Dr. Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary is an associate professor of economics at Tokai University in Japan and a visiting professor at Keio University in Tokyo. He has taught as an assistant professor at Keio University and Waseda University, Tokyo. He is a recipient of an Excellent Young Researcher grant from the Ministry of Education of Japan. At present, he is also a visiting professor at Chiang Mai University (Thailand) and a distinguished research fellow and an external scientific member at the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). Currently, he is serving as editor of Cogent Business & Management journal and associate editor/board member of several other journals, including Energy Efficiency, Singapore Economic Review, Global Finance Journal, and Frontiers in Energy Research. He has guest-edited special issues for prestigious journals, including Energy Policy, Energy Economics, Finance Research Letters, Economic Analysis and Policy, and Journal of Environmental Management. His research credits include authoring more than 150 academic journal papers and book chapters and the editing of ten books, published by Springer Nature, Routledge, and World Scientific. Dr. Taghizadeh-Hesary holds a Ph.D. in economics from Keio University, with a scholarship from the Government of Japan (MEXT).

Dr. Naoyuki Yoshino is a professor emeritus of Keio University in Tokyo and director of the Financial Research Center (FSA Institute, Government of Japan). He obtained a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University (USA) in 1979, where his thesis supervisor was Sir Alan Walters (UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Economic Adviser). He worked as assistant professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo and visiting scholar at MIT (USA), visiting scholar at the Central Bank of Japan, and visiting professor at the University of New South Wales (Australia) and La Fondation nationale des sciences politiques (France). He received honorary doctorates from the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). The Fukuzawa Award was conferred upon him by Keio University for his contribution to research. He was dean and CEO of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) in Tokyo from 2014 to 2020.