Hiro Ito is a Professor of Economics, the Department Chair in the Economics Department and the co-director and co-founder of the Initiatives for Community Disaster Resilience at Portland State University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2004 and joined PSU the same year.
His areas of research are financial liberalization and development, capital flows, emerging market open macro policies, and global imbalances. His papers have been published in the Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of International Money and Finance, and Review of International Economics. He has visited many international banks as a visiting scholar. These include the Asian Development Bank Institute, the Bank for International Settlements, De Nederlandsche Bank, and the Research Institute of Economics, Trade, and Industry. He has done consulting work for the Asian Development Bank and is currently an associate editor of the Journal of International Money and Finance and the Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy.
Hiro’s teaching interests have been in monetary theory, macroeconomics, and East Asian economic development. He has overseen many undergraduate and graduate student thesis and directed studies and enjoys helping students with their scholarly and academic growth and pursuits.