SAITO Jun

SAITO Jun

SAITO Jun
[Belonging・Position] Middle Eastern Studies Group, Area Studies Center
[Research Field] Middle Eastern Economy, Financial Development
[email] Jun_Saito E-mail
Profile Information (Research history, education, papers & publications)

Previous research

I graduated from the Hitotsubashi University Faculty of Economics in 1999 and obtained a doctorate in economics from the same university in 2014. I joined the JETRO Institute of Developing Economies in 2006 as a researcher in the Middle Eastern Studies Group at the Area Studies Center. Before starting my current position in 2015, I worked as a visiting researcher at the United Arab Emirates University in Abu Dhabi.

The focus of my research is development finance, corporate finance, financial systems, and corporate governance in Arab Gulf countries. Based on the results of my research, I have written about the financing and investment behavior of Islamic financial institutions in Arab Gulf countries, the role of the board of directors in financial institutions, the state of telecommunications companies' overseas expansion, succession in family-owned companies, economic relationships between Arab Gulf countries and Asian countries, agricultural companies’ operations in the United Arab Emirates, and food security.

Current research projects

At present, my main topic of research concerns the actual state of the circulation of funds in Arab Gulf states. From the perspective of the international transfer of funds and transactions of financial institutions, I am attempting to empirically analyze how funds obtained from the sale of oil and natural gas affect the economy of neighboring Arab countries as well as South Asian and Southeast Asian countries in terms of worker remittances, foreign direct investment, and international aid funds.

Also, from the perspective of development finance, corporate finance, and corporate governance, I am quantitatively analyzing how the flow of funds back into Arab Gulf states are distributed to domestic companies through local financial institutions and financial markets and are then utilized for economic development and the improvement of people’s lives.