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The Four Talent Giants

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Cover of the book "The Four Talent Giants"

The Asia-Pacific region has seen extraordinary economic achievements. Japan's post-World War II transformation into an economic powerhouse challenging US dominance by the late 1980s was miraculous. China's rise as the world's second-largest economy is one of the 21st century's most stunning stories. India, now a top-five economy by GDP, is rapidly ascending. Despite its small population, Australia ranked among the top ten GDP nations in 1960 and has remained resilient. While cultivating, attracting, and leveraging talent has been crucial to growth in these countries, their approaches have varied widely, reflecting significant cultural, historical, and institutional differences.

In this sweeping analysis of talent development strategies, Gi-Wook Shin investigates how these four "talent giants'' achieved economic power and sustained momentum by responding to risks and challenges such as demographic crises, brain drain, and geopolitical tensions. This book offers invaluable insights for policymakers and is essential for scholars, students, and readers interested in understanding the dynamics of talent and economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

See also:

Sociologist Gi-Wook Shin Illuminates How Strategic Human Resource Development Helped Build Asia-Pacific Economic Giants
APARC website,  June 26, 2025

In the Media

Stanford Scholar Reveals How Talent Development Strategies Shape National Futures
The Korean Daily, July 13, 2025 (interview)
- English version
- Korean version

 

Reviews of The Four Talent Giants

 

Review by Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley 
Published in Foreign Affairs, December 16, 2025

"Scholars have offered multiple hypotheses, mostly emphasizing culture, history, and institutions, to explain the economic rise of countries in Asia. Shin focuses on human capital, analyzing the different ways Asian economies have developed their workforces. The four countries whose economies he focuses on—Australia, China, India, and Japan—have taken distinctive approaches to acquiring what he calls “talent portfolios.” Japan nurtured homegrown talent, while Australia attracted skilled immigrants. China sent students abroad, while India relied on its foreign diaspora and its advanced institutes of technology to train workers and impart needed skills. Although the approaches differ, each country successfully developed scientific, technical, and managerial talent in the quest for economic growth. Shin’s focus on talent competition is especially timely given the rapid increase in the number of students in China studying STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering, and math—and political attacks on higher education in the United States. Together, these trends raise questions about the ability of the United States to keep pace with China."

Review By Steven A. Mejia, Washington State University
Published in Social Forces, August 23, 2025

"The determinants of nation-state development is one of the most central questions in the comparative international social sciences. In The Four Talent Giants: National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India, Gi-Wook Shin joins these longstanding conversations in an ambitious work that may become a classic study. [...]

"There is much to praise about The Four Talent Giants. It makes sound theoretical inferences from analysis of expansive historical and quantitative data on major successes in the modern world economy, helping advance scientific understanding of the factors shaping development. These scholarly insights will also be crucial for policy makers at national, regional, and international levels. For example, countries seeking to foster their own development may invest in the forms of human and social capital emphasized in The Four Talent Giants. [...]

"Overall, The Four Talent Giants provides a groundbreaking theoretical innovation to help explain key empirical problems central to decades of comparative international social scientific work. This may in turn shape development policy that can then improve the quality of life for millions around the world. The Four Talent Giants will move comparative international social scientific conversations on development in important new directions."

Read the complete review via Social Forces.

Review by Anthony P. D'Costa, University of Melbourne
Published in The Developing Economies, November 2025

"Gi-Wook Shin has written an excellent book on talent development strategies [...] Shin's book is noteworthy for three key reasons: First, he has developed a novel framework to analyze the development and the international movement of talent and their mobilization by governments for national economic and technological development. Second, he covers an important region of the world that has significant players in talent portfolios and offers wide-ranging experiences for talent strategy. And third, it is a timely publication when anti-immigrant sentiments are running high. He has skillfully marshaled a wealth of data, including field interviews in these countries, to produce a coherent narrative of global talent [...]

"Gi-Wook Shin's skillfully argued book will inspire students and scholars to rethink talent migration, education inequality, and the future of Asian economic development."

Read the complete review via The Developing Economies.


Advance praise for The Four Talent Giants:

"The Four Talent Giants is a wonderful book, full of new ideas and, especially, comparative empirical research. Gi-Wook Shin's ambitious treatment of the topic of human capital, or 'talent,' in the context of a globalized economy is very important and reading it will be a rewarding exercise for scholars, politicians, corporate leaders, and many others."
—Nirvikar Singh, University of California, Santa Cruz

"The current scholarly literature offers multiple country-specific talent formation studies, including those on the transformative role of skilled migration. However, few authors have dared to attempt a thorough cross-national analysis, comparing the nature and impact of policies across highly variable geopolitical contexts. The Four Talent Giants achieves this goal triumphantly, and accessibly, assessing the global implications of national experimentation for effective talent portfolio management."
—Lesleyanne Hawthorne, University of Melbourne
 

Related Research

Talent Flows and Development

APARC's Monographs Series with Stanford University Press

Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

Read More

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Toward a Portfolio Theory of Talent Development

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Toward a Portfolio Theory of Talent Development
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Racism “Denial” in Asia: Critical Discourse Analysis of UN CERD State Reports, 1978–2023

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Racism “Denial” in Asia: Critical Discourse Analysis of UN CERD State Reports, 1978–2023
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Assessing Japan’s Innovation Policy Landscape

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Assessing Japan’s Innovation Policy Landscape
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National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India

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Gi-Wook Shin
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Stanford University Press
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Financial market exposure increases generalized trust

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How can we build trust, especially in polarized societies? We propose that exposure to broad financial markets—where individuals place their assets in the hands of large groups of unfamiliar agents who nonetheless have the incentive and ability to promote their interests—can contribute to generalized trust. In a randomized controlled trial, we encourage Israelis to hold or trade stocks for up to seven weeks. We find that participation in financial markets increases the probability of expressing generalized trust by about 6 percentage points, equivalent to a quarter of the control group mean. The effects seem to be driven by political partisans along the left–right spectrum in Israel, and are robust to negative price changes. Thus, trust is not only a cause but can also be an effect of participation in financial markets.

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Journal of Public Economics
Authors
Saumitra Jha
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February 2025, 105303

Loren Brandt

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Skyline Scholar (2025), Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Professor of Economics, Noranda Chair in Economics and International Trade, University of Toronto
Research Fellow, IZA
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Loren Brandt is the Noranda Chair Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto specializing in the Chinese economy. He is also a research fellow at the IZA (The Institute for the Study of Labor) in Bonn, Germany. He has published widely on the Chinese economy in leading economic journals and been involved in extensive household and enterprise survey work in both China and Vietnam. With Thomas Rawski, he completed Policy, Regulation, and Innovation in China’s Electricity and Telecom Industries (Cambridge University Press, 2019), an interdisciplinary effort analyzing the effect of government policy on the power and telecom sectors in China. He was also co-editor and major contributor to China’s Great Economic Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2008), which provides an integrated analysis of China’s unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. Brandt was also one of the area editors for Oxford University Press’ five-volume Encyclopedia of Economic History (2003). His current research focuses on issues of entrepreneurship and firm dynamics, industrial policy and innovation and  economic growth and structural change.

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Estimating the Impact of Rural Hukou Status on Earnings for College Graduates in China

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A growing body of literature explores the effect of higher education on the urban–rural divide in China. Despite an increasing number of rural students gaining access to college, little is known about their performance in college or their job prospects after graduation. Using nationally representative data from over 40,000 urban and rural college students, we examine rural students’ college performance and estimate the impact of rural status on students’ first job wages in comparison to their urban peers. Our results indicate that once accepted into college, rural students perform equally as well, if not better, than their urban counterparts. Additionally, we discovered that rural students earn a 6.2 per cent wage premium compared to their urban counterparts in their first job after graduation. Our findings suggest the importance of expanding access to higher education for rural students, as it appears to serve as an equalizer between urban and rural students despite their significantly different backgrounds.

Journal Publisher
The China Quarterly
Authors
Huan Wang
Claire Cousineau
Matthew Boswell
Hongbin Li

Global Capitalism, Trust and Accountability Conference

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The Program on Capitalism and Democracy
presents a two-day conference
Co-sponsored by the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL)

Global Capitalism, Trust, and Accountability conference

Are democratic governments equipped and willing to hold global capital accountable, and does their failure to do so affect citizens’ trust?

Global capitalism has reshaped trade, economic priorities, and financial flows — and, in doing so, has also transformed societies and politics. However, the transnational nature of global capital has presented an intellectual and policy challenge as corporate activities and corruption adapt to the global environment. While activists, journalists, and scholars have investigated and publicized these issues, much work remains to develop coherent analytical understandings of these problems.  

Democratic governments often struggle to establish and enforce proper rules for corporate malfeasance and corruption. Domestic regulations present jurisdictional challenges, and corporate law, which enables corporations, has yet to be effective in preventing them and their leaders from dodging accountability in global markets. The world of global capital is opaque, designed explicitly to hide assets or evade the reach of governments. The financialization of the global economy has expanded the power not only of banks but also of professional services that facilitate ties between wealthy individuals, political leaders, and tax havens or shelters.

This conference brings together scholars across the disciplines of law, business, social sciences, and history, as well as practitioners and journalists, to explore the challenge of creating trust and accountability in a system dominated by global capitalism. In convening together, we aim to advance research, education, and policy on these critical issues.

Organizers

Anat Admati (George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics, GSB, and Faculty Director of the Capitalism and Democracy Program at CDDRL) and Didi Kuo (Center Fellow, CDDRL)

Anat R. Admati Anat Admati

Anat R. Admati

Didi Kuo Didi Kuo

Didi Kuo

FRIDAY, APRIL 4

 

1:30 - 1:45 — Introduction and Opening Remarks
 

Peter DeMarzo, Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Business (Interim)
Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Didi Kuo, Center Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Anat Admati, George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business

1:45 - 3:15 pm Session 1 — Why Trustworthy Governments are Essential
 

For markets and capitalism to continue producing broad-based prosperity, governments must maintain the institutions that underpin the market economy, ensuring that property and human rights are protected, that people have fair access to society’s resources and that contracts and laws are enforced effectively. This panel examines the forces that can help make institutions trustworthy or in turn cause trust to erode, framing key issues that the rest of the conference explores.

MODERATOR
Curtis Milhaupt, Stanford Law School

PANELISTS
Vic Khanna, University of Michigan Law School
Naomi Lamoreaux, Economics and History, Yale University
Alexander Cooley, Political Science, Barnard College

DISCUSSANT
Rick Messick, Global Anticorruption Blog

3:15 - 3:45 — Break

 

3:45 - 5:15 pm — Session 2: Opacity and Illicit Flows


The globalization of financial flows, and the opacity of the global economic system and of many governments, have increased opportunities for wealthy individuals, kleptocrats and terrorists to evade law enforcement. How can we conceptualize and measure these problems and the harm they cause? What is the role of anonymous and multinational corporations, secrecy jurisdictions, transnational actors, and cryptocurrencies in shaping these opportunities, and how might these problems be addressed?

MODERATOR
Victoria Baranetsky, The Center for Investigative Reporting

PANELISTS
Dan Nielson, Government, University of Texas at Austin 
Gary Kalman, Transparency International US
Brooke Harrington, Sociology, Dartmouth College

DISCUSSANT
Mark Weidemaier, University of North Carolina School of  Law

5:30 - 6:15 pm — Keynote: Investigating “the Brazen”


Tom Wright, Co-Founder of Project Brazen; co-author of the bestseller, Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World; Former Wall Street Journal Asia Economics Editor

MODERATOR
Anat Admati, Stanford Graduate School of Business

6:30 — Reception and Dinner
 


SATURDAY, APRIL 5
 

8:00 - 8:30 am — Breakfast
 

8:30 - 9:15 am — Keynote: Is Cryptocurrency a Racket?


Judge Jed Rakoff, Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York

MODERATOR
Rohit Chopra, Former CFPB Director and FTC Commissioner

9:15 - 10:45 am — Session 3: The Law and Politics of Fighting Corruption


Can democratic governments and global institutions. through laws and international agreements, address corruption in its many forms within and across jurisdictions? What are the political forces that interfere with such efforts? This panel examines the mechanisms and tools that are available to policymakers, media and the public, to fight corruption in the private sector and in government, and the political and institutional challenges.

MODERATOR
Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

PANELISTS
Kevin Davis, New York University School of Law
Gerhard Schick, Finanzwende, Germany
John Githongo, Kenya

DISCUSSANT
Vikrant Vig, Stanford Graduate School of Business

10:45 - 11:15 am — Break
 

11:15 am -12:45 pm — Session 4: Greed, Norms, Culture, and Trust


Norms and culture, both in corporations, in government bodies, and in society at large, play a significant role in promoting trust and preventing misconduct. Global capitalism and democratic institutions reflect norms, but they also reshape them. This panel investigates the societal and democratic norms shaping transparency, whistleblowing, ways to hold power to account, and ultimately trust in institutions.

MODERATOR
Didi Kuo, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

PANELISTS
Jonathan Katz, The Brookings Institution
Peter Solmssen, Former Siemens AG
Miriam Baer, Brooklyn Law School

DISCUSSANT
Paola Sapienza, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

12:45 - 1:45 pm Lunch
 

1:45 - 3:15 pm — Session 5: Corporate Misconduct and the Law


What are the tools for deterring corporate misconduct, and are these tools being used effectively? This panel of experts on white-collar crime will explain why laws and enforcement mechanisms may fail to deter corporate misconduct and why corporate leaders are rarely appropriately held accountable. What is the interplay of institutions, politics, and power that undermines the rule of law in the corporate context?

MODERATOR
Anat Admati, Stanford Graduate School of Business

PANELISTS
Ellen S. Podgor, Stetson University College of Law
Elizabeth Pollman, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Fabio De Pasquale, Public Prosecutor's Office, Milan, Italy

DISCUSSANT
Jennifer Taub, Wayne State University Law School

3:15 -3:45 pm — Break
 

3:45 -5:15 pm — Session 6 (Round Table): What Academics, Activists, and the Media Can Do


This roundtable will enable all participants to brainstorm how academics, activists, and journalists can work together to accomplish shared goals around global capitalism and accountability. How are each sector's resources, voices, and contributions best deployed? How might individuals and organizations align their work and objectives? And most importantly, how might we create a more trustworthy and fair economic system for the 21st century?

MODERATOR
Bethany McLean, Vanity Fair

5:15 - 5:30 pm — Closing Remarks
 

5:30 pm — Closing Reception

In-person: By invitation only.

Virtual: Open to the public

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Sung Sup Ra

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Visiting Scholar at APARC, 2025
ra_sungsup.jpg Ph.D.

Sungsup Ra joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as visiting scholar for the 2025 calendar year. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management (KDI School) and also serves as an Advisor to the International Financing Facility for Education (IFFEd), an Advisory Board Member at the International Centre for Industrial Transformation (INCIT), and an Industry Fellow at the NTU Entrepreneurship Academy (NTUpreneur).

Before joining KDI School in April 2024, Sungsup was the Deputy Director General and Deputy Group Chief of the Sectors Group at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). In this role, he led ADB-wide strategies, knowledge innovation, and sovereign operations across multiple sectors including agriculture, education, energy, health, finance, transport, urban development, and water. He oversaw key ADB initiatives such as climate financing, energy transition, addressing the learning crisis, food security, the rollout of the new operating model, and the management of 29 trust funds.

With over 35 years of professional experience, including 23 years at ADB, Sungsup held leadership positions such as Chief Sector Officer for Sustainable Development and Climate Change, Director of the South Asia Human and Social Development Division, and Director of the Pacific Operations Division. He also chaired the Education Sector Group, driving strategic education initiatives across Asia and the Pacific.

Prior to ADB, Sungsup worked in both the public and private sectors, including roles at Samsung and the Korean National Pension. He has also taught at leading universities such as International Christian University in Tokyo, Korea University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds a Doctorate in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

While at APARC, he conducted research on the future of skills development in Asia.

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Demand for Commitment in Credit and Saving Contracts: A Field Experiment

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We conduct a field experiment in which we offer credit and saving contracts to the same pool of Pakistani microfinance clients. Additional treatments test ex-ante demand for soft commitment (in the form of reminders, either to respondents or to their families), hard commitment (in the form of a penalty for missing an installment), and flexibility (an option to postpone an installment) to save or pay loan installments on time. We find substantial demand for fixed repayment contracts in both the credit and savings domains in ways that imply that respondents value the commitment required. While we find little or no average demand for additional contractual features, we nonetheless observe that different combinations of contractual add-ons are preferred depending on the respondent’s level of financial discipline. Respondents with high financial discipline prefer flexibility in credit contracts when combined with reminders to self, while those with low discipline value penalties in savings contracts only when paired with reminders. Our results imply that, for the average microfinance client, demand for commitment is met through the regular payment schedule built into standard microcredit or commitment savings contracts. However, combining penalties or flexibility with reminders may appeal to certain subsets of clients.

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The Economic Journal
Authors
Marcel Fafchamps
Number
Issue 664

Katherine Casey

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Professor of Political Economy, Stanford GSB
Faculty Director, Stanford King Center on Global Development
headshot_casey_-_katherine_e_casey.jpg

Katherine Casey is Professor of Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Faculty Director of the King Center on Global Development. Her research explores the interactions between economic and political forces in developing countries, with particular interest in the role of information in enhancing political accountability and the influence of foreign aid on economic development. Her work has appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, among others. 

CDDRL Affiliated Faculty
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Does Chinese Industrial Policy Work? A Big Data China Event

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The event will be webcast live from this page.

In this online event, set for November 19, 6:30-7:30 am US PT, the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI) and the CSIS Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics are releasing a new Big Data China feature that reviews recent literature evaluating the successes and failures of industrial policy in China and the conditions that shaped policy outcomes.

Trustee Chair Deputy Director Ilaria Mazzocco will moderate a discussion among experts on industrial policy in China today and its implications for the Chinese economy, global trade, and how policymakers in other countries should respond. Panelists will include Lee Branstetter (Carnegie Mellon University), Panle Jia Barwick (UW-Madison), Chloé Papazian (OECD), and Gerard DiPippo (Bloomberg Economics).  

FEATURING

Panle Jia Barwick
Todd E. and Elizabeth H. Warnock Distinguished Chair and Professor, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison		Ilaria Mazzocco
Senior Fellow, Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics
Lee Branstetter
James Walton Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University		Gerard DiPippo
Senior Geo-Economics Analyst, Bloomberg Economics
Chloé Papazian
Trade Policy Analyst, Trade and Agriculture Directorate, OECD		 

EVENT PARTNERS
 

SCCEI and CSIS logos

Virtual Livestream 

Panle Jia Barwick
Lee Branstetter
Gerard DiPippo
Ilaria Mazzocco
Chloé Papazian
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Israel Insights Webinar with Azar Gat — What Is The Problem With “The Palestinian Problem”?

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Cover image for Gil Troy event

Despite the great progress made in Arab-Israeli rapprochement over the past several decades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appears as intractable today as it has ever been. Why has this conflict proved so difficult to resolve? Why have all attempts at a final peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians failed since the launch of the Oslo Peace Process in the early 1990's? And what can be learned from this history of failure about the prospects of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Join Amichai Magen in conversation with Azar Gat.

Read the essay here.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Azar Gat is the Ezer Weitzman Chair of National Security and Head of the International and Executive MA Programs in Security and Diplomacy in the School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs at Tel Aviv University. He is also Academic Advisor to the Executive Director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel-Aviv. Professor Gat is the author of 12 books - on democracy, nationalism, ideology, war and military history - which have been translated into numerous languages.

Virtual Event Only.

Amichai Magen
Amichai Magen

Virtual Only Event.

Azar Gat
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