• Michinao Okachi Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo

• Rieko Kage Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo

Many governments in advanced countries including Japan accumulate a large amount of sovereign debt. The IMF projects that the average sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio of advanced countries in 2021 will reach 123%, which is almost as same as the level after WWII. In terms of the Japanese case, many researchers estimate that its sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio will keep increasing because of high social security costs and interest payments. If this ratio is on the divergent path, it would not be sustainable for good and an economic crisis might be caused in the future. It will be beneficial to obtain a policy to mitigate the economic damage triggered by high public debt. He introduces several policies that the Japanese government can take when a sovereign debt crisis happens in Japan. Then, he explains his and prior research what kind of policy should the government take to minimize its effect in Japan.

Michinao Okachi (Ph.D. in economics, Australian National University) is an Associate Professor of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo. He is also a visiting associate professor at Tohoku University. He has a wide range of interests in macroeconomics such as international economics, public finance, monetary policy, inequality, and environmental economics. He is currently studying sovereign debt crises, global warming effects on the economy, and COVID-19 infections in universities. Some projects are funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and government-sponsored agents.