Keisuke Otsu: Comparative Advantage and Personal Connections

2019/02/12

I obtained my PhD in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After working at the Bank of Japan Monetary Research Centers and Institutes for two years, I taught at the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Sophia University for two years and at the University of Kent in the UK for seven years. Since 2017, I have held my current position at the Faculty of Business and Commerce at Keio University. Thanks to moving between various workplaces unexpectedly, I have been blessed with opportunities to interact with many different researchers.

Research activities are an important duty for university faculty members. This work is essential for reflecting ever-evolving academic research in higher education. My field of research is called "quantitative macroeconomic analysis," where I use economic models that simplify the real economy to its necessary minimum to perform factor analysis of macroeconomic phenomena such as economic growth and business cycles, and to estimate the effects of policies.

The research I am currently focusing on is the analysis of the impact of population aging on the economy. In Japan, which has become a super-aging society at a speed unparalleled in the world, it is an extremely important task to clarify to what extent various economic policies can mitigate the negative effects that aging has on economic growth through a shrinking labor force and increasing social security burdens.

These research results are published in the form of academic papers, but the impact of the paper itself and the evaluation of the researcher depend on which academic journals they can be published in. Economists hope that the real economy will be improved by the findings they discover. Therefore, we work hard every day to have our papers accepted by prestigious journals that can be seen by more people.

Papers on quantitative macroeconomic analysis generally consist of an analysis of economic trends based on macroeconomic data, the construction of a macroeconomic theoretical model, and quantitative analysis using that model. Therefore, by having multiple co-researchers specialize in and divide tasks according to their relatively strong fields—such as data analysis, economic theory, or programming—it is possible to efficiently produce high-quality research results. This is a concept known in economics as "comparative advantage."

I myself conduct joint research with excellent researchers, such as my former mentors and classmates from my time at UCLA, former bosses and colleagues from the Bank of Japan, friends I met at Sophia University, and former colleagues from the University of Kent. To continue solving important research issues in the future, I will cherish my connections with people and look forward to being blessed with new encounters.