Yasuyuki Sawada was chief spokesperson on economic and development trends and led the production of ADB’s flagship knowledge products and support for regional cooperation fora. Before joining ADB, he was a Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo and has led numerous large-scale development policy evaluation projects for various institutions. His key research areas are development economics, microeconomics, the economics of disasters, and field surveys and experiments. He obtained his PhD in Economics from Stanford University.
He was an Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo; an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the Korea University; a Research Associate at the Australia-Japan Research Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University; and a Visiting Researcher at the Asian Development Bank Institute. Previously, he did part-time research work in a variety of institutions, such as the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Research Institute; the World Bank; Economic Research Institute of ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA); Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS); Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE); International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines; International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Sri Lanka; Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry (RIETI) in Japan; and Japan Society of Promotion of Science (JSPS), where he led a number of large-scale development policy evaluation projects in Asia and other developing countries.
Mr. Sawada holds a Doctorate degree in Economics and a Master's degree in International Development Policy from Stanford University, USA; a Master's degree in International Relations from the University of Tokyo, Japan; a Master's degree in Economics from Osaka University, Japan; and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Keio University, Japan.