Richard C. Koo is the Chief Economist of Nomura Research Institute (NRI), with responsibilities to provide independent economic and market analysis to Nomura Securities, the leading securities house in Japan, and its clients. Before joining Nomura in 1984, Mr. Koo, a US citizen, was an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1981–84). Prior to that, he was a Doctoral Fellow of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (1979–81). In addition to conducting financial market research, he has also advised five Japanese prime ministers on how best to deal with Japan's economic and banking problems. In addition to being one of the first non-Japanese participants in the making of Japan's five-year economic plan, he was also the only non-Japanese member of the Defense Strategy Study Conference of the Japan Ministry of Defense for 1999–2011. Currently he is serving as a Senior Advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, D.C.). He is also a columnist for the German Handlesblatt newspaper and a frequent contributor to The International Economy Magazine published in, Washington, D.C.

Mr. Koo is the author of many books on economics and the Japanese economy, and his The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics—Lessons from Japan's Great Recession (John Wiley & Sons, 2008) has become a required read in many university economics classes around the world. It has been translated into and sold in six different languages. Mr. Koo holds BAs in Political Science and Economics from the University of California at Berkeley (1976) and an MA in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University (1979). From 1998 to 2010, he was a visiting professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. In financial circles, Mr. Koo was ranked first among over 100 economists covering Japan in the Nikkei Financial Ranking for 1995, 1996, and 1997, and by the Institutional Investor magazine for 1998. He was also ranked first by Nikkei Newsletter on Bond and Money for 1998, 1999, and 2000. He was awarded the Abramson Award by the National Association for Business Economics (Washington, D.C.) for the year 2001. A piano manufacturer before becoming an economist, Mr. Koo, a native of Kobe, Japan, is married and has two children.