Why Has Japan Become So “Cheap”?

Wednesday, October 5, 2022 | 6:00 – 7:30 PM (Reception to follow)

Room 120 (Cooperman Commons), Geffen Hall, Columbia Business School (map)

Featuring:

Takatoshi Ito

Professor, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

Director, Program on Public Pension and Sovereign Funds, Center on Japanese Economy and Business (CJEB), Columbia Business School

Moderator:

David E. Weinstein

Director, CJEB; Carl S. Shoup Professor of the Japanese Economy, Columbia University

What you will learn:

- Why the yen has depreciated so much this year

- Why Japan’s inflation rate remains so low (compared to the U.S. and Europe)

- The only way out of being a “cheap country” is to raise productivity and wages 　

About the speaker:

Takatoshi Ito is the director of the Program on Public Pension and Sovereign Funds and associate director of research at the Center on Japanese Economy and Business of Columbia Business School. He is also a professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He has taught extensively both in the United States and Japan since finishing his PhD in economics at Harvard University in 1979. He taught as assistant and tenured associate professor (1979-88) at the University of Minnesota, as associate and full professor at Hitotsubashi University (1988-2002), as professor at the Graduate School of Economics at University of Tokyo (2004-2014) before assuming his current position in 2015. He held visiting professor positions at Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia Business School, and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, and the Tun Ismail Ali Chair Professor at the University of Malaya. He has 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 the Journal of the Japanese and International Economies and is co-editor of the Asian Economic Policy Review. In an unusual move for a Japanese academic, Ito was also appointed to positions in the official sector, as senior advisor in the Research Department at the 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). (Read more)

Admission and Contact:

You must register to attend this event in person.

If you have questions about the event, please contact us at cjeb@gsb.columbia.edu.

Special Notes:

● This in-person-only event is open to the public and will not be live streamed.

A recording will be available on our website at a later date

● Please be advised that this event may be photographed, so your image may appear on our website later. If this is an issue, please let us know.

● Please note that due to current University guidelines in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, all visitors to the campus buildings must meet the 2-dose primary series mandate for vaccination.

● All attendees must have their primary series of COVID-19 vaccination and be prepared to show proof if asked.

For more information about other CJEB events, visit our website or contact cjeb@gsb.columbia.edu.