Yujiro Hayami, born in 1932, was one of the first Japanese to earn a U.S. Ph.D. in agricultural economics after World War II(Iowa State, 1960). He began his professional career in the National Research Institute of Agricultural Economics in Japan, followed by two decades' service at the Tokyo Metropolitan University. He recently moved to Aoyama-Gakuin University. He has also served as visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and as an economist with the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. He served on the Editorial Council for the American Journal of Agricultural Economics in 1972-74 and 1984-86. He has avoided administrative appointments throughout his career.

Hayami has advanced knowledge in three important areas. The first was to identify the stylized facts and working mechanisms of agricultural development through both historical and intercountry comparative analysis. His book with Vernon W. Ruttan, Agricultural Development: An International Perspective, was the major product of his effort. The main contribution of the book was to advance and test the induced innovation model of agricultural development. His second major contribution was based on a series of village level studies in the Philippines and Indonesia. These studies are reported in Asian Village Economy at the Crossroads (with Masao Kikuchi) and forthcoming book on peasants' marketing and processing activities in Indonesia. They shed new light on the institutional and organizational structure of peasantry in Asia and confirmed the power of the induced innovation model to interpret institutional change . Hayami's third contribution in the area of political economy includes The Political Economy of Agricultural Protection (with Kym Anderson) and a recently published book outlining a new theory of land reform drawing on Philippine experience, entitled Toward an Alternative Land Reform Paradigm (with Agnes Quisumbing and Lourdes Adriano).

A common thread connecting these three research areas is his keen interest in the innovation inducement mechanism operating through interactions among resource endowments, technology, and institutions.