Public Panel Discussion
Abenomics:Economist's Perspectives from Japan and the U.S

In June this year, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation began hosting a series of US-Japan Economic Forums as a means to promote strategic discussion, at the private sector level, of issues in US-Japan economic policy. The first forum featured a number of invited experts on US-Japan economy. Following the first forum in Washington in June 2014, a second forum is to be held (*not open to the public) on the 18^th and 19^th of December. Starting at 14:00 on the 19th (Fri), a public panel discussion (details given below) will be held at the Nippon Foundation building in Tokyo.

　The first forum was characterized by lively debate, both in the closed session and the public panel discussion, on five themes: productivity, long-term financial sustainability, effectiveness of fiscal policy and public investment, TPP negotiations and the related outlook, and monetary policy under long-term economic downturn.

　Recently in Japan, the House of Representatives has been dissolved and the country is in the midst of national elections, in which the issue of Abenomics will play a pivotal role. Accordingly, the time is right to set Abenomics as the core topic for discussion at the upcoming US-Japan Economic Forum, where leading economics experts from the US and Japan will debate the issues at hand. The invited guests to the forum from the US are seven leading economists centering on the Washington-based opinion leader in US-related economics Adam Posen (director of the US Peterson Institute for International Economics), while from Japan, eight economists working at the forefront of their field, including Motoshige Itoh, chairman of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy and professor at the graduate school of the University of Tokyo will be invited to attend the event, which promises to be a highly specialized but also practical discussion of Abenomics.

　The objective of this forum is to provide valuable information to those active in the field as well as a broad range of the general public, and to help to us better understand our chaotic world from the point of view of the US-Japan economy. We hope you will join us for this informative event.