Saori N. KATADA

Professor
University of Southern California

Saori N. Katada is Professor of Political Science and International Relations Department at University of Southern California and vice president of International Studies Association (April 2021-March 2022). Her new book Japan’s New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific was published by Columbia University Press in July 2020. She is also a co-author of two recent books: The BRICS and Collective Financial Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Taming Japan’s Deflation: The Debate over Unconventional Monetary Policy (Cornell University Press, 2018). She has her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Political Science), and her B.A. from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo). Before joining USC, she served as a researcher at the World Bank in Washington D.C., and as an International Program officer at the UNDP in Mexico City.

Research themes: International political economy, comparative political economy, geoeconomics, economic statecraft, monetary policy, economic institution, Asian regionalism, Japan, East Asia, trade, investment, foreign aid, economic development, Indo-Pacific

Collaboration with FFJ

2022 FFJ/Banque de France Fellow
Stay: 15 August 2022 - January 2023
Theme 1

A new approach for public spaces of mobility in world metropolises: design, management, and governance for a social, digital, energetic, and post-pandemic transition.

Saori N. Katada plans to work on two projects during her fellowship. The first project titled “Variety of Financialization and Central Bank” examines the links between financialization and politics associated with monetary policy choices of the central banks. By comparing the case of Japan with other OECD countries, the project seeks to identify how central bank policies are affected by different types of financialization. The second project examines the challenge to Japan’s developmental state practices as the Japanese economy has undergone financialization. With focus on infrastructure financing, the project asks how the shift in Japan’s domestic financial structure impacted its infrastructure financing in the 21st century, and how Japan’s new financing strategy might provide useful lessons (both positive and negative ones) in bridging the contemporary financial incentives to fill the vast infrastructure investment gap in the emerging and developing world.

Main publications