Koichi Hamada Keynote Speaker

Koichi Hamada is a prominent Japanese economist and special adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He was Tuntex Professor of Economics at Yale University, where he taught the Japanese economy and international economics.

In the 1970s, he was one among the first economists who applied the methodology of game theory to “currency wars,” “tax competitions” and the process of building an international monetary regime. In 1997, Professor Hamada served as a member of the external evaluation team of the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) Program of the IMF. He advised Mike Moore and Supachai Panitchpakdi, former Directors General of the WTO.

From 2001 to 2002, he served as first President of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Japan’s Cabinet, a body conducting policy-oriented research and compiling the country’s GDP statistics. In that capacity he advised the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, a government agency created to promote administrative reform.