Sagiri Kitao

Sagiri Kitao
Born	1972 Saitama, Japan
Occupation(s)	Economist, university professor
Years active	1996–present
Known for	Macroeconomics research, first female recipient of the Nakahara Prize

is a Japanese economist and faculty member at the University of Tokyo.

Career

Born in 1972 in Saitama, Japan, Kitao completed her undergraduate studies at Waseda University in 1996. She launched her professional journey at Goldman Sachs, initially joining the Investment Banking division before transitioning to Fixed Income. She departed the firm in 1999 to continue her academic pursuits.

In 2001, she obtained a Master of Public Administration specializing in International Development from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She earned her Ph.D. from New York University in 2007, under the mentorship of Thomas J. Sargent and Gianluca Violante. After completing her doctorate, Kitao served as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California from 2007 to 2009, followed by roles as economist and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York until 2011.

Kitao re-entered academia as an associate professor at the City University of New York, where she taught at both Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center between 2011 and 2015. Subsequently, she held a professorship at Keio University from 2015 to 2018 before joining the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo.

In 2016, she became the first female recipient of the distinguished Nakahara Prize, honoring her significant contributions to the field of economics.

Teaching

Kitao’s teaching portfolio includes Macroeconomics courses across renowned institutions such as NYU, USC, and the University of Tokyo. At NYU, she delivered instruction in both Macroeconomics and Advanced Macroeconomics within the doctoral Economics curriculum. During her tenure at Keio University, she conducted undergraduate and graduate classes focusing on monetary economics, banking systems, and international economic relations. Her courses at the University of Tokyo have encompassed International Finance for undergraduates and Macroeconomic Models of Heterogeneous Agents for graduate students. Her academic instruction spans multiple leading universities.

Research

The research conducted by Sagiri Kitao primarily addresses macroeconomic topics with emphases on income tax policy, wealth inequality, social security frameworks, health and unemployment insurance systems, demographic shifts, entrepreneurship, and economic developments specific to Japan.

Since 2015, she has produced numerous publications analyzing Japanese economic policy. Among her recent work is "Policy Uncertainty and Cost of Delaying Reform: The Case of Aging Japan" (Review of Economic Dynamics, 2018). Collaborating with Selahattin Imrohoroglu and Tomoaki Yamada, she has investigated Japan’s fiscal sustainability challenges. Her 2017 article "When Do We Start? Pension Reform in Aging Japan" (The Japanese Economic Review), derived from her Nakahara Prize lecture, examines how increasing retirement age by three years could decrease replacement rates by approximately 20%, while postponing reforms results in higher tax burdens and diminished welfare prospects for future generations.

In response to the economic repercussions of Covid-19, Kitao co-authored "Effects of the COVID-19 on the Labor Market and Inequality in Japan," which explores labor market disruptions and rising inequality caused by the pandemic. This study was published in Economics of the COVID-19 Crisis (Nikkei, 2020).

Selected publications

• Attanasio, O., Kitao, S., & Violante, G. L. (2007). Social security reform in the context of global demographic shifts. Journal of Monetary Economics, 54(1), 144–198.
• Conesa, J. C., Kitao, S., & Krueger, D. (2009). Is capital taxation a viable policy? Evidence suggests it may be beneficial. American Economic Review, 99(1), 25–48.
• İmrohoroğlu, S., Kitao, S., & Yamada, T. (2019). Addressing fiscal sustainability challenges in Japan. Journal of the Economics of Ageing, 14, 100205.
• Kitao, S., & Mikoshiba, M. (2020). Demographic aging and its macroeconomic impacts on Japan’s population groups: women, elderly, and men. Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 56, 101064.

External links

• Official website of Sagiri Kitao
• Faculty profile at Keio University
• Profile at the National Bureau of Economic Research