The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada is proud to share its first Asia Leaders Speakers Series webinar, Economic Impacts of COVID-19 on Developing Asia and the Pacific: Policy Responses and Risks to Recovery with Dr. Yasuyuki Sawada, Chief Economist with the Asian Development Bank.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) recently published its regular flagship publication, Asian Development Outlook (ADO). It reports that developing Asia’s growth will slow sharply to 2.2% in 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak and global growth slowdown. The decline in growth is broad-based, affecting the People's Republic of China and India, as well as the rest of developing Asia’s economies.
Risks to the region's economies are extremely large due to the uncertain evolution and effects of the ongoing pandemic. In this first presentation of ADO 2020 in Canada, which took place May 7, 2020, ADB's Chief Economist Dr. Sawada shares just-updated and previously unreleased estimates of the pandemic's economic impact on the world's most populous region, and discusses economic policy implications of COVID-19 across the Asia Pacific.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Yasuyuki Sawada, is the ADB's Chief Economist, a position he assumed in 2017. He was previously a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Economics. Mr. Sawada, a Japanese national, has more than 20 years of experience as an economist, researcher, and academic. He has worked at the ADB Institute in Tokyo and served as a consultant for various projects at the World Bank Group. A leading figure in development economics and applied microeconometrics, he has also served as a visiting professor at Stanford University’s Stanford Center for International Development, and adjunct professor of economics at Korea University.
As Chief Economist, Dr. Sawada acts as ADB's spokesperson on economic issues and heads its Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department, which carries out policy research on development challenges facing Asia and the Pacific. The department also works closely with the international research community and produces the Asian Development Outlook, ADB's flagship economic report.
Dr. Sawada has conducted many field studies in developing countries and has deep insight about development issues. His research has contributed to the works of various development institutions including the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Crawford School of Public Policy’s Australia-Japan Research Center at the Australian National University, and the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics. He has also published and reviewed numerous books, reports, and journal articles, particularly on the topics of economics, disaster resilience and recovery, foreign aid, and poverty dynamics.
Mr. Sawada earned a Ph.D. in Economics and a Master’s degree in International Development Policy at Stanford University. He also received Master’s degrees in International Relations at the University of Tokyo, and Economics at Osaka University and Bachelor’s degree in Economics at Keio University.
More in our ALSS webinar series:
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