“Masaaki Shirakawa is one of the giants of central banking whose insights and experience are widely respected by his peers the world over.”  - Peter Fisher, CGBG Senior Fellow and Senior Director of the BlackRock Investment Institute.

WHO: Masaaki Shirakawa, 30^th Governor of the Bank of Japan (2008-2013)

WHEN: Tuesday, May 13, 2014, 12-1 p.m., Georgiopoulos Classroom

WHAT:  The title of the talk is The Japanese Economy in the Past Two Decades: The Myths, the Realities, and the Challenges.

BACKGROUND: Masaaki Shirakawa is a Japanese economist, central banker, and the 30th Governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ), and professor of Aoyama Gakuin University. He is currently a member of the Group of Thirty, a private, nonprofit, international group of very senior representatives of the private and public sectors and academia focused on international economic and financial issues. Fellow members in the Group of Thirty include Paul Volcker, Arminio Fraga Neto, Mario Draghi, Timothy Geithner, Raghuram G. Rajan, and Ernesto Zedillo.

He joined the Bank of Japan in 1972, and after a short stint as a faculty member at the graduate school of public policy at Kyoto University in 2006, he returned to BOJ as governor in 2008 as served in that role until 2013. Currently, he is a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University. While governor of the Bank of Japan, Shirakawa was named to the world’s most powerful/influential lists compiled by Forbes, Newsweek, and Bloomberg.

Shirakawa holds B.A. in Economics from The University of Tokyo in 1972 and M.A. degree in Economics from The University of Chicago in 1977.