My main research areas are in labor economics and industrial development— workers, firms, product upgrading, trade, cross-border migration, matching, and cities in developing economies. To get a better and deeper understanding about the process of economic development, my research covers: (1) building relationship specificity, firm-to-firm matching with technology transfers, and acquisitions of managerial capabilities along the local and global production chains; (2) micro empirics and aggregate patterns of firm growth and urban labor markets in developing economies including Japanese historical experiences in the late 19th century. A number of my papers have been focused on firm growth and product/process upgrading with a special emphasis on production chains in Southeast Asia. Recently I am also working on economics of traffic accidents and among other topics to explore improving mobility in developing economies.

Tomohiro Machikita is a labor economist and associate professor of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University, Japan. His current research uses labor and organizational economics to understand complex problems in trade-off between traffic accidents and industrial development with a special emphasis on production chains. He has also combined insights from labor economics and trade/geography to study such as the rise of temporary workers, unemployment duration, migration, job matching, and vocational training. Prior to joining CSEAS in June 2019, He had been an economist of Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO), Japan since April 2006. He began his academic career at Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University. He received Nikkei Prize Best Economic Book of the Year with his four coauthors in 2009. He received his Doctorate from Kyoto University in 2007. His hobbies include hiking and reading.