Takashi YanagawaKobe University 

Takashi Yanagawa is a professor at the Graduate School of Economics at Kobe University, Japan, where he specializes in industrial organization. His work includes Risks and Regulation of New Technologies (edited jointly with Tsuyoshi Matsuda and Jonathan Wolff, Springer, 2020), Introduction to Econo-Legal Studies (edited jointly with Hiroshi Takahashi and Shinya Ouchi, Yuhikaku, 2014, in Japanese; China Machine Press, 2017, in Chinese; and currently being translated into English), among others. At present he is working on research projects having to do with the competition policies of platform businesses, energy market reform under the Paris Agreement, and econo-legal studies.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He was formerly the director of the Interfaculty Initiative in the Social Sciences at Kobe University and was also the vice-dean of the Organization for Advanced and Integrated Research at Kobe University. He was a visiting researcher at the Japan Fair Trade Commission, the London School of Economics, and the University of California at Berkeley. He was the president of the Japan Economic Policy Association and is currently a board member of the Japan Economic Policy Association and the Public Utility Economics Association. He is also a co-editor of the International Journal of Economic Policy Studies (Springer).

Shinichi Kusanagi

University of Hyogo

Shinichi Kusanagi is a professor of public utility law at the University of Hyogo, Japan. His research areas are public utility law and economic administrative law. He received his S.J.D. and LL.M. degrees from Keio University, Japan. He also received an LL.M. degree from Indiana University, USA, and an LL.B. from Keio University. He taught law and environment policy at the Evergreen State College in the USA as an exchange faculty member, and he was the dean of the School of Economics at the University of Hyogo. He received the Grand Award from the Japanese Society of Public Utility in 2018.

He is the author of The Energy Laws in the United States: Law and Policy in Economic and Environmental Regulations (Hakuto Shobo, 2017, in Japanese). He is also a co-author of The New Development of Energy Policy (Koyo Shobo, 2017, in Japanese), The Truth of Liberalization of Electricity and Gas (Energy Forum, 2017, in Japanese), Overall Electricity System Reform (Denki Shimbun, 2019, in Japanese), and The Study of Constitutional Law and Administrative Law from Lawsuits (Gakuyo Shobo, 2020, in Japanese). He was an editor of the Japan Social Innovation Journal from 2011 to 2020.

Chapter 1. Privatization of Public City Gas Utilities in Japan: Reasons, Objectives, and Methods

Chapter 2. Survival Analysis of Public Gas Utility Firms in the Japanese Urban Gas Industry

Chapter 3. Concession in infrastructure management: A case of public gas service in Japan

Chapter 4. A Study on the Background and Issues of Privatization of Public City Gas Utilities in Japan- Implications by comparing several business analysis indicators

Chapter 5. Privatization of Public Utilities: Results from the UK Experiment

Chapter 7. New Designs for Regulations on City Gas Pipeline Networks in Japan

Chapter 8. New Designs for City Gas Businesses in the Era of the Fully Liberalized Gas Retail Markets in Japan