in our school or in the graduate school of economics. The four courses above offered in our program put more emphasis on the policy application rather than the theory itself.

- Second Semester (First Year)
Empirical Analysis of Public Economics is the required course, and students should take selective courses for more than 6 credits. Besides these academic trainings, we start our professional trainings. Students are required to take the Consulting Project I in order to prepare for the consulting project to be completed by the end of the next semseter.

- First Semester (Second Year)
In this semester, students are expected to take selective courses with more applied nature. The required courses are Public Policy Workshop I and Consulting Project II. In the Public Policy Workshop I, we invite guest speakers from universities, research institutes, governments, and other policy-related fields in order to have better understanding of the up-to-date research and policy issues. In the Consulting Project II, each student is required to complete his/her own consulting project. In these required courses, close interaction among students and the faculty are expected.

- Second Semester (Second Year)
Public Policy Workshop II and Research Seminar are the two required courses for this final semester. In the Public Policy Workshop II, we continue to welcome guest speakers from various fields of public policy. The Research Seminar is basically a continuation of the Consulting Project II in the sense that students are expected to expand and deepen their analysis in their consulting projects so that they can write a research paper not for one client but for the general public with sound academic foundation and good applications to the real-world policy issues.

Summary Table (PEP2)

〈One-Year Mid-Career Program (PEP1)〉

　　In principle, students in the PEP1 are expected to concentrate on the course work, i.e., taking various courses for academic trainings to brush up their skills. There may be, however, some exceptions in which students with strong academic background choose to put more emphasis on writing a high-quality research paper under the guidance of a faculty. Students who want to choose such a curriculum should see the academic advisor in advance. Once choices are made, students cannot change them. Needless to say, students who choose the standard curriculum will also have various opportunities to write policy papers and research papers during their course work.

- First Semester
The required courses are Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Econometrics, Public Finance, Foundation of Economics, Public Policy Workshop I, and Special Workshop I for PEP1. In the Special Workshop I, each student must write a research paper. Students are also expected to take selective courses for more than 4 credits.

- Summer Session
Students are required to take intensive courses in the summer session.

- Second Semester
In this semester, students are expected to take selective courses with more applied nature. Required courses are Public Policy Workshop II and Special Workshop II for PEP1. In the Special Workshop II, each student is expected to expand and deepen his/her research paper submitted in the Special Workshop I to make the final research paper.

Summary Table (PEP1)