**Kentaro Iwatsubo**

Kentaro Iwatsubo was born in Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, in 1969. He graduated from the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University in 1993, received a Master's degree from the Graduate School of Economics at the University of Tokyo in 1997, and received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2003. After working as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, he became an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University, in 2007 and a Professor in 2013. During that time, he was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, USA; Sung Kyun Kwan University, Korea; and Cass Business School, UK. For many years, he was a Special Research Fellow at the Ministry of Finance's Policy Research Institute. He has served as an executive board member of the Japan Society of Monetary Economics and as Editor-in-Chief of the *Japanese Journal of Monetary and Financial Economics*. He is currently a board member of the Japan Finance Association and an academic advisor to the Financial Futures Association of Japan. He has published many research articles in the areas of foreign exchange, stocks, and bonds, as well as commodities. He received the Academic Encouragement Award from Murao Ikueikai in 2015 for his analysis of exchange rate finance.
