Sawada Lab Website

Yasuyuki (Yasu) Sawada

ISRA Project PI

I am Professor at Faculty of Economics and Director of Center for Research and Education in Program Evaluation (CREPE), University of Tokyo. I am also a member of Science Council of Japan and Vice President (President-Elect) of Japanese Economic Association. Previously, I was Chief Economist at Asian Development Bank (ADB) and served as Director General of its Research Department (ERCD) from March 2017 to August 2021. My primary research areas encompass micro and macro development economics, empirical microeconomics, economics of disasters, field surveys & experiments, and analysis of Asian economies. I have served as a visiting professor at Stanford University and Korea University, and as an adjunct professor at the University of the South Pacific, as well as an AJRC Research Associate at ANU. My research and policy collaborations include work with a wide range of institutions, such as JICA, RIETI, ERIA, IDE-JETRO, JMOF, PIDE (Pakistan), BIDS (Bangladesh), IRRI (Philippines), IWMI (Sri Lanka), BRAC Bangladesh, CRED, UNISDR (UNDRR), IPA, IGC, ADB and ADBI, IFPRI, and the World Bank. I earned my Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.

My CV (researchmap)

Our new research paper:

He, Guojun, Yuhang Pan, Albert Park, Yasuyuki Sawada, and Elaine S. Tan. "Reducing Single-Use Cutlery with Green Nudges: Evidence from China’s Food Delivery Industry," Science, 8 Sep 2023, Vol 381, Issue 6662, DOI: 10.1126/science.add9884.

Upcoming Presentations

Invited Speaker, 2027 Econometric Society CSW Asia Meeting in Lahore, Pakistan, January 14-17, 2027.
Invited Speaker, Singapore Economic Review Conference, July 28-30, 2026.
Invited Speaker, 46th ASEAN+3 Bond Market Forum, July 7-9, 2026.
Invited Speaker, Korean Economic Association Annual Meeting, June 21, 2026.
NBER-East Asian Seminar on Economics, June 7 and 8, 2026.
UCSD, May 28 and 29, 2026.

Selected Works

Emily A. Beam, Lasse Brune, Narayan Das, Stefan Dercon, Nathanael Goldberg, Rozina Haque, Dean Karlan, Maliha Khan, Doug Parkerson, Ashley Pople, Yasuyuki Sawada, Christopher Udry & Rocco Zizzamia (2025) "Group versus Individual Coaching for Rural Social Protection Programs: Evidence from Uganda, Philippines, and Bangladesh." NBER Working Paper 34309. Conditionally accepted at American Economic Review: Insights.
Tanaka, Tomoaki, Junichi Yamasaki, Yasuyuki Sawada, and Khaliun Dovchinsuren (2025). "Barriers to Saving for Retirement: Evidence from a Public Pension Program in Mongolia," Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics. https://doi.org/10.1086/732811
Special Issue "Demographic change and wellbeing in Japan and Asian economies.” Japanese Economic Review, 2024. Guest-edited.
Yusuke Kuroishi & Yasuyuki Sawada (2024) "On the Stability of Preferences: Experimental Evidence from Two Disasters," European Economic Review 161, 104632.
He, Guojun, Yuhang Pan, Albert Park, Yasuyuki Sawada, and Elaine S. Tan (2023). "Reducing Single-Use Cutlery with Green Nudges: Evidence from China’s Food Delivery Industry," Science, 8 Sep 2023, Vol 381, Issue 6662, DOI: 10.1126/science.add9884.
Yasuyuki Sawada, Minhaj Mahmud, Mai Seki, and Hikaru Kawarazaki (2023), "Fighting the Learning Crisis in Developing Countries: A Randomized Experiment of Self-Learning at the Right Level," Economic Development and Cultural Change. Replication package.
Takeshi Aida, Emi Kiyota, Yasuhiro Tanaka, and Yasuyuki Sawada (2023) "Building Social Capital with Elders’ Leadership through a Community Hub “Ibasho” in the Philippines and Nepal," (Nature) Scientific Reports 13: 3652. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30724-7
Yasuyuki Sawada, Takeshi Aida, Andrew S. Griffen, Eiji Kozuka, Haruko Noguchi, and Yasuyuki Todo (2022), "Democratic Institutions and Social Capital: Experimental Evidence on School-Based Management from a Developing Country," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Volume 198, June 2022, Pages 267-279.
Special Section “Natural Disaster, Poverty, and Development,” World Development 94, June 2017. Co-Edited by Yasuyuki Sawada and Yoshito Takasaki.

Hiroyuki Hikichi, Yasuyuki Sawada, Toru Tsuboya, Jun Aida, Katsunori Kondo, Shihoko Koyama, and Ichiro Kawachi (2017). “Residential relocation and change in social capital: A natural experiment from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.” Science Advances vol. 3 no. 7, e1700426, 2017. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700426.
Jeong-Joon Lee and Yasuyuki Sawada (2010). "Precautionary Saving under Liquidity Constraints: Evidence from Rural Pakistan,” Journal of Development Economics 91(1), 77-86, 2010.
Yasuyuki Sawada and Michael Lokshin (2009). "Obstacles to School Progression in Rural Pakistan: An Analysis of Gender and Sibling Rivalry Using Field Survey Data," Journal of Development Economics 88(2). (Previously titled: 'Household Schooling Decisions in Rural Pakistan").
Yasuyuki Sawada and Satoshi Shimizutani (2008). "How Do People Cope With Natural Disasters? Evidence from the Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) Earthquake," Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 40 (2-3), 463-488, 2008.
John Akoten, Yasuyuki Sawada, and Keijiro Otsuka (2006). “The Determinants of Credit Access and Its Impacts on Micro and Small Enterprises: The Case of Garment Producers in Kenya,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 54 (4), 927-944.
Emmanuel Jimenez and Yasuyuki Sawada (1999). 'Do Community Managed Schools Work?: An Evaluation of El Salvador’s EDUCO Program,' World Bank Economic Review 13 (3), September 1999, 415-441.
Yasuyuki Sawada (1994). 'Are the Heavily Indebted Countries Solvent? Tests of Intertemporal Borrowing Constraints,' Journal of Development Economics 45, pp. 325-337.

Matsubayashi, Tetsuya, Yasuyuki Sawada, and Michiko Ueda (2013). "Does the Installation of Blue Lights on Train Platforms Prevent Suicide?: A Before-and-After Observational Study from Japan," Journal of Affective Disorders 147, 385-388, 2013.
1. - Media coverage: BBC, The Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, Fox32 Chicago, RI Daily, Times of India, Next City, Pressat, The City, VoxDev.

Past Positions:

Chief Economist and Director General, Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department (ERCD), Asian Development Bank, March 2017-August 2021
Adjunct Professor, University of South Pacific, Fiji
AJRC Research Associate, Australia-Japan Research Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
Visiting Researcher, JICA Research Institute
Faculty of Fellow, Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry (RIETI)

Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, University of Tokyo, 1999-02 Associate Professor, Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo, 2002-2012

Visiting Fellow, Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI)
Visiting Scholar, Bangladesh Institute for Development Studies (BIDS)
Member, Joint Research Project on a New Era of Japan-ROK Relations
Visiting Research Fellow, BRAC-RED (Research and Evaluation Division), Bangladesh.
Visiting Professor, SCID, Stanford University
Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics, Korea University
Part-time research positions: World Bank, ERIA, CRED for UNISDR, IDE, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), IFPRI
Part-time research and committee positions in Japan: Cabinet Office, FASID, IDE, JBIC, JICA, METI, MOF, MOFA, MIC, JCER, IPSS
Part-time teaching positions: (English) GRIPS-FASID (PhD program), ICU, YNU for World Bank MA program, and Korea U; (Japanese) Osaka U, Kobe U, Hitotsubashi U, and U Tsukuba

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Research fields: Development Economics; Field Studies, Empirical Microeconomics, Economics of Disasters, Asian Economy

Impact of compounded disasters in low-income communities: The Philippines.
Socio-economic impact assessments of COVID-19: China and the Philippines
Impact evaluation of large-scale infrastructure projects using remote-sensing data: China, Greater Mekong Subregion, India, and the Philippines
Economic analysis of digital platformers using administrative data: China and Indonesia
Empirical micro investigations of individual, household, and firm behavior under risk: China, India, Lao PDR, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan
Impacts of disasters triggered by natural hazards on households and firms: Sichuan, Kobe, Chuetsu, & Tohoku earthquakes, Asian Tsunami disaster, Typhoon Milenyo in the Philippines, flood in Thailand, and Avian Influenza in Vietnam.
Impacts of manmade disasters on households and firms: Financial crises in Japan and Korea.
Impact evaluation of development policies: Education decentralization in Burkina Faso and distribution of mosquito nets (LLIN) in Madagascar
Field experiments: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka
Development macroeconomics: Economics of Official Development Assistance and numerical analysis of multi-sector GE
Suicide prevention policies in Japan.

Current and past teaching fields:

Development Economics; International Economics; International Finance; Macroeconomics; Microeconomics; Applied Micro-Econometrics; Human Development; Risks and Disasters in Asia; Asian economy

Background:

After getting BA from Keio University and two MA degrees in Japan (one in Economics from Osaka U; and the other in International Relations from U Tokyo), I obtained MA in International Development Policy (Food Research Institute) and PhD in Economics from Stanford University in 1996 and 1999, respectively. I received 2013 Nikkei Book Prize; 2011 Ishikawa Prize of Japanese Economic Association; 2010 Kiyoshi Kojima Prize of the Japanese International Economic Association; 2009 Enjoji Jiro Prize of Nikkei Center (JCER); and 2007 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. I am an associate editor of Asian Economic Policy Review and served as a co-editor of Asian Development Review. and Japanese Economic Review previously.

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