Nakahara Prize

The Nakahara Prize is an award issued to a Japanese economist who has made important contributions to the field of economics. It is designed to recognize younger economists, as the maximum age of a winner is set at 45.

The Nakahara Prize is awarded annually by the Japanese Economic Association, a professional organization of economists with some 3,200 members. It is named after Nobuyuki Nakahara, a former board member of the Bank of Japan. He personally endowed the prize for its first nine years; after that, it has been funded by Shin-Nihon Scholarship Foundation, which he heads as president.

The Nakahara Prize was first awarded in 1995, and focuses on economists who have published internationally-known books or papers, and so have earned global recognition (rather than solely domestic acclaim) for their work. Fumio Hayashi, a neoclassical economist, was the first recipient; he was 43 years old at the time. In 2016, Sagiri Kitao became the first woman awarded the prize.

The 2018 prize recipient is Toshihiko Mukoyama, a visiting professor at Georgetown University.