PESD Working Paper #101 on Australia's black coal industry featured in Platts Coal Trader International
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Platts Coal Trader International
Vol. 11, Issue 67, Pages 5-6
Australia faces serious challenges over the next 20 years in maintaining its hard-won place as a leading coal exporting country and capturing new market share, according to a research paper published by Stanford University's Program on Energy and Sustainable Development April 5.
Following earlier papers on China, Indonesia and South Africa's coal industries, the latest PESD paper, entitled Australia's Black Coal Industry: Past Achievements and Future Challenges, has been written by coal industry expert Bart Lucarelli.
The paper sketches the development of Australia's export coal industry, from its shaky start in the aftermath of the Second World War amid a glut of cheap oil, to the "phenomenal success story" of today. The renaissance of Australia's coal industry was assisted by the discovery of vast deposits of high-quality coking coal and thermal coal in Queensland's Bowen Basin and the
Hunter Valley of New South Wales respectively, along with new mining technologies and the economic expansions of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, Lucarelli said.
During the Australian coal industry's competitive phase - 1987 to 2003 - export coal prices were relatively stable, but the growth rate of Australia's coal industry slowed as Indonesia became a significant coal exporter. Since 2003, Australia's coal industry has been in a "volatile price phase," as export coking and thermal coal prices have soared to record highs with the entry of China and latterly India into the international seaborne market, while weather events have affected supplies from coal exporting countries.
Looking to the next 20 years, Lucarelli forecasts serious challenges to the preeminence of Australia's export coal industry in the shape of infrastructure constraints, regulatory risks and under-investment in railways and ports by government-owned companies. "The most pressing and immediate technical challenge to the black coal industry of Australia is the shortage of rail and port infrastructure to support its further growth," said Lucarelli in the research paper.
‘Chronic infrastructure shortages' Governments in Queensland and New South Wales have proposed projects for expanding their rail and port networks to support a significant increase in Australian coal exports, which are forecast to grow to 540 million mt by 2020 from 240 million mt in 2010. "Part of the reason that chronic infrastructure shortages are likely to persist has to do with the type of technology being implemented - large rail and fixed land port systems," Lucarelli explained. Large port and rail projects are required for economies of scale, but involve long lead times, high upfront costs and complex regulatory clearances.
"A second reason for the chronic shortage of infrastructure has been the reliance on state-owned entities to make the necessary investments in the rail and port systems," Lucarelli said. Government-owned rail and port companies tend to be less nimble and entrepreneurial in their decision-making than the private sector, though some port and rail companies have been privatized recently - most notably Queenslandbased rail company QR National and the port of Brisbane. Regulatory uncertainty stemming from the Australian government's stop-start policy on curbing carbon emissions and its proposed Mineral Resource Rent Tax on coal-mining profits are additional factors clouding the expansion of Australia's coal industry. "Potential coal mining projects most at risk due to regulatory uncertainty are the massive new steam coal projects planned for the Galilee, Gunnedah and Surat basins," Lucarelli said. Illustrating the potential for expansion within Australia's coal industry, Lucarelli said that if only two of the advancedstage projects in the Surat Basin in Queensland started production on schedule, they could add 110 million mt/year of thermal coal exports by 2015. This is almost as much thermal coal as Australia exported for the whole of 2008, at 115 million mt.
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The Chinese Century? Business and Education in the 21st Century
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Europe dominated the 19th century. The 20th century saw the rise of the United States. Will the 21st century be "the Chinese Century"? Using a series of Harvard Business School Cases, this lecture will explore production, consumption, and education for China's new middle class, and think about China's future, in the light of its past.
William C. Kirby is T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University and Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He is a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor. He serves as Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Chairman of the Harvard China Fund.
A historian of modern China, Professor Kirby's work examines China's business, economic, and political development in an international context. He has written on the evolution of modern Chinese business (state-owned and private); Chinese corporate law and company structure; the history of freedom in China; the international socialist economy of the 1950s; relations across the Taiwan Strait; and China's relations with Europe and America. His current projects include case studies of contemporary Chinese businesses and a comparative study of higher education in China, Europe, and the United States.
This talk is co-sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS).
Philippines Conference Room
William C. Kirby
T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University and Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration
Speaker
Harvard Business School
Seminars
A Century of Unique Friendship between Republic of China and the United States
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Lyushun Shen earned his doctorate in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania. He started his career at the School of Law, University of Maryland before deciding to become a professional diplomat. He has enjoyed a distinguished career serving Taiwan in its overseas missions in America and Europe, including in Washington D.C., Kansas City, Geneva and Brussels. Prior to his current appointment he was Taiwan’s representative to the European Union. His publications include: “The Republic of China’s Perspective on the US Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1989), The Issue of US Arms Sales and Peking’s Policy toward Taiwan (Taipei, 1986), “Is Peking’s Claim over Taiwan Internationally Recognized?” Monograph Series of the Asia and World Forum (Taipei, 1984), “The Washington-Peking Controversy over US Arms Sales to Taiwan: Diplomacy of Ambiguity and Escalation” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1982), and “The Taiwan Issue in Peking’s Foreign Policy during the 1970’s, A Systematic Review” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1981).
In this special event, Vice Foreign Minister Shen will reflect on the century-long relationship between the Republic of China and the United States, and address the future prospects and challenges of this relationship.
Bechtel Conference Center
Lyushun Shen
Vice Foreign Minister
Speaker
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan)
Conferences
Innovation Beyond Boundaries: Partnerships for Advancing Smart, Green Living
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FORUM Speakers & DISCUSSANTS (listed in alphabetical order)
- Rohit T. Aggarwala, Special Advisor to the Chair, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group
- Alan Beebe, Managing Director, China Greentech Initiative
- Sven Beiker, Executive Director, Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS)
- Ann Bordetsky, North America Market Development, Better Place
- Dennis Bracy, cEO, US-China Clean Energy Forum
- Curtis R. Carlson, President and CEO, SRI International
- Jaching Chou, Senior Transportation Analyst, Institute of Transportation
- Stephen J. Eglash, Executive Director, Energy and Environment Affiliates Program, Stanford University
- Henry Etzkowitz, President of Triple Helix Association; Senior Researcher, Human Sciences and Technology Advanced Research Institute (H-STAR), Stanford University; Visiting Professor at University of Edinburgh Business School
- Gordon Feller, Director of Urban Innovation, Cisco Systems
- TJ Glauthier, President, TJG Energy Associates, LLC
- Russell Hancock, President & Chief Executive Officer, Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network
- Ted Howes, Business for Social Responsibility
- Asim Hussain, Director of Product Marketing, Bloom Energy
- Paul Chao-Chia Huang, Deputy General Director, Service Systems Technology Center, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan
- Kristina M. Johnson, Former Under Secretary of Energy, U.S. Department of Energy
- Jeffrey Heller, President, Heller Manus Architects
- Allan King, Senior Manager, Institute for Information Industry, Taiwan
- Michael Marlaire, Director, NASA Research Park
- David Nieh, General Manager, Shui On Land Limited
- Jon Sandelin, Senior Associate Emeritus, Office of Technology and Licensing, Stanford University
- Gerald Sanders, CEO & Chairman, SkyTran
- Tim Schweikert, President & CEO, China Region for GE Technology Infrastructure, GE
- Jonathan Thorpe, Senior Vice President, Gale International
- Kung Wang, Professor, China University of Technology
- Sean Wang, President, ITRI International Inc.
- Jonathan Woetzel, Director, McKinsey & Co; Co-Chair, Urban China Initiative
Questions for presentations and discussion included:
- What roles are public-private partnerships and other forms of collaboration playing to advance innovations in smart green industries, such as in the built environment or intelligent transportation?
- What innovations - not only in technologies and products but also in processes, models and platforms - are leading the way?
- What results are emerging from living labs, leading cities, or other outstanding examples of public-private partnerships around the world?
- How do results stack up against economic, energy and social metrics, e.g. economic productivity, quality of life, energy impact, financial payback, user response, etc.?
- What are implications for business strategies?
- What government policies are effectively nurturing advancement in these areas?
Outcomes will include policy recommendations as well as highlights to be included in a book published by SPRIE at Stanford.
Workshops
Physician Ownership of Non-Physician Medical Services
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Dr. Brian Chen's research has examined the tradeoffs between moral hazard and efficiencies in the integration of physician and non-physician medical services in the presence of asymmetric information. He has looked at a policy intervention in Taiwan that prohibited self-referrals of patients to physician-owned pharmacies unless the physician group integrated pharmacy services into the clinic by hiring an onsite pharmacist. He found that the policy reduced drug expenditures by close to thirty percent among physicians that did not have an onsite pharmacist. However, these physicians responded by increasing the overprovision of diagnostic services not covered by the policy, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the policy. Forty-five percent of the clinics that did not have an onsite pharmacist prior to the policy hired one subsequent to the implementation of the policy. Overall, after integration, the policy applied to only seventeen percent of clinics, and only reduced average discretionary expenditures by about two-point-five percent. Chen's research also shows that despite the reduction in drug utilization, patients treated at clinics without an onsite pharmacist did not have greater observable adverse health events than patients treated at integrated clinics. His results show that moral hazard costs of self-referral incentives are large, that the “safe harbor” exemption severely reduces the effectiveness of the policy, and that the exemption explains much of the recent integration of ancillary services into physician offices.
Dr. Brian Chen recently completed his Ph.D. in business administration in the Business and Public Policy Group at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. He received a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School in 1997, and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1992.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Brian Chen
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E-301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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chenbk@stanford.edu
2011 AHPP/CEAS Visiting Scholar
Dr. Brian Chen is currently a visiting scholar with the Asia Health Policy Program and Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. He was recently Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center's 2009-2010 postdoctoral fellow in Comparative Health Policy. As a visiting scholar, Dr. Chen will conduct collaborative research about health of the elderly and chronic disease in China.
As an applied economist, Chen’s research focuses on the impact of incentives in health care organizations on provider and patient behavior. For his dissertation, Chen empirically examined how vertical integration and prohibition against self-referrals affected physician prescribing behavior. His job market paper was selected for presentation at the American Law and Economics Association’s Annual Meeting, the Academy of Management, the Canadian Law and Economics Association, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and the First Annual Conference on Empirical Health Law and Policy at Georgetown Law Center in 2009. The paper was also nominated for best paper based on a dissertation at the Academy of Management.
Chen comes to the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center not only with a multidisciplinary law and economics background, but also with an international perspective from having lived and worked in Taiwan, Japan, and France. He has a particularly intimate knowledge of the Taiwanese health care system from his experience as an assistant to the hospital administrator at a medical college in Taiwan.
During his past residence as a postdoctoral fellow with the Asia Health Policy Program, Chen conducted empirical research on cost containment policies in Taiwan and Japan and how those policies impacted provider behavior. His work also contributed to the program’s research activities on comparative health systems and health service delivery in the Asia-Pacific, a theme that encompasses the historical evolution of health policies; the role of the private sector and public-private partnerships; payment incentives and their impact on patients and providers; organizational innovation, contracting, and soft budget constraints; and chronic disease management and service coordination for aging populations.
Dr. Brian Chen recently completed his Ph.D. in Business Administration in the Business and Public Policy Group at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. He received a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School in 1997, and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1992.
Seminars
How Good is the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement -- and Good for Whom?: A Philippine View
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Students learn real-world policy skills
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How do you effectively
advise senior-level policymakers when a political crisis emerges? Stanford
students taking the course U.S. Policy
Towards Northeast Asia (IPS 244), sponsored by the Walter H. Shorenstein
Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), are learning and putting into
practice these very skills. Over the ten weeks of the 2011 winter quarter,
students will learn about contemporary U.S. policy towards Japan, China, and
Korea, and about how to write and present policy-style memoranda to top-level
government decision makers. They will also take part in an in-class simulation
of a Six-Party meeting to negotiate North Korea's nuclear program.
Students cover a great deal of content in a short amount of time. "Ten weeks
goes by pretty quickly," says course leader Michael H. Armacost, the Shorenstein
Fellow at FSI and a former U.S. Ambassador to Japan and the Philippines. The
real-world approach to the course is similar to what you would find in a
professional international relations school, he explains. In previous years,
Armacost has taught the course both alone and as part of a team with other
former U.S. senior-level policy officials. The current course has been offered in the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies (IPS) for the last
three years. It is co-taught with Daniel C. Sneider, the associate director for
research at Shorenstein APARC and a former long-time foreign correspondent in
Asia; David Straub, the associate director of the Stanford Korean Studies
Program and a former U.S. senior foreign service officer; and Thomas Fingar,
the Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at FSI and a former Chairman of the
National Intelligence Council.
In addition to providing a strong understanding of the U.S. foreign
policymaking process, each week of the course is dedicated to a different
aspect of the relationship of the United States with the countries of Northeast
Asia, including Taiwan and the Russian Federation. Students will closely
examine the history and dynamics between the great powers of the region; U.S.
security relations with Japan and China; East Asian regionalism;
democratization in South Korea; the North Korean nuclear crisis; and economics
and human rights in China.
Although the case studies that the policy-writing exercises are based upon are
hypothetical, they are closely tied to real-world issues and events. A previous
year's case study dealt with tensions between China and Japan over rival claims
to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, anticipating the September 2010 conflict between
Japan and China in the waters around these islands. The simulation exercise,
another highlight of the course when students have the opportunity to
collaborate with one another, is also closely tied to current regional events.
In addition to the rich content of the course and the expertise of its
instructors, the diverse background of the students lends itself to the overall
learning experience. Some of the students are pursuing a master's degree
through IPS or the Center for East Asian Studies, while others come from the
Graduate School of Business and various other Stanford units. Each year, there
are always a few undergraduate students, who Armacost describes as "very
strong," as well as early-career foreign affairs and military officials from
Northeast Asia.
Interest in the course remains strong each year, and Shorenstein APARC will
continue to offer it in order to provide solid, real-world policy training for
the next generation of scholars and government officials.
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Michael H. Armacost, course leader for IPS 244, talks to students about the history of U.S. policy towards Northeast Asia.
Sarah Lin Bhatia
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