PUBLICATIONS & REPORTS
PUBLICATIONS & REPORTS
From Kitakyushu to the world: AGI, a research institute that studies Asia's economy and society
Takatoshi Ito: Scholarship on Japan’s Economy Transformed
| Author | Kosuke Aoki, Alan Auerbach, Charles Yuji Horioka, Anil Kashyap, Tsutomu Watanabe, David Weinstein |
|---|---|
| Date of Publication | 2025. 11 |
| No. | 2025-20 |
| Download | 293KB |
Contents Introduction
Takatoshi Ito, who passed away in September 2025, was a leading scholar of macroeconomics and international finance. This column, written by a group of friends and colleagues, outlines his many contributions in a lifetime of research, teaching and policy-making in Japan, the United States and around the world. His work is particularly notable for challenging the widespread perception that standard economic analysis is somehow ill-suited for understanding the Japanese economy. Indeed, using the discipline’s rigorous tools, he illuminated challenges that Japan faced earlier and more acutely than other countries – including population decline and ageing, ballooning government debt, the zero lower bound and unconventional monetary policies, real estate bubbles and their collapse, and the banking sector’s problem of non-performing loans.