Beyond the Pitch Deck: Truths About VC
In-person: Stanford Graduate School Business - C105 (655 Knight Way, Stanford)
Online: Via Zoom
In-person: Stanford Graduate School Business - C105 (655 Knight Way, Stanford)
Online: Via Zoom
Supply chains can be surprisingly complex. In many low- and middle-income settings, large companies often rely on networks of small, independent distributors who travel by foot to sell consumer goods to otherwise hard-to-reach customers (Kruijff et al. 2024). These ‘micro-distributors’ operate at the far edge of the supply chain, with no formal employment contracts, thin profit margins, and high levels of economic risk.
In a field experiment in Kenya, we partnered with one of the world’s largest food manufacturers (pseudonymously “FoodCo”) to evaluate whether investment-appropriate financing contracts could help their independent distributors improve their business performance. We found that tailoring repayment terms to better share risk and rewards—compared to a standard, rigid debt contract—significantly boosted distributors’ profits. Crucially, these more flexible contracts took advantage of detailed administrative data on monthly performance. These findings underscore the promise of improved observability enabled by digitisation: with richer data, financial contracts can be designed to incorporate greater risk-sharing (Fischer 2013, Meki 2024), potentially opening new opportunities for mutually beneficial investments.
Flexible financing for ‘last-mile’ distributors boosted profits across a food supply chain in Kenya.
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Organized by the Taiwan Program at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC)
Co-sponsored by National Taiwan University's Office of International Affairs
As Taiwan looks to develop comprehensive strategies to promote national interests, it faces challenges shared by other advanced economies. How can Taiwan leverage AI innovation and its semiconductor prowess to drive resilience and continued growth while promoting entrepreneurship and forging advantages in emerging industries? What regulatory and policy measures are needed to scale Taiwan’s role as a global leader in biomedical and healthcare advancements while ensuring patient trust and safety? How can it address the gaps posed by rapid family changes and population aging? And how do its historical and linguistic legacies shape present narratives and identities, within Taiwan and among the Taiwanese diaspora?
Join us for a conference that explores these questions and more, featuring panel discussions with scholars from Stanford University, National Taiwan University, and other universities in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Singapore, alongside Taiwanese industry leaders. We will examine Taiwan’s strategies for navigating modernization in a shifting global landscape — bridging technology, industry, culture, and society through interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives.
8:45 - 9:10 a.m.
Opening Session
Welcome Remarks
Shih-Torng Ding
Executive Vice President, National Taiwan University
Gi-Wook Shin
Director, Shorenstein APARC and the Taiwan Program, Stanford University
Congratulatory Remarks
Chia-Lung Lin
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Taiwan
Raymond Greene
Director, American Institute in Taiwan
9:10-10:40 a.m.
Panel 1 — Advancing Health and Healthcare: Technology and Policy Perspectives
Panelists
Kuan-Ming Chen
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, National Taiwan University
Lynia Huang
Founder and CEO, Bamboo Technology Ltd.
Ming-Jen Lin
Distinguished Professor, Department of Economics, National Taiwan University
Siyan Yi
Associate Professor, School of Public Health, National University of Singapore
Moderator
Karen Eggleston
Director, Asia Health Policy Program, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University
10:40-10:50 a.m.
Coffee and Tea Break
10:50 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Panel 2 — Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Technology Leadership
Panelists
Steve Chen
Co-founder, YouTube and Taiwan Gold Card Holder #1
Matthew Liu
Co-founder, Origin Protocol
Huey-Jen Jenny Su
Professor, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Former President, National Cheng Kung University
Yaoting Wang
Founding Partner, Darwin Ventures, Taiwan
Moderator
H.-S. Philip Wong
Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor in the School of Engineering, Stanford University
12:30-1 p.m.
Perspectives from Stanford and NTU Students
Tiffany Chang
BS Student in Engineering Management & Human-Centered Design, Stanford University
Liang-Yu Ko
MA Student in Sociology, National Taiwan University
1-2 p.m.
Lunch Break
2-3:30 p.m.
Panel 3 — Interwoven Identities: Exploring Chinese Languages, Taiwanese-american Narratives, and Japanese Colonial Legacies in Taiwan
Panelists
Carissa Cheng
BA Student in International Relations, Stanford University
Yi-Ting Chung
PhD Candidate in History, Stanford University
Jeffrey Weng
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University
Moderator
Ruo-Fan Liu
Taiwan Program Postdoctoral Fellow, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University
3:30-3:45 p.m.
Coffee and Tea Break
3:45-5:15 p.m.
Panel 4 — The Demographic Transformation: Lessons from Taiwan and Comparative Cases
Panelists
Yen-Hsin Alice Cheng
Professor, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica
Youngtae Cho
Professor of Demography and Director, Population Policy Research Center, Seoul National University
Setsuya Fukuda
Senior Researcher, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan
Moderator
Paul Y. Chang
Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Association Senior Fellow, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University
5:15-5:30 p.m.
Closing Remarks
Gi-Wook Shin
Director, Shorenstein APARC and the Taiwan Program, Stanford University
Paul Y. Chang is the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Association Senior Fellow at Shorenstein APARC and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Chang is also the Deputy Director of the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC and the President of the Association of Korean Sociologists in America. Chang’s research on South Korean society has appeared in flagship disciplinary and area studies journals. He is the author of Protest Dialectics: State Repression and South Korea’s Democracy Movement, 1970-1979 (Stanford University Press) and co-editor of South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (Routledge). His current work examines the diversification of family structures in South Korea. Before joining Stanford, Chang served on the faculty at Harvard University, Yonsei University, and Singapore Management University. He earned his B.A. from UC Santa Cruz, M.A. degrees from Harvard Divinity School, UCLA, and Stanford, and his Ph.D. from Stanford’s Sociology Department.
Tiffany Chang, Miss Asia USA 2024 and the first Taiwanese recipient of the title, is a Stanford University junior studying Engineering Management & Human-Centered Design. She is a research assistant at APARC under Dr. Karen Eggleston and worked as an Intern at a Taiwanese AI company, Intumit Inc last summer. Tiffany plays a significant role in the Taiwanese and Asian American communities, serving as a spokesperson, emcee, influencer, and model. She has moderated high-profile events featuring notable figures such as the President of Taiwan and representatives from Chanel, and serves as a brand ambassador for esteemed Asian products. Recognized as Taiwan's "guiding light," reflecting her influential leadership within the community, Tiffany is a frequent guest on Taiwanese talk shows. Tiffany's philanthropic endeavors include founding Madhatter Knits, a global nonprofit dedicated to providing knit hats for premature babies in NICUs, showcasing her unwavering commitment to advocacy, inspiration, and empowerment, particularly for marginalized voices.
Kuan-Ming Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at National Taiwan University and Director of the Behavioral and Data Science Research Center. He is a labor economist specializing in family economics, studying how family members support one another through caregiving, financial transfers, and labor market decisions. His research covers topics such as job flexibility, intimate partner violence, long-term care, and the economic impact of family structures on well-being. Dr. Chen’s work applies empirical methods, including natural experiments and administrative data analysis, to understand labor supply dynamics and policy impacts. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Steve Chen is an Internet entrepreneur who co-founded YouTube. Born in Taiwan, Steve moved to the US when he was 8 years old. Steve grew up in Chicago and moved to Silicon Valley in 1999 to join PayPal, where he met Chad Hurley, the co-founder of YouTube. In 2005, Steve left PayPal to create YouTube. YouTube quickly became one of the web's fastest-growing sites and was sold to Google for $1.65 billion. Steve was the first recipient of the Gold Card, a program Taiwan launched in 2018 to attract foreign talent to move to the country. In 2019, after 20 years spent in Silicon Valley, Steve moved his family to Taiwan using the Gold Card. In Taiwan, Steve has collaborated with the government to foster a better ecosystem for local entrepreneurs to create startups.
Carissa Cheng is a Taiwanese American Stanford University senior studying International Relations, focusing on Asia. Her interest in Asian American activism began when she started making student films in high school and questioned why Asian Americans were so underrepresented behind and in front of the camera. Last year, she served as one of the Co-Chairs of Stanford’s Taiwanese Cultural Society (TCS), which hosts Stanford’s largest pan-Asian event each year: TCS Night Market. Last summer, she studied at National Taiwan University, where she also interned at AI firm Intumit as part of the Stanford Global Studies program. Through her academic and professional work, she hopes to learn how Asian countries can unite to fight global challenges such as climate change and political polarization and explore the intersections and differences between Asian and Asian American identities and cultures.
Yen-Hsin Alice Cheng is a Professor and Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. She is trained as a demographer and received a Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the Pennsylvania State University in the United States. She also spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany. Her main research interest is family demography, focusing on family changes and social inequalities. Her recent research investigates the socioeconomic differentials in marriage, cohabitation, divorce, and fertility over the past few decades in Taiwan and East Asia. Her latest works also include studies on disadvantaged youths and families, as well as comparative studies on public attitudes toward homosexuality.
Youngtae Cho (Ph.D) has been a professor of demography at the Graduate School of Public Health at Seoul National University (SNU) since 2004. Currently, he serves as the director of the SNU Population Policy Research Center. Professor Cho and his research team’s academic interests include the fundamental cause of the lowest low fertility in Korea, measuring and analyzing a new concept of population (presenting population), the impact of population dynamics on future market change, and demographic dividend issues for Vietnam and Indonesia. He achieved his Ph.D., specializing in demography, from the University of Texas-Austin in 2002. He served as a member of the Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy, and a member of the National Economic Advisory Council.
Yi-Ting Chung is a History Ph.D. student in the fields of East Asia and transpacific history. Born and raised in Taiwan, her concern lies in the marginalized communities who were excluded, sacrificed, and forgotten in the making of the Japanese empire. Her current research direction examines how the colonial subjects of the Japanese empire—Okinawans, Koreans, and Taiwanese—traversed the Pacific while treading the complex boundaries of nation, empire, and race between Japan and the US in the first half of the twentieth century. Yi-Ting is also deeply passionate about teaching and dedicated to bettering her pedagogy. At Stanford, she designed and taught the class “Between Empires: Modern History of Taiwan.”
Shih-Torng Ding is the Executive Vice President and a distinguished professor at National Taiwan University, specializing in animal nutrition, molecular regulation, smart agriculture, agricultural biotechnology, and industry development strategies. His outstanding research has earned him numerous prestigious honors.
With extensive experience in government advisory roles, Dr. Ding has served on the Board of Science and Technology (Executive Yuan), the Research Advisory Committee for the Council of Agriculture, and BioHub Taiwan. As NTU’s Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Ding led key educational innovations, including a specialization-focused learning system, future classrooms, and enhancements to NTU COOL. Now, as Executive Vice President, he advances teaching and learning, sustainability initiatives, school development research, bilingual education, and international exchanges.
Furthermore, Dr. Ding serves as the CEO of National Taiwan University System, working to foster collaboration among three universities and expand educational resources for students.
Karen Eggleston is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Asia Health Policy Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at FSI. She is also a Fellow with the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Eggleston earned her PhD in public policy from Harvard University and has MA degrees in economics and Asian studies from the University of Hawaii and a BA in Asian studies summa cum laude (valedictorian) from Dartmouth College. Eggleston studied in China for two years and was a Fulbright scholar in Korea. Her research focuses on government and market roles in the health sector and Asia health policy, especially in China, India, Japan, and Korea; healthcare productivity; and the economics of the demographic transition.
Setsuya Fukuda is a Senior Researcher at the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Japan, where he conducts demographic research on the inter-relationships between gender, family formation, and family policy. His current research focuses on gender role division, educational assortative mating, fertility, and intergenerational transfers in international comparative settings, looking, in particular, at how Japan’s gender structure and intergenerational relations are poised to change in relation to population decline, new family policies and technological development.
Raymond F. Greene assumed duties as the Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) on July 8, 2024. Prior to this assignment, he served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, Japan. Mr. Greene is a member of the State Department’s Senior Foreign Service with the personal rank of Minister-Counselor and has spent his entire 28-year career advancing U.S. diplomatic, economic, and security engagement with the Indo-Pacific region. In Washington, Mr. Greene was Director for Japan and East Asian Economic Affairs at the National Security Council and Director of the Office of Economic Policy in the State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. In the latter capacity, Mr. Greene was elected as Chair of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum’s Economic Committee.
Overseas, Mr. Greene served as U.S. Consul General in Chengdu, China, Okinawa, Japan, and as the Deputy Director at AIT. Earlier assignments included Chief of the Political-Military Affairs Unit at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, Deputy Chief of the Political Section at AIT Taipei, and as a political officer in Tokyo and Manila. Mr. Greene was the first Baker-Kato Diplomatic Exchange Fellow at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo. He also was assigned as a State Department Faculty Advisor at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He holds a B.A. (Government/Japanese) and M.P.M. (International Security and Economic Policy) from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Lynia Huang is the CEO and founder of Bamboo Technology Ltd., a company focused on advancing mental health care through AI-driven solutions. With a background in military psychological counseling and a strong commitment to mental health advocacy, she has dedicated her career to integrating technology with psychological support. Lynia holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from National Taiwan University. She is also a pioneer in the development of AI-based mental health services, including the HereHear virtual therapist app, which has gained global recognition. Lynia’s passion for improving emotional well-being through accessible technology is evident in her work with various organizations, including collaborations with hospitals and corporations. She believes that mental health support should be universal and strives to make these services available to everyone, especially in underserved communities.
Liang-Yu (Louis) Ko is currently an MA student in the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University. His research centers on political sociology, focusing on state-society relations, political culture, and public opinion. He investigates how political trends interact with cultural and institutional factors, particularly in areas such as polarization, nationalism, and "culture wars." He is always open to connection and collaborative research.
Chia-Lung Lin possesses extensive experience in government, academia, and industry. He currently serves as minister of foreign affairs of Taiwan, vice chairman of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, and chairman of the International Cooperation and Development Fund. Previously, he held positions including secretary-general of the Office of the President, ambassador-at-large of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, minister of transportation and communications, mayor of Taichung City, legislator, minister of the Government Information Office, National Security Council advisor, assistant professor at National Chung Cheng University, research associate at the United Nations University, and Fulbright scholar in the United States. He is also a cofounder of Taiwan Thinktank and honorary chairman of Mt. Dadu Industrial Innovation Foundation.
Minister Lin holds a PhD in political science from Yale University in the United States, as well as dual master’s degrees in political science and philosophy. Additionally, he earned a master’s and bachelor’s degree in political science from National Taiwan University.
Ming-Jen Lin earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 2002. His research interests span multiple fields, including data science and economics, demography and health, law and economics, and labor economics, with particular interest in interdisciplinary collaboration within the social sciences. His research appears in journals such as American Economic Review, Nature Communication, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, and International Economic Review.
Currently, he serves as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Economics at National Taiwan University. He previously held the government position of Deputy Executive Secretary at the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Director at the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, both at the National Science and Technology Council. He has also served as the Chair of the Department of Economics at National Taiwan University and President of the Taiwan Economic Association.
Matthew Liu is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Origin Protocol. He is also active as an angel investor and advisor to dozens of startups. Previously, he served as VP of product at Qwiki and Bonobos. Matthew started his career as the third product manager at YouTube. He graduated with a B.S. in electrical engineering and M.S. in management science and engineering from Stanford University.
Ruo-Fan Liu is the inaugural Taiwan Program Postdoctoral Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, Stanford Univerity. She earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research explores how Taiwan's holistic admission reforms created uncertainties for students and how parents and teachers leveraged cultural and social capital to restore admissions advantages. A Fulbright recipient and former Congress party negotiator, Ruo-Fan is also the author of Let the Timber Creek: An Alternative School’s Utopia for Coming Generations, recognized as one of the top ten non-fiction books by China Times. Her work has been published in International Studies in Sociology of Education and Ethnography, and she also investigates transformative meritocracy and credentialism in East Asia. At APARC, Ruo-Fan is transforming her dissertation, When Ladders Move, into a book manuscript, while expanding her research on uncertainty and legitimacy to offer practical recommendations for different nations’ policies and talent flows.
Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in Sociology and a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He has served as director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center since 2005, and as founding director of the Korea Program since 2001. His research concentrates on social movements, nationalism, and international relations, focusing on Korea and Asia. He is the author/editor of numerous books and articles, including South Korea’s Democracy in Crisis: The Threats of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization and The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security. His new book, Talent Giants in the Asia-Pacific Century, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India, will be published by Stanford University Press in 2025.
In 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), an initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. In May 2024, he launched the new Taiwan Program at APARC and currently serves as the program director.
Shin previously taught at the University of Iowa and the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a B.A. from Yonsei University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
Huey-Jen Jenny Su was the first and only female president in the 95-year history of National Cheng Kung University (2015–2023) and a professor of Environmental Health (1992–2024). In 2018, the scientific journal Nature recognized her as one of the 10 “Science Stars of East Asia.” She received the 2017 Leadership Award in Public Health Practice from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the 2022 Outstanding Professional Global Corporate Sustainability Award, the first recipient from the academic.
Dr. Su actively fosters academia-industry collaborations and international partnerships, strengthening Taiwan as a key global player in sustainability, multidisciplinary research, and technological innovation. Currently, she leads strategic planning initiatives for the Ministry of Education’s University Academic Alliance in Taiwan and serves on the National Climate Change Committee, Office of the President, R.O.C. (Taiwan). Her leadership drives sustainability and resilience in a rapidly evolving global landscape.
Yao-Ting Wang is an experienced entrepreneur and technology visionary. Yaoting co-founded two successful technology startup companies in Silicon Valley. In 1995, he co-founded Numerical Technologies, Inc. (San Jose, California) (NASDAQ:NMTC) based on his doctoral research for IC manufacturing. As the Chief Technology Officer and Senior VP of Engineering, Yaoting was active in company operations and helped take it public in 2000. The company was later acquired by Synopsys, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNPS) in 2003.
In 2004, Yaoting co-founded Clear Shape Technologies, Inc. (Sunnyvale, California) and was the Chairman and Chief Technology Officer. The company was a pioneer in the space of design for manufacturing (DFM) and recognized by multiple prestigious awards including the EDN Innovation of the Year Award (2007), the EE Times Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Award (2007), one of the top 10 semiconductor companies' Partner Award (2007) and the EE Times 60 Emerging Startups (2007). The company was acquired by Cadence (NASDAQ:CDNS) in August of 2007.
In August of 2008, Yaoting moved back to Taiwan and co-founded Darwin Ventures with Simon Fang.
Yaoting received his Ph.D. and M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and his B.S. in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University.
Jeffrey Weng has been an Assistant Professor of Sociology at National Taiwan University since 2021. His research centers on language and nationalism in China and Taiwan, and his work has appeared in the Journal of Asian Studies, Theory and Society, and the European Journal of Sociology.
Weng holds a B.A. from Yale University and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining NTU, he was a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia at Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
H.-S. Philip Wong is the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. He joined Stanford University as Professor of Electrical Engineering in 2004. From 1988 to 2004, he was with the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. From 2018 to 2020, he was on leave from Stanford and was the Vice President of Corporate Research at TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor foundry, and since 2020 has remained TSMC's Chief Scientist in a consulting, advisory role.
He is a Fellow of the IEEE and received the IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award, the IEEE Technical Field Award to honor individuals for outstanding contributions to solid-state devices and technology, as well as the IEEE Electron Devices Society J.J. Ebers Award, the society’s highest honor to recognize outstanding technical contributions to the field of electron devices that have made a lasting impact.
He is the founding Faculty Co-Director of the Stanford SystemX Alliance – an industrial affiliate program focused on building systems and the faculty director of the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility – a shared facility for device fabrication on the Stanford campus that serves academic, industrial, and governmental researchers across the U.S. and around the globe, sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation. He is the Principal Investigator of the Microelectronics Commons California-Pacific-Northwest AI Hardware Hub, a consortium of over 40 companies and academic institutions funded by the CHIPS Act. He is a member of the US Department of Commerce Industrial Advisory Committee on Microelectronics.
Siyan Yi is an Associate Professor and UHS-SPH Integrated Research Programme Leader, National University of Singapore Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. He also serves as Director of KHANA Center for Population Health Research in Cambodia and Adjunct Associate Professor at Touro University California, the United States. Dr. Yi is a medical doctor and an infectious disease epidemiologist by training. He received his Ph.D. from the School of International Health of the University of Tokyo in 2010. He was a 2011-12 postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Health Policy Program at Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University.
His implementation research program focuses on developing and evaluating community-based innovative interventions for improving access to prevention, treatment, and care services for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, sexual and reproductive health, and maternal and child health among vulnerable and marginalized populations in Southeast Asia.
THIS CONFERENCE IS HELD IN TAIPEI, TAIWAN, ON SUNDAY, MARCH 23, 2025, FROM 8:45 AM TO 5:30 PM, TAIPEI TIME
International Conference Hall, Tsai Lecture Hall
College of Law
National Taiwan University
No.1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road
Taipei City, 10617
Taiwan
The Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institution's (SCCEI) annual China Conference brings together leading voices from policy, business, and academia to examine key economic trends in China and their implications for the world.
This year's conference will examine China's role in a changing global economy. Panels of experts from Stanford and around the world will take a deep dive into China’s evolving economic ambitions and self-perception on the global stage, assess the roles of state and private enterprises in advancing China’s goals, and analyze the impacts on global trade, finance, and institutions.
We are finalizing an outstanding lineup of speakers from academia, industry, and policy communities. Updates will be posted here as confirmed.
Location:
Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford University
Scott Rozelle
Faculty Co-director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Helen F. Farnsworth Endowed Professorship; Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University
Elizabeth Economy
Hargrove Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Moderator:
Hongbin Li
Faculty Co-director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
The James Liang Endowed Chair; Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University
Session Panelists:
Gangsheng Bao
Professor of Political Science, Fudan University
Skyline Scholar, Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions
Jonathan Czin
Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies, John L. Thornton China Center
Brookings Institute
Stephen Kotkin
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies;
Kleinheinz Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Moderator:
Ruixue Jia
Professor of Economics, School of Global Policy and Strategy
University of California San Diego
Session Panelists:
Nan Jia
Professor of Management and Organization
University of Southern California
Arthur Kroeber
Founding Partner
Gavekal Dragonomics
Dan Wang
Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Moderator:
Zhiguo He
James Irvin Miller Professor of Finance, Stanford Graduate School of Business; Faculty Affiliate, Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions,
Stanford University
Sean Stein
President, U.S.-China Business Council
Moderator:
Scott Rozelle
Faculty Co-director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Stanford University
Session Panelists:
Deborah Brautigam
Director of the China Africa Research Initiative; Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy Emerita
Johns Hopkins University
Kyle Chan
Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in Sociology
Princeton University
Ramin Toloui
Distinguished Policy Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University
Moderator:
Shaoda Wang
Skyline Scholar, Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, Stanford University; Assistant Professor, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago
Hongbin Li
Faculty Co-director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Stanford University
Gangsheng Bao, Professor of Political Science, Fudan University; Skyline Scholar, Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions
Gangsheng Bao is a Professor of Political Science at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, and a Skyline Scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. He earned his Ph.D. from Peking University in 2012. His research interests include political theory, comparative politics, and political history, focusing on political modernization and democratization. He has published numerous journal articles and authored several books, including The Fate of Civilization States: From Political Crisis to Modernization (2024), Political Evolution: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century (2023), Crises and Solutions: Reflections on Political Thought in Early China (2023), The Logic of Democracy (2018), The Common Sense of Modern Politics (2015), and Politics of Democratic Breakdown (2014). His works have received multiple awards, including "Best Social Science Book of the Year" (2014).
Deborah Brautigam, Director of the China Africa Research Initiative; Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy Emerita, Johns Hopkins University
Deborah Brautigam is the Director of the China Africa Research Initiative and Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy Emerita at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Her recent books include The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Will Africa Feed China? (Oxford University Press, 2015). She has been a visiting scholar at the World Bank, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and advised more than a dozen governments on China-Africa relations. Her PhD is from the Fletcher School, Tufts University.
Kyle Chan, Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in Sociology, Princeton University
Kyle Chan is a postdoctoral researcher in the Sociology Department at Princeton University and an adjunct researcher with the RAND Corporation. His work focuses on industrial policy, clean technology, and infrastructure development in China and India. Dr. Chan has testified as an expert for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and has been cited in international media, including the Financial Times, The New Yorker, Nikkei Asia, Times of India, and Le Monde. He writes a popular newsletter on these topics called High Capacity.
Jonathan Czin, Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institute
Jonathan A. Czin is the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. He is a former member of the Senior Analytic Service at the CIA, where he was one of the intelligence community’s top China experts. Czin led analysis on Chinese politics and policymaking, briefing senior policymakers on President Xi Jinping and key issues. From 2021 to 2023, he was director for China at the National Security Council, advising on White House diplomacy with China. Czin previously served at the Department of Defense and a CIA field station in Southeast Asia. Czin holds a master’s from Yale University, graduated magna cum laude from Haverford College, and studied at Oxford University.
Elizabeth Economy, Hargrove Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Elizabeth Economy is the Hargrove Senior Fellow and co-chair of the Program on the U.S., China, and the World at the Hoover Institution. From 2021 to 2023, she served as senior advisor for China at the Department of Commerce. Previously, she was the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations for over a decade. An expert on Chinese domestic and foreign policy, Economy is the author of The World According to China (2022), The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (2018), and By All Means Necessary: How China’s Resource Quest Is Changing the World (2014). Her work has been widely recognized and translated into a dozen languages. Economy has published in top journals, appeared on national television and radio, and testified before Congress. She serves on the boards of several organizations, including the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and has taught at multiple prestigious universities.
Zhiguo He, James Irvin Miller Professor of Finance, Stanford Graduate School of Business; Faculty Affiliate, Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University
Zhiguo He is the James Irvin Miller Professor of Finance at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is a financial economist whose expertise covers financial markets, financial institutions, and macroeconomics broadly. He is also conducting academic research on Chinese financial markets, and writing academic articles on new progress in the area of cryptocurrency and blockchains. Before joining Stanford GSB, he was on the faculty of Chicago Booth from 2008 to 2023, where he received tenure in 2015 and led Becker Friedman Institute China from 2020 to 2023. He holds degrees from Tsinghua University and a PhD from Northwestern. He was named a 2014 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, and has won numerous awards for his outstanding scholastic record.
Nan Jia, Professor of Management and Organization, University of Southern California
Nan Jia is Professor of Strategic Management. She holds a PhD in Strategic Management from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto (Canada). Her research interests include corporate political strategy, business-governance relationships, and applications of Artificial Intelligence technologies in management. Nan’s research has been published in multiple top journals in strategic management. She currently serves as an associate editor for the Strategic Management Journal and on the editorial boards of multiple leading academic journals.
Ruixue Jia, Professor of Economics, School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California San Diego
Ruixue Jia is a professor of economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. She also serves as co-director of the China Data Lab, executive secretary of the Association of Comparative Economic Studies (ACES) and co-chair of the China Economic Summer Institute (CESI). Jia’s research lies at the intersections of economics, history and politics, with a focus on how power structures evolve and shape economic development. Her recent work examines the political economy of idea formation and diffusion, including the interplay between the state, education, science and technology. She is the co-author of The Highest Exam, a forthcoming book that explores how China’s education system both mirrors and molds its society.
Stephen Kotkin, Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Kleinheinz Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Stephen Kotkin is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Asian Pacific Research Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, both at Stanford. He directs the Hoover History Lab, which uses history to address contemporary policy challenges. At Princeton, where he taught for 33 years, he directed the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, where he established the Wythes Center for Contemporary China and the Chadha Center on Global India, among other endeavors, and edited a book series on Northeast Asia. He is completing a multivolume biography of Joseph Stalin.
Arthur R. Kroeber, Founding Partner, Gavekal Dragonomics
Arthur R. Kroeber is the founder of Gavekal Dragonomics, a China-focused economic research firm with offices in Beijing and Hong Kong; and partner in its parent firm Gavekal. Before establishing Dragonomics in 2002, he spent fifteen years as a financial and economic journalist in China and South Asia. He is adjunct professor of economics at the NYU Stern School of Business and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Committee on US-China Relations. His book China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know (2nd edition 2020) is published by Oxford University Press.
Hongbin Li, The James Liang Endowed Chair; Faculty Co-director of Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University
Hongbin Li is the Co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Li obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 before joining the economics department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University from 2007 to 2016 in the School of Economics and Management and was the founder and Executive Associate Director of the China Social and Economic Data Center. Li’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world. He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics and co-author of the forthcoming book, The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China, published by Harvard University Press.
Scott Rozelle, Helen F. Farnsworth Endowed Professorship; Faculty Co-director of Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University
Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University. He received his B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Previously, Rozelle was a professor at the University of California, Davis and an assistant professor in Stanford’s Food Research Institute and department of economics. His research focuses almost exclusively on China and is concerned with agricultural policy, including the supply, demand, and trade in agricultural projects; the emergence and evolution of markets and other economic institutions in the transition process and their implications for equity and efficiency; and the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health, and nutrition. His book, Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise, was published in 2020 by The University of Chicago Press.
Sean Stein, President, U.S.-China Business Council
Sean Stein is the president of the US-China Business Council. He previously served as the board chair of the American Chamber of Commerce in China and is the chair emeritus of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. He also co-chaired the China Public Policy Practice at Covington and Burling where he advised international businesses on political risk, public affairs, communications, and US and China government relations. Sean previously served for nearly three decades as a US diplomat, including as Consul General in Shenyang and Shanghai. He also served on the China desk at the State Department, at the former consulate general in Chengdu, and in other positions around the Indo-Pacific. Sean speaks Mandarin and Indonesian and is a graduate of Georgetown University.
Ramin Toloui, Distinguished Policy Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Stanford University
Ramin Toloui is a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, focusing on global economic and geopolitical competition, financial crises, and critical technologies. From 2022 to 2024, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, shaping U.S. economic strategy, strengthening global supply chains, and overseeing sanctions programs. From 2014 to 2017, he was Assistant Secretary for International Finance at the U.S. Treasury, managing global financial stability efforts. Toloui played a key role in shaping the U.S. government’s approaches to navigating Ukraine’s financial crisis, threats to Eurozone financial stability, Brexit, and China’s foreign exchange and market volatility. Before joining the U.S. Treasury, Toloui served as Global Co-Head of Emerging Markets Portfolio Management at PIMCO. Toloui holds degrees from Harvard University and Oxford University.
Dan Wang, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Dan Wang is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and is one of the leading international experts on China’s technological capabilities, especially semiconductors and clean tech. Dan was previously a fellow at the Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center. From 2017 to 2023, Dan worked in China as the technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, based in Hong Kong, Beijing, and then Shanghai. In addition to a widely circulated annual letter from China, Dan’s essays have appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, New York Magazine, and The Atlantic. Dan is the author of Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future, forthcoming in Fall 2025 from W. W. Norton (US) and Penguin (UK).
Shaoda Wang, Skyline Scholar, Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, Stanford University; Assistant Professor, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago
Shaoda Wang is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, 2024-25 Skyline Scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and an affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis in Development (BREAD). He also serves as the deputy faculty director of the China branches of the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI-China) and the Energy Policy Institute at UChicago (EPIC-China). He is an applied economist with research interests in development economics, environmental economics, and political economy, with a regional focus on China. He holds a BA from Peking University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Parking meters are enforced Monday - Friday 8 AM to 4 PM, unless otherwise posted.
The event will take place in the Bechtel Conference Center located on the first floor of Encina Hall Central. The closest visitor parking to Encina Hall is:
Please visit the this website for more detailed parking options and directions to the venue.
Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford University
This event is by invitation only.
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
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.
"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
National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Virtual: Open to the public
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.