Stanford University

Economic Affairs

Property Law, Rule of Law, and Beyond - What Matters to Foreign Investors in China? And What Not?

-

Weitseng Chen, a Fulbright scholar, will receive his JSD from Yale Law School in October 2007. His recent research focuses on China's foreign direct investment and property rights transition, the economic behaviors of ethnic foreign investors in China, and a China-Taiwan comparison on their rule of law transition. Prior to his Yale education, Chen practiced law in Taiwan in diverse fields such as Internet and information technology industry, the private sector and public interest affairs, governmental reforms, and international NGO affairs.

Weitseng Chen's recent publications include "East Asian Model and Rule of Law (with Randall Peerenboom, a to be published book chapter)", "WTO: Time's Up for Chinese Banks - China's Banking Reform and Non-Performing Loans Disposal" (Chicago Journal of International Law), "State, Market, and the Law: Law and Development in Taiwan" (Chinese) (Journal of the Humanities & Social Science), and a book titled Law and Economic Miracle: Interaction between Taiwan's Economic Development and Economic & Trade Laws after WWII. (Chinese).

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Weitseng Chen

N/A

0
CDDRL Hewlett Fellow 2007-2008
weitseng_web.jpg J.S.D.

Weitseng Chen, a Fulbright scholar, will receive his JSD from Yale Law School in October 2007. His recent research focuses on China's foreign direct investment and property rights transition, the economic behaviors of ethnic foreign investors in China, and a China-Taiwan comparison on their rule of law transition. Prior to his Yale education, Chen practiced law in Taiwan in diverse fields such as Internet and information technology industry, the private sector and public interest affairs, governmental reforms, and international NGO affairs.

Weitseng Chen's recent publications include "East Asian Model and Rule of Law (with Randall Peerenboom, a to be published book chapter)", "WTO: Time's Up for Chinese Banks - China's Banking Reform and Non-Performing Loans Disposal" (Chicago Journal of International Law), "State, Market, and the Law: Law and Development in Taiwan" (Chinese) (Journal of the Humanities & Social Science), and a book titled "Law and Economic Miracle: Interaction between Taiwan's Economic Development and Economic & Trade Laws after WWII." (Chinese).

Weitseng Chen Hewlett Fellow Speaker CDDRL
Seminars

The role of the US in global tobacco control

-
Less than 5% of the world's smokers live in the USA; nevertheless America plays a vital role in reducing the global tobacco epidemic. This is particularly important because the US, along with the United Kingdom, Japan and now China, is home to the global tobacco industry. Also, as markets have declined in the west, these transnational companies have looked towards developing countries for their future expansion and profits, with tactics including denial of the health evidence, pervasive promotion, and political and commercial pressures on governments in developing countries.

 

Along with other western countries, American governmental and non-governmental organisations, academic institutions and foundations, have offered assistance and expertise on a global scale, for example, the establishment of a science base, training, serving on international committees, funding world and regional conferences, and grants. The US-based international media have played an important role. The US has offered leadership in areas such as tobacco economics; some aspects of legislation like smoke-free areas in restaurants and bars; litigation; smoke-free movies; and publicising tobacco industry documents exposing information on industry tactics around the globe.

However, and importantly, the USA has not yet ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), now ratified by 149 countries.

Worldwide, systems are slowly being put into place that will eventually reduce the tobacco epidemic -- data are being collected, legislation and price policies implemented, and health education and cessation programmes introduced. Examples will be given of countries which have now implemented stronger tobacco control policies and programmes than those found in the USA.

Download pdf

Anthropology
Building 50, Room 51A
(Inner Quad, next to the Memorial Church)

Judith Mackay Professor Speaker FRCP (Edin), FRCP (Lon)
Lectures

2008 Payne Lecture Series: Can the Poor Afford Democracy? A Presidential Perspective (Final Lecture)

-

The Honorable Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

Bechtel Conference Center

Alejandro Toledo Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, CDDRL Visiting Scholar, and Former President of Peru Speaker
Lectures
Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series

2008 Payne Lecture Series: Can the Poor Afford Democracy? A Presidential Perspective (Lecture 2)

-
The Honorable Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

This is the second lecture in a series of lectures Dr. Toledo will give. His final lecture will be on May 14th.

Bechtel Conference Center

Alejandro Toledo Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, CDDRL Visiting Scholar, and Former President of Peru Speaker
Lectures
Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series

2008 Payne Lecture Series: Can the Poor Afford Democracy? A Presidential Perspective (Lecture 1)

-
Dr. Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

This is the first lecture in a series of lectures Dr. Toledo will give. Lecture 2 is scheduled for April 10th and lecture 3 will be on May 14th.

Due to technical difficulties, we were unable to record this lecture. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Bechtel Conference Center

Alejandro Toledo Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, CDDRL Visiting Scholar, and Former President of Peru Speaker
Lectures
Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series

Does Education Change Political Attitudes? Evidence from a Kenyan School Experiment

-

Edward Miguel received his PhD at Harvard in 2000, the same year he joined UC Berkeley as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 2005. He recently received the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for Best Paper in Health Economics for "Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities" (with Michael Kremer), which appeared in Econometrica. He also was the recipient of the 2005 Sloan Fellowship. At Berkeley he has received the Best Graduate Adviser Award and the Distinguished Teaching Award.

Professor Miguel is co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources, associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics and Review of Economics and Statistics, director of the U.C. Berkeley Scientific Evaluation for Global Action program, co-organizer for Working Group in African Political Economy, associate director at CIDER, an NBER faculty research associate, a CEPR research fellow, a senior fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and a research affiliate at the MIT Poverty Action Lab. He also has worked as a consultant for non-governmental organizations on projects in Delhi, Kenya, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone.

CISAC Conference Room

Ted Miguel Professor of Economics Speaker University of California at Berkeley
Seminars

CESP 1998-2007: A Valediction

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

The Center for Environmental Science and Policy (CESP), one of FSI's longstanding research centers dedicated to interdisciplinary research on the environment, transitioned to its new home in the Woods Institute for the Environment on September 1, 2007. An outgrowth of the university's Environmental Forum, CESP was formally established in 1998 under the leadership of Walter P. Falcon, the Farnsworth Professor of International Agricultural Policy, Emeritus, and Donald Kennedy, Bing Professor of Environmental Science, Emeritus, and former president of Stanford, followed by co-directors Pamela Matson, now the dean of the School of Earth Sciences, and Stephen Schneider, Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Studies.

The center's principal mission was to provide a venue at Stanford for interdisciplinary research on the environment. Groundbreaking projects and programs launched over the past decade by CESP include: the Integrated Studies of Sustainability: Land-Water systems of the Yaqui Basin, which brought together specialists to explore management and policy alternatives that could increase human welfare and minimize resource and environmental risks in the Yaqui Basin in Sonora, Mexico; the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD), an interdisciplinary program that draws on the fields of political science, law and economics to investigate how the production and consumption of energy affect human welfare and environmental quality; and the Program on Food Security and the Environment (FSE), which examines potential solutions to the persistent problems of global hunger and environmental damage from agricultural practices worldwide. PESD was spun off as a freestanding program under the direction of David G. Victor, while FSE continues as a joint program of Woods and FSI under the direction of Rosamond L. Naylor. FSI would like to recognize CESP for the extraordinary contributions over the past decade to environmental research and policy, and to wish its faculty, researchers, and staff success in their new interdisciplinary home within Woods.

Hero Image
cesp logo
All News button
1

What is 'Putin's Plan'?

-

Andrew Kuchins is a senior fellow and director of the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program. From 2000 to 2006, he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he was director of its Russian and Eurasian Program in Washington, D.C., from 2000 to 2003 and again in 2006, and director of the Carnegie Moscow Center in Russia from 2003 to 2005. Kuchins conducts research and writes widely on Russian foreign and security policy. He is working on a book titled China and Russia: Strategic Partners, Allies, or Competitors, and coedited, with Dmitri Trenin, Russia: The Next Ten Years (Carnegie, 2004).

Kuchins has taught at Georgetown University and Stanford University. From 1997 to 2000, he was associate director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also served as a senior program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1993 to 1997, where he developed and managed a grant-making program to support scientists and researchers in the former Soviet Union. From 1989 to 1993, he was executive director of the Berkeley-Stanford Program on Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies.

He is a member of the editorial boards of Pro et Contra and Demokratizatsia and was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1995 to 2000. He holds a B.A. from Amherst College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.

CISAC Conference Room

Andrew Kuchins Director and Senior Fellow Speaker Russia and Eurasia Program
Seminars

Is India a Knowledge Economy?

-

What are the underpinnings of India's vibrant technology sector? Dr. Dossani will look at the causes and prospects of the sector, including the role of the diaspora, education, familiarity with the English language, entrepreneurship and economic and political reforms.

Rafiq Dossani is a senior research scholar at Shorenstein APARC, responsible for developing and directing the South Asia Initiative. His research interests include South Asian security, and financial, technology, and energy-sector reform in India. He is currently undertaking projects on political reform, business process outsourcing, innovation and entrepreneurship in information technology in India, and security in the Indian subcontinent.

Dossani holds a BA in economics from St. Stephen's College, New Delhi, India; an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India; and a PhD in finance from Northwestern University.

His latest book, India Arriving: How This Economic Powerhouse is Redefining Global Business, will be available at the seminar.

Download pdf

Philippines Conference Room

Rafiq Dossani

No longer in residence.

0
R_Dossani_headshot.jpg PhD

Rafiq Dossani was a senior research scholar at Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) and erstwhile director of the Stanford Center for South Asia. His research interests include South Asian security, government, higher education, technology, and business.  

Dossani’s most recent book is Knowledge Perspectives of New Product Development, co-edited with D. Assimakopoulos and E. Carayannis, published in 2011 by Springer. His earlier books include Does South Asia Exist?, published in 2010 by Shorenstein APARC; India Arriving, published in 2007 by AMACOM Books/American Management Association (reprinted in India in 2008 by McGraw-Hill, and in China in 2009 by Oriental Publishing House); Prospects for Peace in South Asia, co-edited with Henry Rowen, published in 2005 by Stanford University Press; and Telecommunications Reform in India, published in 2002 by Greenwood Press. One book is under preparation: Higher Education in the BRIC Countries, co-authored with Martin Carnoy and others, to be published in 2012.

Dossani currently chairs FOCUS USA, a non-profit organization that supports emergency relief in the developing world. Between 2004 and 2010, he was a trustee of Hidden Villa, a non-profit educational organization in the Bay Area. He also serves on the board of the Industry Studies Association, and is chair of the Industry Studies Association Annual Conference for 2010–12.

Earlier, Dossani worked for the Robert Fleming Investment Banking group, first as CEO of its India operations and later as head of its San Francisco operations. He also previously served as the chairman and CEO of a stockbroking firm on the OTCEI stock exchange in India, as the deputy editor of Business India Weekly, and as a professor of finance at Pennsylvania State University.

Dossani holds a BA in economics from St. Stephen's College, New Delhi, India; an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India; and a PhD in finance from Northwestern University.

Senior Research Scholar
Executive Director, South Asia Initiative
Rafiq Dossani Senior Research Scholar Speaker Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Seminars

CDDRL has concluded its third year of the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) has concluded its third year of the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program held July 30th-August 17th, 2007.

This year's summer fellows program brought 26 leaders from 22 different countries in transition to Stanford for the three-week program. The fellows combined theory with practice as they studied democracy, development, and the rule of law and the links and interactions among the three areas. Not only did the fellows participate in morning seminars with leading Stanford faculty, but they also attended talks by keynote speakers including Carl Gershman and Judge Pamela Rymer to name a few. Furthermore, this year's summer fellows engaged in group discussions and presentations on key issues of democracy, development, and rule of law within their countries and regions. Fellows brought their experiences and knowledge from a wide background of different professions to the discussions and presented their proposals for addressing real-world problems of democratic and economic development.

Throughout their three-week stay, fellows enjoyed the surrounding Bay Area attractions including San Francisco and Monterey, and had the opportunity to visit institutions such as Google, the San Francisco Chronicle, and KQED Radio. The program closed with a graduation dinner on August 17th, 2007 and fellows departed, eager to put to practice what they had gained from their three-week interaction with each other, with the Stanford faculty, and with visiting speakers.

All News button
1
Subscribe to Economic Affairs