Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara (born 1947), who also publishes as Masahiro Okuno, is a Japanese economist applying microeconomics and game theory to industrial policy, economic institutions, and cooperation. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1969 and earned his PhD in economics at Stanford University in 1974. After appointments at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois, and Yokohama National University, he joined the University of Tokyo in 1984 and later taught at Ryutsu Keizai University and Musashino University. With Motoshige Itoh, Kazuharu Kiyono, and Kotaro Suzumura, he wrote the Japanese-language “Sangyo Seisaku no Keizai Bunseki,” which examined industrial promotion, trade, firms’ strategic behavior, and research and development from the perspective of economic welfare. It received the Nikkei Prize for Excellent Books in Economic Science in 1988. Alongside collaborative work on comparative institutional analysis and the economic implications of information technology, he developed teaching materials in microeconomics. His edited and co-authored Japanese textbook “Microeconomics” (2008), based on lectures at the University of Tokyo, connected consumer and producer behavior and market equilibrium with game theory, asymmetric information, externalities, and public goods. In joint research with Takako Fujiwara-Greve, he studied social interactions in which people can choose whether to maintain or terminate relationships. Their Japanese-language book “Jihatsuteki Kankei Shakai no Game Riron” (2025) modeled such relationships as evolutionary games, analyzing equilibria in which cooperation and defection coexist, the conditions sustaining tolerant behavior without an immediate payoff, and how communication can change patterns of interaction. The book received the 69th Nikkei Prize for Excellent Books in Economic Science in 2026.
