Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 17, 2006|Volume 35, Number 11|Two-Week Issue

Koichi Hamada

Japan gives top civilian honor to Yale scholar

The government of Japan has bestowed its highest civilian honor on Koichi Hamada, the Tuntex Professor of Economics, a specialist in the Japanese economy and international economics.

Hamada 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. It is the country's second-highest honor of its kind and the highest honor given to a civil servant.

The decoration honors Hamada's performance as president of the Economic and Social Research Institute in the Cabinet Office during administrative reforms in Japan from 2001 to 2003. Hamada received the decoration from Prime Minster Shinzo Abe on Nov. 7 at a special ceremony at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo in the presence of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Akihito.

A native of Japan, Hamada passed the Japanese National Bar Examination in 1957 and earned an LL.B. in 1958 from the University of Tokyo, where he also received B.A. and M.A. degrees in economics in 1960 and 1962. He also earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Yale in 1962 and 1964. He taught for 21 years at the University of Tokyo before coming to Yale in 1986. He was named the Tuntex Professor of Economics in 2005.

Hamada's game-theoretic study of international monetary coordination was one of the first studies to draw attention to the strategic aspects of macroeconomic policies in the interdependent world. He was one of the few to apply the methodology of "Law and Economics" to Japan's legal system in the 1970s. His current research topics include regional integration, political economy of monetary reform, the role of ideas in economic policy and a comparison of the economic functions between the Japanese and U.S. legal systems. His books include "The Political Economy of International Monetary Interdependence" and "Strategic Approaches to International Economy: Selected Essays of Koichi Hamada," as well as numerous volumes in Japanese.

In Japan, Hamada participated in many policy committees at the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the Economic Planning Agency and other ministries. He was president of the Economic and Social Research Institute, a cabinet office of the Japanese government, while on leave from Yale 2001-2003. The institute was created as part of the administrative reform in Japan.

A fellow and one-time council member of the Econometric Society, Hamada is a former president of the Japanese Association of Economics and Econometrics (now the Japan Economic Association) and the founding president of the Japan Law and Economics Association, where he is now an honorary fellow. He is an associate editor for numerous academic journals, including Econometrica and the Journal of International Economics, and is editor of the Economic Studies Quarterly (now Japanese Economic Review).

His numerous other honors include the Nikkei Book Prize, the Ekoonomisuto Prize and the Otton Eckstein Prize. He has received a Fulbright Scholarship, the Ford Dissertation Fellowship and the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector Fellowship.

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