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By Leika Kihara
TOKYO (Reuters) - A soft-spoken academic with a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kazuo Ueda - Tokyo's nominee for next Bank of Japan governor - is a pragmatist who knows how to turn policy ideas into reality.
Unlike incumbent Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, who arrived with a clear mandate to beat deflation with massive stimulus, Ueda faces the delicate task of phasing out his predecessor's radical and complicated policy framework without derailing a fragile economic recovery.
His academic credentials suggest he is fit for the job. At MIT, he studied economics under Stanley Fischer, whose students include former U.S. Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke and former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.
As the first postwar BOJ governor to come from academia, the 71-year-old also brings a wealth of experience helping guide Japan's economy through rough waters - including during his time at the central bank's nine-member board from 1998 to 2005.
One of the tools he helped put in place in 1999 to combat a banking crisis and debilitating deflation back then was forward guidance, in which central banks explicitly communicate future interest rate intentions as a way of influencing spending and investment behaviour.
People who know him say Ueda is a pragmatic policymaker-type academic who can adjust his views on monetary policy flexibly, making him hard to brand as either a hawk or a dove. He is a good listener and a consensus-builder, rather than a leader with a strong view on the direction of monetary policy, they say.
"His style is to discuss monetary policy based on facts and evidence," said Tetsuya Inoue, who was Ueda's staff secretary when he was a central bank board member.
"He won't rely on a single model because he knows that economic and price developments are very complex. Rather, he uses economic theories as tools to conduct policy flexibly."
A fan of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows baseball team who likes going out for drinks with colleagues and former schoolmates, Ueda is described by associates as approachable and open-minded, as well as being a sharp-minded theorist who favours empirical analysis and data.
Even after retiring as board member, he has been close to the BOJ. A good number of students he taught at the prestigious University of Tokyo now work at the bank.
As an adviser to a BOJ-affiliated think tank, he frequently appeared in its international panels and was among a handful of academics called upon by central bank executives for policy suggestions.