Hideo Akabayashi is a Professor of Economics at Keio University. His research areas are in economics of education and family economics. His publications include an economic theory of child development and empirical investigations concerning the effects of class size and private school vouchers in Japan. He is a principal investigator for the Japan Child Panel Survey (JCPS), the first longitudinal data of children with measures of both cognitive and non-cognitive skills in Japan, which started in 2010 as a supplement to the Japan Household Panel Data (JHPS) at Keio. He is also a founder/CEO of gaccom.jp, a web directory of Japanese schools similar to greatschools.org in the U.S. Before taking these positions, he served as a Japanese government official and as a consultant in the World Bank.

Akabayashi received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1996.