Richard Koo Keynote Speaker

Chief Economist of Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo
Senior Advisor to the Center of Strategic and International Studies (Washington, D.C.), and an Advisory Member of the Institute of New Economic Thinking (New York City)
Creator of the balance sheet recession theory

Richard Koo's Biography

Richard Koo is a noted thought leader in economics and the creator of the balance sheet recession theory. Richard has been the chief economist at Nomura Research Institute since 1997. Over the years, Koo has advised several Japanese prime ministers, and numerous Western governments and central banks on economic and banking problems.

Richard first joined Nomura in 1984 as its first expatriate researcher. With his position, he got to watch Japan’s recession from an excellent vantage point and has since written four highly acclaimed books on balance sheet recession: The Other Half of Macroeconomics and the Fate of Globalization (Wiley, 2018), The Escape from Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap: A Hazardous Road for the World Economy (Wiley, 2014), The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession (Wiley, 2009) and Balance Sheet Recession: Japan’s Struggle with Uncharted Economics and its Global Implications (Wiley, 2003)

Koo’s pioneering work on balance sheet recession made an invaluable contribution to economics. It triggered a focus on debt in global policy debate as he discusses the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy changes as an economy undergoes different stages of development.

Prior to Nomura, Richard Koo was an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and a Doctoral Fellow of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In addition to being one of the first non-Japanese to participate in the development of Japan’s five-year economic plan, he taught at Waseda University in Tokyo as a visiting professor and was Senior Advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Lessons and insights shared by Koo can help navigate economic and political predicaments, challenge stagnation and worsening inequality, and overcome inflation. Richard Koo was the number one economist in the Nikkei Financial Ranking for three consecutive years (1995, 1996 and 1997). He also took first place in the Nikkei Newsletter on Bond and Money from 1998 to 2000. In 2001, he was awarded the Abramson Award by the National Association for Business Economics.