Research
Katada’s primary research concerns global economic governance and the roles of non-Western nations, particularly Japan and the countries around the Pacific Rim, in the changing world economic order as these economies have emerged as increasingly important members of the international system for the last several decades. Expanding her dissertation, Katada completed her first single-authored book comparing three financial crises of the 1980s through 1990s (Latin American Debt Crisis, Mexican Peso Crisis and Asian Financial Crisis) and the Japanese government’s policies in response to the crisis focusing on the question of why the Japanese government was actively involved in tackling some crises but not others. The book Banking on Stability was later awarded the Ohira Memorial Book Prize.
As the gravity center of economic power has shifted even more to Asia with the dramatic rise of China (though Japan has continued to stagnate), we have become concerned about U.S.’s precarious commitment to the region and the global economic order with war on terror and in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Meanwhile, new institutions and economic strategies, such as regional free trade agreements or strategic use of accumulated foreign exchange reserves, have introduced additional forums and foreign policy instruments for cooperation and conflicts among states. Intrigued by these real world developments and research opportunities, Katada’s research has expanded the scope in three ways.
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First, the regional and issue scope of Katada’s research on political economy of East Asian regionalism has broadened to include the politics of trade, as well as regional cooperation and institution-building. The Asian financial crisis (1997-98) was a watershed event for cooperation and economic institution-building in East Asia. By the dawn of the 21st century, many governments in the region began formalizing economic agreements in support of regional production network and intra-regional trade. Interestingly, however, many of these agreements proliferated through competitive dynamics among the Asian states, rather than emulative or cooperative ones.
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Competitive Regionalism: FTA Diffusion in the Pacific Rim. Mireya Solís, Barbara Stallings and Saori N. Katada (eds.), London: Palgrave Macmillan. August 2009.
Cross Regional Trade Agreements: Understanding Permeated Regionalism in East Asia. Saori N. Katada and Mireya Solís (eds.), Berlin: Springer. September 2008.
“Unlikely Pivotal States in Competitive FTA Diffusion: The Effect of Japan’s TPP Participation on Asia-Pacific Regional Integration.” With Mireya Solís (Brookings Institution). New Political Economy. Vol. 20, No. 2. April 2015; 155-177. (pdf available under “Publication”)
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Second, the global financial crisis in 2008-09 expanded her work on the Asian financial crisis and the politics of finance to analyze the impacts of the new crisis on Japan, Asia and global financial governance. In connection to East Asian regionalism, Katada found that the global financial crisis worked to reverse the centripetal forces that consolidated East Asian regionalism in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, as some important Asian countries are now included into the global G20 process and China began to take more proactive stance in challenging global economic governance. Furthermore, quick economic rebound among emerging economies from the global financial crisis introduced a more complex political dynamics including South-South cooperation into global economic order.
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The Global Economic Crisis and East Asian Regionalism. Routledge, 2012.
Unexpected Outcomes: How Emerging Markets Survived the Global Financial Crisis. Carol Wise, Leslie Elliott Armijo and Saori N. Katada (eds.). Brookings Press. February 2015
“Seeking a Place for East Asian Regionalism: Challenges and Opportunities under the Global Financial Crisis.” The Pacific Review. Vol. 24, No. 3, July 2011: 273-290. (pdf available under “Publication”)
“The Fault Lines of the New Global Financial Architecture: Can G20 Keep up with its Expanding Issue Coverage?” with Peter Knaack (USC). Global Policy. Vol. 4, Issue 3. September 2013. (pdf available under “Publication”)
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The third focus of her recent research is associated with the so-called economic and financial statecraft, analyzing how states use their economic and financial clout to achieve their foreign policy goals. By focusing on China and Japan, her work in this area examines how these two large Asian countries have tackled the challenges of their rising (and declining) economic presence in the world.
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The BRICS and Collective Financial Statecraft, with Cynthia A. Roberts and Leslie Elliott Armijo. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
The Financial Statecraft of Emerging Powers: Shield and Sword in Asia and Latin America. Leslie Elliott Armijo and Saori N. Katada (eds.) Palgrave Macmillan, August 2014. Translated into Chinese
“Theorizing the Financial Statecraft of Emerging Powers” with Leslie Elliott Armijo (Portland State University). New Political Economy. Vol. 20, No. 1; February 2015; 42-62. (pdf available under “Publication”)
Meanwhile, Katada continues to work on Japanese political economy. Her two most recent works are as follows.
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The first is a series of projects on Japanese monetary policy. Her co-authored book (with Gene Park, Giacomo Chiozza and Yoshiko Kojo) was published in November 2018 from Cornell University Press. The volume analyzes, with extensive interviews and text analysis, how policy ideas within the Bank of Japan, which was protected by its policy network, persisted and influenced the Bank’s monetary policymaking after its de jure independence in 1998, and how Prime Minister Abe managed to dismantle BOJ dominance through disrupting the BOJ’s policy network after his electoral victory in December 2012.
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Taming Japan's Deflation: The Debate over Unconventional Monetary Policy, with Gene Park, Giacomo Chiozza and Yoshiko Kojo. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018.
“Financial Crisis Fatigue? Politics behind Japan’s post-Global Financial Crisis Economic Contraction” Journal of Japanese Political Science, Vol. 14, Issue 2; 223-242 (June 2013). (pdf available under “Publication”)
“From a Supporter to a Challenger? Japan’s Currency Leadership in Dollar-dominated East Asia.” Review of International Political Economy. Vol. 15, No. 3, August 2008; 399-417. (pdf available under “Publication”)
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Second, Katada published a single-authored book in 2020, which examines an important shift in the Japanese government’s economic strategy toward East Asia in the last quarter century from a bilaterally-bound neomercantilist to a liberal regionalist one. By examining how the Japanese economy has transformed from that of a government-led developmental state to one characterized by a more arms-length government-business relationship during this period, the project reveals the opportunities and limits of Japan’s regional strategy as the region faces the power transition from one dominated by the United States to the one dominated by China.
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Japan's New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific, New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.
“At the Crossroads: The TPP, AIIB, and Japan’s Foreign Economic Strategy,” AsiaPacific Issues, No. 125. May 2016. East West Center. (pdf available under “Publication”)