The Program on Alternative Investments of the Center on Japanese Economy and Business (CJEB) at Columbia Business School hosted a conference in Tokyo, Japan, titled "The Japanese Government as a Portfolio Manager: Managing the Nation's Wealth." One hundred sixty-seven people attended the conference to hear the views of seventeen distinguished speakers on the topic of a Japanese sovereign wealth fund (SWF). This report summarizes the presentations of the conference.
The Program on Alternative Investments at the Center on Japanese Economy and Business (CJEB) of Columbia Business School and Columbia University's Program for Economic Research and Weatherhead East Asian Institute cosponsored the symposium "Lessons from the Japanese Bubble for the U.S." Amidst a deepening U.S. financial crisis, 260 people attended to hear three specialists on the Japanese economy discuss what can be learned from the Japanese experience to help U.S. policymakers avoid a systemic crisis and the "lost decade" that Japan went through following the bursting of its asset bubble in the early 1990s. The speakers were Takeo Hoshi, Pacific Economic Cooperation Professor of International Economic Relations, University of California, San Diego; Paul Sheard, global chief economist and head of economic research, Nomura Securities International; and Michael Woodford, John Bates Clark Professor of Political Economy, Columbia University. Alicia Ogawa, director of the Program on Alternative Investments, CJEB, commenced the symposium with introductory remarks, and David Weinstein, associate director for research, CJEB, and Carl S. Shoup Professor of the Japanese Economy, Columbia University, served as moderator. This report is a summary of the speakers' presentations.
A new category of institutional investor has entered the world of alternative investments: the Japanese corporate pension plan. Long discouraged from entering the field due to domestic government regulations and other factors, since the late 1990s a growing number of such plans have made financial commitments to one or more categories of alternative investments.
