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.
The paper presents a theory of policy timing that relies on uncertainty and transaction costs to explain the optimal timing and duration of policy reforms. Delaying reforms resolves some uncertainty by gaining valuable information and saves transaction costs. Implementing reforms without waiting increases welfare by adjusting domestic policies to changed market parameters. Optimal policy timing is found by balancing the trade-off between delaying reforms and implementing reforms without waiting.
CISAC Affiliate Jeffrey Lewis, founder of the blog ArmsControlWonk.com, explains that journalists and foreign policy elites have misunderstood the National Intelligence Estimates on Iran's nuclear program, particularly the 2007 report, which claimed that Iran halted its covert nuclear weapons program in 2003. Lewis spoke with FSI's Tom Fingar, who explained that the report intended to signal that Tehran is sensitive to international pressure, and that it could restart the nuclear weapons program at a later date.
Overview, from W.W. Norton & Company:
A long-time staple of International Relations courses, this new edition continues the important discussion of nuclear proliferation, while looking at the regions and issues now at the forefront of the nuclear question.
This article gives a short, introductory overview of basic aspects of the emerging field of neuroeconomics, as a contemporary approach to economic theory and practice. In many ways, neuroeconomics can be regarded as a new, multi- and inter-disciplinary orientation to economic thinking that interweaves the current international renewal of the economic sciences, in particular the “new experimentalism”, and the most recent technological advances in brain research, ecology and environmentalism.
Stephen Craig: "Tamed Tiger or Restless Beast? German Foreign Policy in the Post-Unification Period"
Clay Ramel: “Reconsidering the Roots of Crude Coercion: a Policymaking Analysis of “the Oil Weapon””
This report discusses desirable policy directions and options in the aftermath of the Great Tohoku Earthquake. It argues that the importance of Japan’s productivity growth has not been invalidated by the disaster, and suggests that Japan should consider restoration and reconstruction from the earthquake as a great opportunity to reposition its policies.
The elderly share of China’s population is projected to grow well beyond the capacity of the nation’s social security system. Meanwhile, family care is being challenged by a decline in fertility and an increase in migration from rural to urban areas. This paper examines the short-, mid-, and long-term effects of family support on elderly well-being in rural China, using four-wave panel data on 1,456 persons aged 60 and above in the Chaohu region of China.
Abstract
Mark C. Thurber, David R. Hults
In an article for Foreign Policy, Karl Eikenberry makes the case for the United States to invigorate its relations with Taiwan and outlines the work needed to make this a reality and stabilize security in the Asia-Pacific region.
This paper looks at past and likely future agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction in the context of the overall Indian economy. The growth of India’s economy has accelerated sharply since the late 1980s, but agriculture has not followed suit. Rural population and especially the labor force are continuing to rise rapidly. Meanwhile, rural-urban migration remains slow, primarily because the urban sector is not generating large numbers of jobs in labor-intensive manufacturing.
François Hollande will be France's next president. What does this mean for the country, the euro and a viable Europe? In an article published in Le Monde Diplomatique, Europe Center Associate Director Roland Hsu writes that in order to address unemployment and government debt, Hollande's administration must first figure out "how to restore trust and win effective cooperation from organized labor, industry, the international investment community, immigrant community leaders, and also the far right."
The China Greentech Report 2012, released by the China Greentech Initiative (CGTI), is the third annual update of recent developments in the greentech sector in China. CGTI, founded in 2008, has rapidly grown to become the only Chinese-international collaboration platform of 100+ commercial and policy organizations, focused on identifying, developing and promoting green technology solutions in China. The Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business is the supporting organization of the initiative.
The authors contend that cloud computing is historically unique by simultaneously being an innovation ecosystem, production platform, and global marketplace. In the first part, they define cloud computing as a "dynamic" utility, listing key characteristics of what it is and what it is not, both from providers' and users' vantages. In the second part, they characterize three competitive battles in the broader cloud ecosystem: winning the user (cloud providers), the search for value (network providers), and the device wars (device providers).
Matthew Kroenig's argument for preventive military action to combat Tehran's nuclear program -- "Time to Attack Iran" (January/February 2012) -- suffers from three problems. First, its view of Iranian leaders' risk calculations is self-contradictory. Second, it misreads nuclear history. And third, it underestimates the United States' ability to contain a nuclear Iran.
For the past two decades China has been a poster child of successful globalization, integrating with the world and in the process lifting millions of citizens out of poverty. But China’s integration into the world economy and global trends drive and constrain Beijing’s ability to manage growing social, economic and political challenges.
National oil companies (NOCs) produce most of the world’s oil and natural gas and bankroll governments across the globe. Although NOCs superficially resemble private-sector companies, they often behave in very different ways. To understand these pivotal state-owned enterprises and the long shadow they cast on world energy markets, the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) at Stanford University commissioned Oil and Governance: State-owned Enterprises and the World Energy Supply.
Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship played a critical role in transforming Japan’s telecommunications sector. Between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, in a sector long dominated by a stable set of large actors with well-established patterns of interaction, entrepreneurs introduced new technologies, new business models, and new norms of interaction.
