For decades, earnings from farming in many developing countries, including in Sub-Saharan Africa, have been depressed by a pro-urban and anti-trade bias in own-country policies, as well as by governments of richer countries favoring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduced global economic welfare and agricultural trade, and almost certainly added to global inequality and poverty and to food insecurity in many low-income countries.
The purpose of this text is to present the proposals of drug policy reform elaborated by the Beckley Foundation for the Government of Guatemala, as part of the agreement set between these two bodies. Amanda Feilding was invited by President Otto Pérez Molina to establish a Beckley Foundation Latin American Chapter in Guatemala in July 2012, and was requested to produce a rigorous, evidence-based analysis of the impact of current prohibitionist drug policies on Guatemala and the wider region.
Context The effect of global health initiatives on population health is uncertain. Between 2003 and 2008, the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the largest initiative ever devoted to a single disease, operated intensively in 12 African focus countries. The initiative's effect on all-cause adult mortality is unknown.
Objective To determine whether PEPFAR was associated with relative changes in adult mortality in the countries and districts where it operated most intensively.
The OECD and the WTO have accumulated systematic data on the magnitude of support going to farmers as a result of farm policies. The datasets are collected for different purposes, but give a detailed picture of the evolution of these policies. This paper extends recent work on the compatibility of these two classification systems with a focus on Norway, Switzerland, the US and the EU. The results show how the OECD data set, particularly with respect to the link between direct payments and production requirements, complements that of the WTO.
New product and service development is the lifeblood of any enterprise. Beyond the obvious need for organizations to innovate in order to compete, embedded in any new product development (NPD) program are knowledge, technological expertise, and the social networks that convert these capabilities into marketable offerings. Recent research has focused on the NPD as dynamic and iterative, as opposed to linear. The pressure to reduce costs is forcing many companies to outsource operations.
These working papers on the South Korean economy are the product of an annual conference series on Korean affairs hosted by Stanford University's Korean Studies Program (KSP), and made possible by the generous support of the Koret Foundation. KSP's 2009–2010 Koret Fellow, Byongwon Bahk, a former vice finance minister and chief economic adviser to Korean president Lee Myung-bak, played a leading role in organizing the 2010 conference, authored a major paper, and co-edited this volume.
From Byongwon Bahk's preface:
The editors believe that the study of the South Korean economy holds, or should hold, interest not only for Koreans but also for Americans and the international community as a whole. Korea has become a major player in the global economy, ranking thirteenth in GDP and seventh in exports among the world's nearly 200 countries. This should no longer come as much of a surprise to consumers across the globe who use Korean cell phones, drive Korean cars, and, increasingly, enjoy Korean pop music and movies.
The Korean economy is also important as a leading model of development. In only two generations and despite national division and the devastation of civil war, South Korea has transformed itself from a largely agricultural economy to a world leader in manufacturing, which in turn facilitated its emergence as a dynamic democracy. The Korean experience holds many lessons for countries throughout the world as they also struggle to modernize in a highly competitive, globalized economy.
Korea's success in navigating the turmoil caused by the global financial crisis and recession of 2008–2009 is yet another reason for studying its economy. Despite its economy being an astounding 85 percent dependent on international trade, Korea has been among the world's leaders in recovering from the crisis. Korea owes that success in part to the very hard lessons it learned from the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998.
The five chapters selected for this compendium focus on some of the timeliest and most important issues involving the Korean economy.
Papers included in this volume:
Foreign Policy blogger and CISAC Faculty Member Amy Zegart explains the good, the bad, and the ugly of aviation security. She notes that the increased use of bomb-sniffing dogs and LAX's ARMOR program, which uses an algorithm to conduct random times and locations for searches, are two examples of positive developments in the TSA's airline security measures.
Foreign Policy blogger and CISAC Faculty Member Amy Zegart explains how major private companies are increasingly developing their own intelligence that conduct surveillance and analyze information that places the reputation, personnel or business interests of their company. These units look and act like government intelligence agencies, and are staffed with former CIA, FBI, and military professionals that maintain their government ties. Companies operating globally cannot afford to ignore political events, natural disasters, and other risks.
CISAC Faculty Member Amy Zegart explains the politics behind leading the CIA: winning trust and support within the organization and with outsiders. David Petraeus excelled at maintaining outside support for the CIA, but could not win over the intelligence community.
Thee next CIA director will need to address major problems such as the military's increasing influence over the "spying business" and the agency's role in the tactical operations, all while the DoD increases its own intelligence activity.
This paper investigates whether agricultural households in the rural Philippines insure their consumption against income shocks and whether they use migration, remittances, informal loans, or assets as ex post risk-coping mechanisms. Since these households have limited access to formal insurance and credit markets, any shocks to their volatile income can have substantial impacts. Using panel data, and rainfall shocks as the instrumental variable for income shocks, this paper finds little evidence of effective risk-sharing within the networks of family and friends.
In this blog post for Foreign Policy, Zegart discusses how the military's organizational and operational culture clashes with that of intelligence agencies. When military leaders are tasked with running an intelligence agency, three distinct concerns arise. The first is that a military leader will focus on short-term tactical operations over long-term strategic assessments. Military leaders are also accustomed to a hierarchical structure where orders from leaders are rarely questioned-- this clashes directly with the CIA's analytical culture.
In this post for Foreign Policy, Martha Crenshaw outlines the difficulties that U.S. presidents have had in forming and maintaining a counterterrorism strategy. From Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, all have had their foreign policy reputations tarnished by terrorism. The challenge is in forming a consistent, logical counterterrorism policy.
CISAC Faculty Member Amy Zegart outlines how the CIA's mindset has not changed since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Fifty years since the crisis, the CIA and other intelligence agencies still operate in an organizational and psychological mindset that favors consensus and consistency. Zegart argues that these "invisible pressures" led to intelligence failures in Cuba in 1962 and Iraq in 2002, where dissenting opinions or internal disagreements were downplayed.
According to Amy Zegart, CISAC faculty member, Americans have become more hawkish on counterterrorism policy since Barack Obama took office. In a blog post for Foreign Policy, Zegart conducted an online poll and found that 25 percent of Americans would stop a terrorist attack by using a nuclear weapon. Support for harsh interrogation techniques and assassination have also increased since similar polls were conducted in 2005 and 2007.
Book description:
During the Cold War, deterrence theory was the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, however, popular wisdom dictated that terrorist organizations and radical fanatics could not be deterred—and governments shifted their attention to combating terrorism rather than deterring it.
The debt crisis is clear: Smaller areas can be managed better than large nations. Therefore they should be autonomous - under the umbrella of the European Union.