Arvid Lukauskas

Arvid Lukauskas is the executive director of the Picker Center for Executive Education and the MPA in Economic Policy Management (MPA-EPM) program at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.  He also directs the International Economic Policy and Global Policy Studies concentrations for the Executive MPA program.

Lukauskas teaches and conducts research on economic history and international and comparative political economy.  His most recent book, with Yumi Shimabukuro, is Misery Beneath the Miracle in East Asia, forthcoming with Cornell University Press in 2024. This book reveals an unsettling reality that challenges prevailing views of the East Asian miracle.  Existing scholarship generally has overlooked the severity, persistence, and harmful consequences of the social welfare crises affecting the region; this volume fills this gap and puts a major asterisk on its economic record.  Combining big-picture analysis, abundant data, a dynamic interdisciplinary framework, and powerful human stories, it sheds light on the social ills—from elderly poverty, working poverty, child maltreatment, to affordable housing crises—that governments have failed to address adequately.  It shows that social welfare paradoxically may deteriorate dramatically amidst economic and democratic advancements, bringing East Asia into debates that are currently embroiling the United States and other advanced industrialized countries.  

His other books are the Handbook of Trade Policy for Development, edited with R. Stern and G. Zanini (Oxford University Press, 2013); The Political Economy of the East Asian Crisis and its Aftermath, edited with F. Rivera-Batíz (Edward Elgar 2001); and Regulating Finance: The Political Economy of Spanish Financial Policy from Franco to Democracy (University of Michigan Press, 1997).  His articles and reviews have appeared in various scholarly journals, including Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, Japanese Journal of Political Science, and Review of International Political Economy.  

He is currently completing a book-length project (with Yumi Shimabukuro) on the origins and development of the Japanese welfare state, entitled Building an Inegalitarian Welfare State: The Impact of Dualistic Coordinated Capitalism & Elite-Made Democracy in Japan.  This manuscript analyzes how the country's pursuit of a modern capitalist economy and process of democratization over the course of a century and a half generated conditions inimical to the development of a safety net. 

Through the Picker Center, Lukauskas has helped develop or direct a number of major executive training programs in Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Egypt, Republic of Georgia, Hong Kong, Israel, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Northern Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey as well as for IADB, IFC, UNDP, and the World Bank.  He has been the principal investigator for two four-year USAID grants, in conjunction with the East-West Management Institute, to develop the capacity of NGOs in the Republic of Georgia.  He has served as a consultant to UNDP and the World Bank Institute.

Lukauskas received a BA from University of Wisconsin, Madison, an MPA from University of Oklahoma, and his PhD from University of Pennsylvania.

Education

• PhD, University of Pennsylvania
• MPA, University of Oklahoma
• BA, University of Wisconsin, Madison