Jiro Yoshida

Biography for Jiro Yoshida, Associate Professor of Business.

Portrait of Jiro Yoshida.

Associate Professor of Business

Jeffery L. and Cindy M. King Faculty Fellow

Dr. Jiro Yoshida is an associate professor of business at Penn State with a specialization in real estate. Dr. Yoshida teaches several courses on the financial analysis of real estate to undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. students. Before joining the Penn State faculty, he was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Tokyo, which is also where he received his undergraduate degree in urban engineering. He later went on to earn a master's degree in real estate from MIT, master's  and Ph.D. degrees in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Yoshida is currently a Jeffery L. and Cindy M. King Faculty Fellow, which provides funding for his research. He is also a Hoyt Academic Fellow - a prestigious award given to a small number of researchers in real estate and urban economics. Additionally, Dr. Yoshida served as the board director and the international committee chair for the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Notable publications by Dr. Yoshida include his research with Dr. Brent Ambrose, director of BIRES, and N. Edward Coulson regarding Housing Rents and Inflation Rates during and after recessions as well as his research with Barney Hartman-Glaser and Mark Thibodeau to determine how wealth in the Silicon Valley area has impact housing prices titled Cash to Spend: IPO Wealth and House Prices. Dr. Yoshida, Dr. Ambrose, and Coulson also saw a need for better quality information regarding rent inflammation in the U.S., so they work together to publish the Penn State/ACY Alternative Inflation Index monthly.

Dr. Yoshida has also been cited in the media over 30 times within the past eight years with recent citations including the Washington Post’s article “Have We Been Measuring Housing Inflation All Wrong?”, WalletHub’s article “2023's Best State Capitals for Safety & More,” and Vox’s article “The Federal Reserve is starting a climate experiment.”

Dr. Yoshida believes that Penn State offers a wide variety of comprehensive real estate programs that give students real-world experiences with site visits and networking opportunities. According to Dr. Yoshida, learning real estate or any subject is like going up a spiral staircase.

“If you look to the top, it looks like you’re going around the same place and going to the same topics again and again, so it seems like you’re doing the same thing over and over. However, you’re actually moving up the more you learn and return to those concepts,” Yoshida said.

He recommends that students who are interested in real estate utilize the programs offered, such as the Real Estate Boot Camp.