Ladies and Gentlemen,
My name is Takashi Yanagawa, the President of the Japan Economic Policy
Association.
Welcome to Naha, Okinawa, and Japan. It is my great pleasure to be herewith all of you to have the 16th international conference of the JEPA, theJapan Economic Policy Association.
The main theme of this year’s conference is "Deregulation and Stable Growth
Policy to Overcome the Deceleration of the World Economy". We have 2plenary sessions and 3 guest speakers from abroad, namely, Professor Guido
PEPERMANS from KU Leuven, Belgium, Professor XiaoPing CHEN, fromNanyang Technology University, Singapore, and Professor Tien DAO Ngoc
from Foreign Trade University, Vietnam. Thank you very much for coming tothe JEPA conference.
In addition to the plenary sessions, we have regular sessions. This year wehave about 80 presentations in total. The total participants of this conference
are about 200. Here we have many experts from academics andnon-academics. We anticipate exciting discussions related to the policy
issues.
I would like to introduce the Japan Economic Policy Association very briefly.
This association was established in 1940, 77 years ago. It is one of the oldest
associations in the field of economics in Japan.
JEPA holds two academic conferences every year; one is the annual meeting
held in Japanese in spring, and the other is the international conference heldin English in autumn. This year, JEPA had the 74th annual meeting, and thisis the 16th international conference. It is very exceptional that a Japanese
association of economics has an English conference regularly.
JEPA also publishes two academic journals; one is the Journal of theEconomic Policy Studies published mainly in Japanese, and the other is theInternational Journal of Economic Policy Studies in English. We call theEnglish Journal IJEPS. IJEPS was first issued in 2006 and recently theVol.11 of IJEPS was published.
JEPA is the only one academic association in Japan that specializes in the1broad study of economic policy, and such kind of association is very rare in
the foreign countries, too. In that sense, JEPA hopes and needs to play animportant role in the study of economic policy studies in the world, especiallyin Asia.
To make JEPA more attractive and more accessible from the world, we arethinking of publishing IJEPS from a world-famous publisher in the nearfuture. So please submit your precious paper to IJEPS. “Call for Papers” isprinted in the Proceeding. From the new volume, Special Feature will start.
The theme of the 2 plenary sessions will be the special features in the coming
first volume of the NEW IJEPS. So please submit a paper on the energy
reform and free trade agreement.
Last but not the least; I would like to thank all the members of the programcommittee and the managing committee. Especially, special thanks should
be given toProfessor Maeda, the Chair of the International Committee, Professor
Hayashi, the Vice Chair of the International Committee, Professor Satake,the Chair of the Program Committee,Professor Yaoita, the Vice Chair of the Program Committee, ProfessorNakahira, the Secretary General of the Program Committee,
Professor Nagahara, the Vice Secretary General,
Professor Oshiro, the Chair of the Managing Committee, and Professor
Ishida, the Vice Chair of the Managing Committee. Without their efforts,
this conference was not realized.
Finally, I hope all of you enjoy not only earnest discussion, but also a niceart-attraction of Okinawa after the plenary session, banquet and wonderfulsurrounding sightseeing spots, so that your visit to this conference becomes
an unforgettable experience.
Thank you.

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