We are publishing to our related researchers this newsletter for the purpose of providing regular notice of the activities of the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University. While we have provided information through the Institute’s website, we now decide to publish this newsletter as a means of communicating information actively in order to provide more timely notice of the Institute’s activities, so that readers can participate in our activities and have more accurate understandings of their content.
I am a development economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I specialize in the study of growth, trade and development, with a regional focus on East and Southeast Asia. After a grueling five years as department chair (2012-17) it was a huge relief in August 2017 to embark on a year of sabbatical research. Hitotsubashi University’s Institute for Economic Research was my host for the first 3.5 months. The Institute, the campus and Kunitachi town provided the perfect setting in which to reset roles and to rebuild momentum in research. At the outset, I want to thank everyone involved in making my stay possible, enjoyable and productive—but especially JSPS for generous financial support, and my institutional and faculty hosts, professors Kazuhiro Kumo and Takashi Kurosaki, and their incredibly helpful and hospitable staff in IER and the Center for Economic Institutions.
Some of my American colleagues asked me why I chose to spend my sabbatical at a university in Japan. If you’ll forgive a moment of nerdiness, the gravity model of international trade makes it all clear. From the U.S., it is surprisingly difficult to keep a finger on the pulse of economic and development issues in Asia. This is a function of distance (i.e., travel cost), and also of the large size of the U.S. relative to most other countries. As a result, there are few universities in the U.S. having a critical mass of faculty studying the developing Asian economies, and even at a great public university like Wisconsin, it is possible to feel quite isolated. Japan, by contrast, is a country where we find a large group of researchers with interests in the Asian development experience. The Japanese academic tradition is very strong, there are good resources to support research, and the geographical proximity to developing Asia is a huge advantage. All of these facilitate flows of people and the exchange of ideas.
IER is well placed to effectively exploit these advantages to the benefit of all. As a literal translation of Hitotsubashi University’s name suggests, it serves as a “bridge” connecting researchers from Japan and around the world. During my stay, I was able to interact with economists working in my region of study, both on campus and (with assistance from my IER hosts) in several other institutions in the Tokyo area. Moreover, in seminars and in conversations with IER faculty working on the Japanese economy I was able to gain additional insights on the Asian development experience from the perspective of a country whose own historical experience embodies many of the challenges faced by today’s developing economies. All this made me feel happier and more productive. I hope I had at least some comparable effect on others during my stay. A bridge lowers the cost of trade, and when the trade in ideas is made less costly, everybody gains.
