ABOUT PRESENTERS AND AUTHORS

Keynote Speakers

 

Dr. Kenichi Ohno
(GRIPS & VDF)
 

Dr. Kenichi Ohno is a professor of Economics at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Tokyo and  the research director of the Vietnam Development Forum (VDF). Professor Ohno has been working on Vietnam's development issues for more than 10 years. He published various articles, papers, and books on international trade, aid management, and industrial development strategies in developing countries. He was a recipient of Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanity, and Osagari Jiro Award for Critical Works in 2001 for the book Globalization of Developing Countries. He holds a Ph.D degree in Economics from Stanford University.

Mr. Noritaka Akamatsu
(The World Bank, Vietnam)

Mr. Akamatsu is a Lead Financial Economist of the World Bank.  He serves as Finance & Private Sector Program Manager for Vietnam and Capital Market Advisor for East Asia & Pacific (EAP) Region, based in Hanoi, Vietnam.  He joined the Bank in 1993 as Financial Economist and has been specializing in the area of financial market development.  Prior to assuming the current position, he served as a leader of Capital Markets Group of the central anchor unit of the Bank’s Financial Sector Network in Washington.  He has worked on numerous lending operations, technical assistance projects including the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) in: Indonesia, China, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, India, Russia, Romania, Turkey, Croatia, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Georgia, Peru and others as well as Vietnam.  Prior to joining the World Bank, Mr. Akamatsu worked for Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo and London where he was responsible for advising governments on financial market development, privatization and international bond issuance.  Mr. Akamatsu holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and an MSc in Economics from London School of Economics.

Speakers and Co-author(s)

Dr. Katsushi Imai (presenter)
Dr. Raghav Gaiha (co-author)
"Poverty, Inequality and Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam"

Dr. Katsushi Imai is an assistant professor in Development Economics at Department of Economics, School of Social Sciences, and a faculty associate of Brooks World Poverty Institute (BWPI), the University of Manchester. He graduated with a MSc at LSE and a PhD from the University of Oxford and previously taught at Oxford and University of London. Dr Imai has worked as a consultant for the IFAD, the UN and DFID. He has published widely on risk, vulnerability and poverty dynamics of households in developing countries and on evaluations of anti-poverty programmes, such as the Employment Guarantee Scheme in India, in development and economics journals, including Journal of Development Studies, Review of Development Economics, Oxford Development Studies, Journal of Policy Modeling, Journal of African Economies, among others.

Dr. Raghav Gaiha is a Professor of Public Policy, Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, and currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Centre for Population and Development Studies. He has held visiting fellowships at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Penn, University of Cambridge, and the World Bank. He has served as a Consultant with FAO, IFAD, ADB, DFID and WIDER. His research interests are in the areas of poverty, nutrition, infant mortality, institutions, and natural disasters. He has published in Economic Development and Cultural Change, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Development Studies, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford Development Studies, among others.

 

Dr. Wade Pfau (presenter)

Mr. Giang Thanh Long (co-author)
"Demographic Changes and the Pension Finances in Vietnam: A Long-term Stochastic Actuarial Assessment"

 

Dr. Wade Pfau is an Associate Professor of Economics at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo, Japan. At GRIPS, he teaches economics to masters and Ph.D students, who are government officials coming to study in Japan from throughout Asia and Africa.  He earned a Ph.D in Economics from Princeton University under the guidance of Professors Alan Blinder and Harvey Rosen.  As an undergraduate student at the University of Iowa, he studied economics, political science, and history.  He completed internships at the U.S. Social Security Administration, the White House, and the U.S. Senate. His main research interests are related to Social Security, pensions, and the economics of aging. Particularly, he is working to develop methods to better analyze the future outcomes of defined contribution pension programs. He published a number of articles, papers, and book chapters in National Tax Journal, Korean Economic Review, among others.

Mr. Giang Thanh Long is a lecturer of the Faculty of Economics, National Economics University in Hanoi, and a research fellow at VDF-Tokyo. His main research interests are social security, poverty, demographic changes, and pension reform, particularly in Vietnam. He has published various articles and research papers on these themes. He earned a master of public policy (MPP) degree from Hitotsubashi University, Japan. In 2005, he held a visiting research fellowship at the Oxford Institute of Ageing, the University of Oxford, to work on aging and pension reform in Vietnam.

 

 Mr. Nguyen Trong Ha (presenter)

"The Economics of Not Using the Health Insurance Card:

A Case Study of Vietnam"

Mr. Nguyen Trong Ha is a PhD candidate at the Crawford School of Economics and Governance, the Australian National University (ANU), and an on-leave lecturer of National Economics University (NEU) in Hanoi. He earned a Master degree in Development Economics from Vietnam-Netherlands Master's Program in Development Economics at NEU. His main research interests include development economics, labor and demographic economics. Currently, he is working on health insurance issues in Vietnam.

  

Dr. Le Viet Trung (presenter)

Dr. Masayoshi Maruyama (co-author)

"The Revolution of Vietnamese Distribution System"

Dr. Le Viet Trung received a PhD degree from the Graduate School of Business Administration, Kobe University, where he is currently conducting research under a postdoctoral fellowship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). He has published a variety of articles and papers in refereed journals on the Vietnamese distribution system and consumer behaviors.

Dr. Masayoshi Maruyama is a professor of Business Economics at the Graduate School of Business Administration, Kobe University, Japan. He is specialized in the area of industrial organization, marketing, and distribution systems. He has published a number of articles, papers, and books on these fields. For Vietnam, he has made a great contribution to the Vietnamese distribution system via both empirical and academic research activities, in which several research projects have been conducted and their reports have been published in refereed journals.