Policy Roundup: May 2023
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Mia Kimura
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mkimura@stanford.edu
Mia Kimura
MBA
Mia Kimura is a Curriculum Consultant at the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE).
Prior to joining SPICE, Mia worked in marketing communications, supporting foreign firms in the Japanese market, and Japanese organizations in the United States. She has also served as Principal at Poppins Active Learning School, an international program for early childhood education in Tokyo. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Cognitive Science from Brown University, and a Master of Business Administration from The Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. She was born in San Francisco and lived in Tokyo for 25 years before returning to the Bay Area.
Mia’s role at SPICE represents the culmination of decades of experience bridging Japanese and American business and social cultures. She also draws from background as an executive coach, defining her role of instructor as an enabler of students’ own curiosity and abilities to question, reflect, and learn.
Curriculum Consultant
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The Social Costs of Keystone Species Collapse: Evidence From The Decline of Vultures in India
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Co-sponsored by Peking University Institute for Global Health and Development, and the Asia Health Policy Program
July 11th, 5-6 pm PST; July 12th, 2023, 8-9 am Beijing Time
Scientific evidence documents an ongoing mass extinction of species, caused by human activity. Allocating conservation resources is difficult due to scarce evidence on the damages from losing specific species. This paper studies the collapse of vultures in India, triggered by the expiry of a patent on a painkiller. Our results suggest the functional extinction of vultures --- efficient scavengers who removed carcasses from the environment --- increased human mortality by over 4% because of a large negative shock to sanitation. These effects are comparable to estimates of heat deaths from climate change. We quantify damages at $69.4 billion per-year.
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Eyal Frank is an Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy and the Energy Policy Institute (EPIC) at the University of Chicago. He works at the intersection of economics and conservation, addressing three broad questions: (i) how do natural inputs, namely animals, contribute to different production functions of interest, (ii) how do market dynamics reduce natural habitats and lead to declining wildlife population levels, and (iii) what are the costs, indirect ones in particular, of conservation policies. To overcome causal inference challenges—as manipulating ecosystems and species at large scales is often infeasible—his work draws on natural experiments from ecology and policy, and uses econometric techniques to advance our understanding regarding the social cost of biodiversity losses.
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Eyal Frank, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
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Gidong Kim
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gdkim@stanford.edu
Visiting Scholar, Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL) Fellow, Summer 2025
Korea Program Postdoctoral Fellow, 2023-2025
Gidong Kim joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as Visiting Scholar, Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL) Fellow for the summer of 2025. He currently serves as Associate Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies' Department of Political Science and Diplomacy.
Previously, he was Korea Program Postdoctoral Fellow at APARC beginning August 2023 until February 2025. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Missouri, as well as both a M.A. and a B.A. in Political Science from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. He studies comparative political behavior and economy in East Asia, with particular focus on nationalism and identity politics, inequality and redistribution, and migration in South Korea and East Asia. His work is published or forthcoming in journals including Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Asian Perspective, Korea Observer, and Social Science Quarterly.
His dissertation, “Nationalism and Redistribution in New Democracies: Nationalist Legacies of Authoritarian Regimes,” investigates the micro-level underpinnings that sustain weak welfare system in developmental states. He argues that authoritarian leaders who encounter twin challenges of nation-building and modernization tend to utilize nationalism as an effective ruling and mobilizing strategy for national development. As a result, nationalism shaped under the authoritarianism can embed pro-development norms, which can powerfully shape citizens' preferences for redistribution even after democratization. He tests his theoretical argument using a mixed-method approach, including in-depth interview, survey experiment, and cross-national survey data analysis.
At APARC, Gidong transformed his dissertation project into a book manuscript. Also, he led collaborative projects about nationalism, racism, and democratic crisis to address emerging social, economic, and political challenges in Korea and, more broadly, Asia.
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Junki Nakahara
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junki@stanford.edu
Stanford Next Asia Policy Postdoctoral Fellow, 2023-2025
Junki Nakahara was a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), housed within the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years. She earned her PhD in Communication (2023) and MAs in Media, Technology, and Democracy (2022) and Intercultural and International Communication (2019) from American University, and a BEd in Educational Psychology (2017) from the University of Tokyo.
Her research centers on nationalism and (digital) media, discourse theory, and postcolonial and decolonial IR. She is particularly interested in contemporary nationalism entangled with racism, xenophobia, historical revisionism (e.g., denial of wartime atrocities), and misogyny, with a primary focus on East Asia. Her past work draws from critical and cultural studies to examine how communication technologies empower marginalized communities while simultaneously amplifying hegemonic voices and exacerbating inequalities. This includes analyses of the global diffusion of Black Lives Matter as a digitally networked connective action in the comparative contexts of Brazil, India, and Japan (Link), and of how digital nationalism distorts the articulation of feminism on China’s video-sharing platform BiliBili through affordances and policies that implicitly favor nationalist manipulation (Link). Collectively, these studies contribute to her broader inquiry into the dialectical tensions between globalization and nationalization/racialization as key factors shaping the conjunctural dynamics of today’s communication landscape.
At SNAPL, Junki led the Nationalism & Racism research track, focusing on how nationalism and racism intertwine to create various forms of suppression and intolerance across the Asia-Pacific region, where entanglements among race, ethnicity, nation, and postcoloniality complicate related debates. Through archival data and discourse analysis, her team developed a typology identifying different logics and manifestations of racism “denial” in state-sanctioned discourses, showing how these are deeply conditioned by dominant ideologies of nationhood—ranging from core social and cultural values to political struggles over national unity and security (Link). Bringing interdisciplinary, comparative, and theoretically grounded approaches, the team pursued projects that include: (1) an investigation into how Asian states appropriate global anti-racist norms through their iterative engagement with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; and (2) a comparative analysis of how different colonial legacies have shaped the articulation of race and racism in India and Korea—from the period of resistance to empire and national liberation to the present.
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A Signal to End Child Marriage: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh
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Co-sponsored by Peking University Institute for Global Health and Development, and the Asia Health Policy Program
Child marriage remains common even where female schooling and employment opportunities have grown. We experimentally evaluate a financial incentive to delay marriage alongside a girls’ empowerment program in Bangladesh. While girls eligible for two years of incentive are 19% less likely to marry underage, the empowerment program failed to decrease adolescent marriage. We show that these results are consistent with a signaling model in which bride type is imperfectly observed but preferred bride types (socially conservative girls) have lower returns to delaying marriage. Consistent with our theoretical prediction, we observe substantial spillovers of the incentive on untreated non-preferred types.
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Erica Field is a Professor of Economics and Global Health at Duke University specializing in the fields of Development Economics, Health Economics and Economic Demography. Professor Field’s work examines the microeconomics of household poverty and health in developing countries, with an emphasis on the study of gender and development. She has written papers on several topics in development in many different parts of the world, including microfinance contract design and social networks in India, marriage markets in Bangladesh, micronutrient deficiencies in Tanzania, health insurance for the poor in Nicaragua, household bargaining over fertility in Zambia. Her work has been published in several leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy and the American Economic Journal. Professor Field received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2003. Prior to joining the Economics Department at Duke, she was a John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard University.
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Erica Field, Professor of Economics, Duke University
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Thai Democracy: Future, Present, Past
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Thailand is at a crossroads. On 14 May 2023, Thai voters took part in their country’s first fully free and fair election after nearly a decade under military and conservative-elite rule. The results gave a resounding victory in the 500-member House of Representatives to Thailand's two most progressive parties: the Pheu Thai Party affiliated with former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and the relative newcomer Move Forward Party. Exceeding even the most optimistic predictions, Move Forward won the most House seats, while the two most pro-military parties together took only 12 percent. Thai voters have conveyed their preferences. But will their votes decide who forms the government and what if any policy reforms are allowed to proceed? Looming over that question for the present is the chance of a more democratic future and the legacy of an authoritarian past.
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Allen Hicken, in addition to his professorship, is affiliated with the University of Michigan’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies, its Center for Political Studies, and its Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies. His work focuses on political institutions, political economy, and policymaking with an emphasis on Southeast Asia. His many publications include a recent co-authored book, Mobilizing for Elections: Patronage and Political Machines in Southeast Asia (2022). Prof. Hicken has held visiting-scholar positions in Thailand (twice), the Philippines, Singapore, and Australia. His higher degrees are from the University of California San Diego (PhD) and Columbia University (MA).
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Ken Mathis Lohatepanont, alongside his doctoral studies, writes regularly for the Thai Enquirer, an English-language news website based in Bangkok. Before coming to the University of Michigan he worked for the Thailand Development Research Institute as part of its Innovation Policy for Sustainable Development Team. In that capacity he helped to generate policy recommendations as to how the Thai economy could be restructured to make it more competitive. Earlier affiliations included a stint as a Journalism Intern with the Asia Focus section of the Bangkok Post reporting and commenting on economics, politics, and business in the Asia-Pacific region. His BA in political science is from UC-Berkeley.
Donald K. Emmerson
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Allen Hicken, Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan
Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan
Ken Mathis Lohatepanont, Ph.D. Student in Political Science, University of Michigan
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Two Sides of Gender: Sex, Power, and Adolescence
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Co-sponsored by Peking University Institute for Global Health and Development, and the Asia Health Policy Program
Adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa have some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence across the globe. This paper evaluates the impact of a randomized controlled trial that offers females a goal setting activity to improve their sexual and reproductive health outcomes and offers their male partners a soccer intervention, which educates and inspires young men to make better sexual and reproductive health choices. Both interventions reduce female reports of intimate partner violence. Impacts are larger among females who were already sexually active at baseline. We develop a model to understand the mechanisms at play. The soccer intervention improves male attitudes around violence and risky sexual behaviors. Females in the goal setting arm take more control of their sexual and reproductive health by exiting violent relationships. Both of these mechanisms drive reductions in IPV.
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Manisha Shah is the Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., Endowed Chair in Social Justice and Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Founding Director of the Global Lab for Research in Action. She is an affiliate of NBER, CEGA, JPAL, BREAD, and IZA. Her research focuses on development economics, particularly applied microeconomics, health, and development. She has written several papers on the economics of sex markets in order to learn how more effective policies and programs can be deployed to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. She also works in the area of child health and education. . Shah has been the PI on various impact evaluations and randomized controlled trials and is currently leading projects in Tanzania, Indonesia, and India. She has also worked extensively in Ecuador and Mexico. Her research has been supported by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the World Bank, and the National Science Foundation among others. She is an editor at Journal of Health Economics and an Associate Editor at The Review of Economics and Statistics. Shah received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.
Jianan Yang
Manisha Shah
Professor of Public Policy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
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Flow of Talent Among Asia-Pacific Nations Would Revitalize the Economy and National Security
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APARC and Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin recently joined the Japan Economic Foundation (JEF) to discuss his research project "Talent Flows, Brain Hubs, and Socioeconomic Development in Asia." The conversation was published in the May/June 2023 issue of the Japan SPOTLIGHT, the online journal of JEF.
📥 Download a PDF version of this interview.
JS: How do you see the different situations vis-à-vis demography among Asia-Pacific nations? Some countries like Japan are suffering from depopulation while some are seeing an increase in population. How do you assess the political and economic implications?
Shin: As you mentioned, Japan and South Korea are going through very serious demographic crises with low birth rates, aging populations, and declines in the working-age population. On the other hand, India and many countries in Southeast Asia have very young populations, and we might expect an increase in talent mobility within the Asia-Pacific region. In the past, a lot of Chinese, Indian, and Korean students came to the United States and Europe. But now more people are going to Japan and South Korea. Their level of education has improved; the quality of universities in advanced Asian countries is quite good. We should think about the policy implications of the increase in regional talent mobility in the Asia-Pacific region.
JS: For example, India and Japan are referred to as complementary because India has lots of young people and Japan does not. Would you say that if Japan expanded opportunities for immigrants, it would make the relationship between Japan and India more complementary? Of course, India-Japan relations can be discussed in the context of skilled immigrants but there is still some disagreement on the issue of immigration of unskilled immigrants.
Shin: In the past, Japan and South Korea accepted largely unskilled labor from China and Southeast Asia. This unskilled migration will continue, but at the same time, Japan and South Korea need to accept more skilled migrants. India can be a good source. It is encouraging to see more foreign students who come to Japan, for example, for college and then stay to work. However, most foreigners leave after a few years of work. If you look at Australia, in contrast, many international students go there for college, stay, and eventually naturalize as Australian citizens. One may point out that Australia is very different from Japan or South Korea, which I partially agree with. However, until the 1970s, Australia was also promoting racial homogeneity. Under their “White Australia” policy, they were accepting only white Europeans, but couldn’t sustain the economy with the low population growth. They had to open up, promoting multiculturalism. This has led to an increase in immigrants from Asia, such as from China and India. Going back to your question, Japan and India can be complementary to each other: one needs talent, the other has a strong supply of IT workers.
JS: As you have just explained, the economic implications of this depopulation could cause us a shrinking economy. We should perhaps encourage the flow of talent to supplement the stagnant economy with immigrants – but what do you think about the political implications of this declining population in terms of security concerns?
Shin: Let me give you an example from South Korea. This is a big issue for South Korea because it maintains a large military. On the one hand, there is no way to maintain the military’s current size or level due to a shrinking population but on the other hand, I don’t think you can bring immigrants into the military. It’s not like bringing immigrants into a company. Another political implication is the change in the voting landscape as the proportion of older people or senior citizens is really increasing. They tend to be more conservative, in favor of conservative parties. This may not be an issue for Japan because the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) gets a lot of support from senior citizens anyway, but in South Korea and other countries where there is a regular change of power, this has potentially huge political implications.
JS: Looking at the possible merits of depopulation, some economists would say that of course depopulation has demerits, but it may still have some merits because individual wealth may increase. What is your perspective on this notion?
Shin: Some jobs can be replaced by robots or AI, and then not only may we not need so many people, but there may be less competition for jobs. Still, I think for any country to maintain the scale of its economy you must maintain a certain level of population. It is not only about production but also consumption. If you have a declining population then consumption will decline in tandem, which will negatively impact the economy. Japan has a fairly large population and the market may be good enough to be self-sufficient for now. But should the population become half of what it is today, then it probably may not be able to sustain the current scale of the economy. While overall you don’t want too many people, South Korea and Japan should be concerned about their declining populations.
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Depopulation is a concern shared by Japan and South Korea. Immigration of high-skilled labor could be a solution for mitigating it. In this regard, Japan SPOTLIGHT interviewed Prof. Gi-Wook Shin, who is working on a new research initiative seeking to examine the potential benefits of talent flows in the Asia-Pacific region.
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Congressman Ro Khanna Addresses Intersection of America's Economy and U.S.-China Geopolitical Challenges
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Many analysts, academics, and policymakers believe that in the coming years and decades, the biggest geopolitical challenges will lie between the West — particularly the United States — and China.
These policy challenges are often characterized in terms of rivalry and aggression, with some going so far as to frame U.S.-China relations as “a new Cold War.”
On April 24, in front of a large crowd assembled in Hauck Auditorium, U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna offered an alternative vision.
A former visiting lecturer at Stanford, Khanna returned to the Farm for an event co-hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Hoover Institution to share his perspective on how healthy economic competition between the U.S. and China can be used as vehicle to stabilize relations between the U.S. and China and promotes peace and prosperity on both sides.
A full recording of his remarks, including a follow-up discussion with FSI Director Michael McFaul and Amy Zegart, a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), is available below.
An economist by training, Khanna advocates for new trade policies and strategic business partnerships to be front and center in U.S. diplomacy with China. This “rebalancing,” as Khanna termed it, is a call for both countries to pursue a fuller, more robust economic development strategy while continuing to engage with each other.
Drawing inspiration from President John F. Kennedy’s commencement address at American University in 1963, Khanna urged listeners not to view “conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats,” when it comes to managing the U.S.-China relationship.
Instead, Khanna outlined four key principles he believes will be crucial to navigating the tense years ahead. These include:
- An economic reset to reduce trade deficits and tensions
- Open lines of communication
- Effective military deterrence
- Respect for Asian partners and robust economic engagement with the world
Khanna is clear-eyed that these goals will take time to realize. Bringing jobs back to the United States will require large investments in domestic infrastructure. Leaders in Washington will need patience, persistence, and help from partners outside of politics to bridge communication gaps and ensure Beijing picks up its phones in moments of tension. Reallocating defense spending in a way that is fair both to American taxpayers and partners like Taiwan will need cooperation from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
But Khanna is confident that these barriers can be overcome.
“I believe a constructive rebalancing with China can maintain the peace,” he told the audience. “It will not happen overnight. It will not happen with one president or one congressman. But it will happen if all of us - military and business leaders, educators, unions, activists, foreign policy experts and students work toward this goal. [We will win by] helping our own nation flourish and by putting our system and our promise of freedom on display for the world to see.”
Click the link to read Congressman Khanna's full remarks on
"Constructive Rebalancing with China."
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![U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna [center] onstage with Amy Zegart [left] and Michael McFaul [right].](https://fsi9-prod.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/styles/895x498_x2/public/2023-04/ro_khanna_mcfaul_zegart_china_hero.png?h=c4d9845d&itok=E5PzqaTx)
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The congressman joined Michael McFaul and Amy Zegart for a discussion co-sponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Hoover Institution on American economic resiliency in the face of U.S. competition with China.