My main area of research is the economic study of post-socialist transition countries – an interest that has been borne as a result of having spent a total of six years as a diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign and Affairs and Japan’s embassy in the Soviet Union/Russian Federation. I subsequently enrolled in Hitotsubashi University’s graduate program, and for my PhD in economics, which I obtained in 2001, conducted a comparative study of economic institutions in the Central Asian countries of the former Soviet Union. Once employed at the Institute, I expanded my research area to include Russia and Hungary and engaged in a comparative study of the transition process to a market economy and enterprise reform in these two countries. With regard to theory, I have a strong interest in theoretical issues related to economic institutions, the comparison of enterprise systems, organizational economics, and the analysis of economics and the law.

The main research topics and projects I am currently involved in can be broadly categorized into the following five areas: (1) meta-analysis of the 20-year history of post-communist transition to a market economy; (2) empirical analysis of the Russian corporate system; (3) industrial linkages between multinational corporations and regional economies in Hungary; (4) compilation of long-term statistics on the countries of Central Asia; (5) issues related to population aging and pension reform in the former socialist countries. Among these topics, I am particularly concentrating on the first two projects: In 2005 and 2009, I was involved in a large-scale questionnaire survey of Russian firms spanning the whole of the country, and at present I am heavily engaged in the statistical and quantitative analysis of this survey. Moreover, in 2010, I have launched a new project based on a grant-in-aid for scientific research (A) to establish a Japan-made comparative transition economics through a meta-analysis of the 20-year history of the systemic transformation towards a market economy in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.