Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCIA) is hosting a webinar on April 21 concerning the economic consequences of the COVID-19 virus on Japan and the world. The keynote speaker is Takatoshi Ito, Professor of International and Public Affairs, School of Public and International Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University. Moderating will be Christina Davis, Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations; Executive Committee; Faculty Associate. Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; Professor of Government, Department of Government, Harvard University.
This is a free webinar with registration. To sign up, click the button below:
About the Speaker
Takatoshi Ito joined the faculty of SIPA as a Professor of International and Public Affairs in January 2015. An internationally renowned economist, Ito is an expert on international finance, macroeconomics, and the Japanese economy who served from 2006 to 2008 as a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy. He also held senior positions in the Japanese Ministry of Finance and at the International Monetary Fund. Ito served as Dean of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy for the past two years and as professor at Japan’s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. He has served as a visiting professor at both Columbia and Harvard and taught at other institutions. He earned his PhD in economics at Harvard University.
Ito has had distinguished academic and research appointments such as President of the Japanese Economic Association in 2004; fellow of the Econometric Society since 1992; research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1985; and faculty fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research since 2006. He was editor-in-chief of Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, and is co-editor of Asian Economic Policy Review. In an unusual move for a Japanese academic, Ito was also appointed in the official sectors, as senior advisor in the Research Department, International Monetary Fund (1994–97) and as deputy vice minister for international affairs at the Ministry of Finance, Japan (1999–2001). He served as a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (2006–2008). In 2010, he was a co-author of a commissioned study of the Bank of Thailand’s 10th year review of its inflation targeting regime. He frequently contributes op-ed columns and articles to the Financial Times and Nihon Keizai Shinbun.
He is an author of many books including The Japanese Economy (MIT Press, 1992), The Political Economy of the Japanese Monetary Policy (1997) and Financial Policy and Central Banking in Japan, with T. Cargill and M. Hutchison, (MIT Press, 2000), An Independent and Accountable IMF, with J. De Gregorio, B. Eichengreen, and C. Wyplosz (1999). He is also the author of more than 130 academic (refereed) journal articles in journals such as Econometrica, American Economic Review, and Journal of Monetary Economics and chapters in books on international finance, monetary policy, and the Japanese economy. His research interests includes capital flows and currency crises, microstructures of foreign exchange rates, and inflation targeting. He was awarded the National Medal with Purple Ribbon in June 2011 for his excellent academic achievement.
Biography provided by Columbia University
School of International and Public Affairs
About the Moderator
Christina Davis is a Professor in the Department of Government at Harvard University as well as the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute. She serves as the Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard, and as the Co-Executive Editor of the Japanese Journal of Political Science. Her teaching and research interests bridge international relations and comparative politics, with a focus on trade policy. Her interests include the politics and foreign policy of Japan, East Asia, and the European Union as well as the study of international organization. She is the author of Food Fights Over Free Trade: How International Institutions Promote Agricultural Trade Liberalization (Princeton University Press, 2003) and Why Adjudicate? Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO (Princeton University Press, 2012), which won the International Law Book Award and the Chadwick F. Alger Prize from the International Studies Association and the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. Her research has been published in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Politics, International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Politics, and World Politics.
Biography provided by Harvard University