Takahiro Akita is a Professor Emeritus of International University of Japan (IUJ). He holds Ph.D. in regional science from the University of Pennsylvania and Master of Engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology. He taught at IUJ and Rikkyo University. Prior to joining IUJ, he worked for United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat). His research interests center around regional and urban economic development, Asian economic development, income inequality, poverty, interindustry analysis and international trade. His research has appeared in Social Indicators Research, Asian Economic Journal, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Environment and Planning A, Annals of Regional Science, International Regional Science Review, among others. Mitsuhiko Kataoka has been a Professor at the Graduate School of Business, Rikkyo University, Japan since 2016. He received his Ph.D. from Nagoya University in 2004. He worked as a professor at Chiba Keizai University, Japan, and a visiting professor in the Faculty of Economics and Business at Padjadjaran University, Indonesia, prior to joining Rikkyo University. His research interests are in the field of regional economics and development economics, especially regional inequality, regional productivity growth, and regional convergence. The empirical focus of most of his work has been on postwar Japan and Indonesia.