The program brought together distinguished finance and economics professors at Columbia Business School and other parts of the University with financial market participants in the United States and Japan, and, in principle, in Europe and China as well. While the focus was on the United States and Japan, this necessarily was in the broader context of the global financial system and its other major players. Potential topics included, but were not limited to, financial system restructuring; development of national and international regulatory systems; effective governance, supervision, and monitoring; the operations of and interactions among specific financial markets; the relationships between finance and macroeconomic performance; and the nature and role of government and monetary policies.
The program began with an initial three-year commitment and developed and grew substantially beyond that. Subject to funding, it usually included two major conferences each year, one at Columbia University and one in Tokyo. An inaugural event, "Coping with Crisis: Financial Policy in the U.S. and Japan" was held at Columbia Business School on November 10, 2009, including Professors Heizo Takenaka, then Director of the Global Security Research Institute at Keio University, and Professor Takatoshi Ito, then Professor at The University of Tokyo, as speakers. The program also included a series of workshops in which faculty and practitioners met to discuss specialized topics and research, the development of joint research projects, and the development of new curricula by participating faculty based on the work of the program.
To support the program initially, CJEB provided seed money from its reserve fund for new programs and administrative resources. The Center established a special lead corporate sponsor funding category for this program and sought a small number of appropriate sponsors prepared to make significant annual commitments for three years.
The program ended in June 2019 with its involvement in the successful organization of a number of consecutive CJEB Annual Tokyo Conferences and various on-campus events. We especially appreciate the generous contributions from our sponsors for this program.
Selected List of Events:
U.S.-Japan Relations in a New Era: Trade, Governance, and the Global Economy
Japan as a Leading Power: Trade and the FinTech Revolution
Japan’s Global and Domestic Futures: The U.S. Relationship and FinTech
Japan’s Changing Corporate Governance
Note: All titles are accurate at the time of the events.