Richard C. Koo ( ja, リチャード・クー, ; ; born 1954) is a

Taiwanese-American Taiwanese Americans () are Americans who carry full or partial ancestry from Taiwan. This includes American-born citizens who descend from migrants from Taiwan. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, 49% of Taiwanese Americans lived in the state of Califo ...

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...

living in Japan specializing in

balance sheet recession A balance sheet recession is a type of economic recession that occurs when high levels of private sector debt cause individuals or companies to collectively focus on saving by paying down debt rather than spending or investing, causing economic ...

s. He is Chief Economist at the

Nomura Research Institute Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. (NRI; Japanese: 株式会社野村総合研究所 or 野村総研 for short) is the largest economic research and consulting firm in Japan, and a member of the Nomura Group. Established in 1965, the firm now emp ...

Early life and education

Koo was born in Kobe. His father,

Koo Kwang-ming Koo Kwang-ming (; born on 15 October 1926) is a Taiwanese statesman, businessman and independence activist. Family background Koo was born into a life of privilege. He was the eighth son of Koo Hsien-jung, a prominent Lukang businessman who h ...

, was an activist in the

Taiwan independence movement The Taiwan independence movement is a political movement which advocates the formal declaration of an Independence, independent and Sovereign state, sovereign Taiwanese state, as opposed to Chinese unification or the status quo in Cross-Str ...

then living in exile in Japan, and the brother of the prominent Taiwanese businessman

Koo Chen-fu Koo Chen-fu (, 6 January 1917 – 3 January 2005), also known as C.F. Koo, was a Taiwanese businessman and diplomat. He led the Koos Group of companies from 1940 until his death. As a chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), Koo arrange ...

. Koo lived in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

for 13 years in his youth, and later attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

where he received a BA degree in Political Science and Government in 1976. He then proceeded to

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

for graduate school, where he received an MA degree in 1981.

Career

Upon graduation from

, Koo worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as an economist from 1981 to 1984. He then joined Nomura in 1984 as its first expatriate researcher - first as senior economist from 1984 to 1997. He later became the chief economist at

starting in 1997. Landon Thomas wrote about Koo's analysis in late 2011 in the ''New York Times'', saying that Koo's 2011 "causes, cure, and politics" publication "has gone viral on the Web". Thomas was discussing the divergence between the way the U.S. and British governments addressed their banking crises in the 2008-9 financial crisis and the way Europe was beginning to in late 2011.Thomas, Landon, Jr.
"Banks Retrench in Europe While Keeping Up Appearances" (limited no-charge access)
''The New York Times'', December 22, 2011. Retrieved 2011-12-22.

Publications

* (2008) ''The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics - Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession'' (John Wiley & Sons) * (2011
"The world in balance sheet recession: causes, cure, and politics"
''Real-World Economics Review'' (issue no. 58), Nomura Research Institute, Tokyo. * (2014) ''The Escape from Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap: A Hazardous Road for the World Economy'' (John Wiley & Sons)

References

External links

Some of Koo's videos and links are below:

Links

Profile
at the

Institute for New Economic Thinking The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) is a New York City–based nonprofit think tank. It was founded in October 2009 as a result of the 2007–2012 global financial crisis, and runs a variety of affiliated programs at major universiti ...

Videos

* * at the

's (INET) Paradigm Lost Conference in Berlin. April 14, 2012 * Living people 1954 births Taiwanese people of Hoklo descent Hokkien businesspeople American people of Chinese descent American expatriates in Japan Koo family of Lukang Institute for New Economic Thinking Johns Hopkins University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Japanese economists 21st-century American economists Federal Reserve economists Nomura Holdings {{economist-stub