Koichi Hamada - Speaker

Koichi Hamada is Tuntex Professor of Economics at Yale University, where he specializes in the Japanese economy and international economics, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo, where he taught before coming to Yale in 1986. Professor Hamada has an L.L.B. (he passed Japan’s national Bar Examination in 1957), and an M.A. in Economics from the University of Tokyo as well as an M.A. and Ph. D. in Economics from Yale University. His work on policy coordination, one of which first applied game theory to international finance, was published as The Political Economy of International Monetary Interdependence (MIT Press, 1985), and some of his economic articles are collected in Strategic Approaches to the International Economy: Selected Essays of Koichi Hamada (Edward & Elgar, 1996). He is a fellow of the Econometric Society and served as its council member from 1980 to 1985. Hamada was the President of the Japanese Association of Economics and Econometrics (now the Japan Economic Association) from 1994 to 1995 and was the founding President of the Japan Law and Economics Association in 2003 (now its honorary fellow). He was awarded the imperial decoration, the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold and Silver Star, which is given to those who have accumulated distinguished achievements for Japan, 2006.

In Japan, he participated in many policy committees at the Ministry of Finance, MITI, the Economic Planning Agency and other ministries. Hamada also serves as one of the associate editors for many journals including Econometrica, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics and Journal of the Japanese and International Economies.

Hamada’s game-theoretic study of international monetary relations is regarded as one of the first studies that drew attention to the strategic aspects of macroeconomic policy in interdependent nations. He was one among the few who applied the methodology of “Law and Economics” to Japan’s legal system in the 1970s. His current research topics include: international capital movements, regional integration, political economy of international monetary reform, economics and politics of Japan's last decade, a comparison of economic functions of the Japanese and the U.S. legal systems.

In 1997, Professor Hamada served as a member of the external evaluation team of the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) Program of the International Monetary Fund by request of its Board of Directors. He was a member of the Consulting Group that advised Mike Moore, Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), on the future perspectives for the world trade system, and he was until recently a member of the Consulting Group that advises Supachai Panitchpakdi, Director General of the WTO.

From January 2001 to July 2002, Professor Hamada was on leave from Yale University to serve as the first President of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI, keizai Shakai sogo kenkyujocho), Cabinet Office of the Japanese Government. The ESRI engages in policy-oriented research and compiling the GDP statistics. Hamada was in a position to advise the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP KeizaiZaisei Shimonkaigi), a body created to promote the administrative reform (Kozo Kaikaku) chaired by the Prime Minister.

Koichi Hamada was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, the Ford Dissertation Fellowship and the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector (IRIS) Fellowship. He was a recipient of Nikkei Tosho Bunka Prize (1967) for “Economic Growth and Capital Movements,” the Ekonomisuto prize (1980) for “Banking Behavior and Monetary Policy.” He was also awarded the Otto Eckstein Prize (1988) by the Eastern Economic Association for “The Impact of the General Theory in Japan,” recognized as the best article in the Eastern Economic Review for the year.