Eighth Annual Conference of the Japan Economy Network held at Japan Center for Economic Research in Tokyo

SOAS-led research network gathers experts from academia, think tanks, industry and policy to discuss a wide range of challenges facing the Japanese economy.

The SOAS-hosted Japan Economy Network (JEN) held its Eighth Annual Conference at the Japan Center for Economic Research (JCER) in Tokyo on 27-28 August 2026. The JEN2026 conference was co-hosted by the JCER together with Hitotsubashi University and the German Institute for Japanese Studies.

The programme comprised five sessions with 11 papers addressing a wide range of topics relating to the Japanese economy – from monetary and fiscal policies over social policies to climate challenges. The programme also featured three high-level policy panels on monetary policy challenges, geoeconomics, and energy transition, respectively.

Keynote speeches were delivered by Professor Kazumasa Iwata (President of the Japan Center for Economic Research) on the future of global imbalances in the light of the AI revolution, defence spending and migration changes; Dr Reiko Hayashi (Director-General of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research) on demographic trends and policy responses in Japan and elsewhere; and Professor Franz Waldenberger (Director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies), who reflected on three decades of research on the Japanese economy.

SOAS was represented at the JEN2026 conference through Dr Harald Heubaum, Professor Sean Kidney and Professor Ulrich Volz.

The JEN was established in 2015 to promote research on the Japanese economy and facilitate exchange between researchers with an active research interest in the Japanese economy. The JEN is an informal network open to researchers from academia, think tanks, international organisations, central banks, governments, NGOs and the private sector. Previous JEN conferences were hosted by the Japanese-German Center Berlin, the Asian Development Bank Institute, the University of Zurich, the Bank of Japan, Columbia University, Hitotsubashi University, and SOAS.

The JEN is hosted by the SOAS Department of Economics.

Header image credit: Sorasak via Unsplash.