Stanford University

International Development

FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.

They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.

FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.

FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.

Stanford Summer Juku 2013

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Stanford Summer Juku on Japanese Political Economy (SSJ-JPE)

August 19-22, 2013

Oksenberg Conference Room

Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

The Japan Studies Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (S-APARC) at Stanford University is starting an exciting new program called Stanford Summer Juku (SSJ).  In SSJ, researchers on Japanese politics and Japanese economy get together and discuss their research in a relaxed setting.  In addition to presentation and discussion of research papers that is standard for any academic conference, SSJ is distinctive by setting aside ample time for informal discussions and interactions.  We believe you will find this an excellent opportunity to expand your network of researchers on Japan in both political science and economics.  We also hope that the interactions at SSJ will lead to some future collaboration among the participants.

Our inaugural meeting will be held at Stanford on August 19-22, 2013.  The first two days will focus on research in political science/political economy and international relations, and the latter two days will focus on research in business and economics. 

Finally, a little bit about the name of this program;  Juku here does not refer to modern Japanese cram schools.  What we have in mind is the private schools at the end of Edo period, which attracted young motivated students and ended up producing numerous leaders in the Meiji period.  Our goal is to attract many young researchers who will go on to become leaders in the studies of Japanese politics and Japanese economy in the near future.  We look forward to welcoming you to Stanford this summer.

Takeo Hoshi, Kenji E. Kushida, Phillip Lipscy

 

Report - Stanford Summer Juku 2013

 

Program

 

8/19/2013

8:30-9:00    Breakfast

9:00-9:15    Welcome: Gi-Wook Shin, (Director, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University)

9:15-10:25  Session I:

"America's Role in Making Japan's Economic Miracle: New Evidence for a Landmark Case", Yusaku Horiuchi (Dartmouth College), Michael Beckley (Tufts University), and Jennifer M. Miller (Dartmouth College)

Discussants:
Amy Catalinac (Australian National University)
William Grimes (Boston University)
 

10:25-10:50  Break

10:50-12:00  Session II:

"The Electoral Politics of Energy", Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University)

Discussants:
Greg Noble (University of Tokyo)
Yusaku Horiuchi (Dartmouth College)

12:00-1:00  Lunch

1:00-2:10    Session III:

"Pork to Policy: The Rise of National Security in Elections in Japan", Amy Catalinac (Australian National University)

Discussants:
Saori Katada (University of Southern California)
Christiana Davis (Princeton University)

 

8/20/2013

8:30-9:15   Breakfast

9:15-10:25 Session I:

"The Politics of Commoditization in Information Communications Technology: Lessons from Japan's 'Galapagos' ICT Sector", Kenji E. Kushida (Stanford University)

Discussants:
Greg Noble (University of Tokyo)
Ulrike Schaede (University of California, San Diego)

10:25-10:50  Break

10:50-12:00  Session II:

"Private Money as Public Funds: Distributive Politics Under Austerity", Kay Shimizu (Columbia University)

Discussants:
Steve Vogel (University of California, Berkeley)
Jonathan Rodden (Stanford University)

12:00-1:00  Lunch

1:00-2:10    Session III:

"Asian Designs: Rising Powers and the Shaping of International Governance", Saadia Pekkanen (University of Washington)

Discussants:
William Grimes (Boston University)
Christina Davis (Princeotn University)

6:30        Group Dinner

 

8/21/2013

8:30-9:15    Breakfast

9:15-10:25  Session I:

"Trading Corporate Assets in Japan: An Event Study of Subsidiary Trades Among Listed Companies", Ulrike Schaede (University of California, San Diego) and Tatsuo Ushijima (Aoyama Gakuin University)

Discussants:
Robert Eberhart (Santa Clara University)
Ayako Yasuda (University of California, Davis)

10:25-10:50  Break

10:50-12:00  Session II:

"School Entry Cutoff Dates and the Timing of Births", Hitoshi Shigeoka (Simon Fraser University)

Discussants:
Karen Eggleston (Stanford University)
Toshiaki Iizuka (University of Tokyo)

12:00-1:00  Lunch

1:00-2:10    Session III:

"New Management at the Bank of Japan, End of the 'Independent' Bank of Japan and Implications for the Cencept of Central Bank Independence", Thomas F. Cargill (University of Nevada) and Jennifer Holt-Dwyer (Hunter College)

Discussants:
Helen Popper (Santa Clara University)
Ken Kuttner, (Williams College)

 

8/22/2013

8:30-9:15    Breakfast

9:15-10:25  Session I:

"Using Dynamic Electricity Pricing to Address Energy Crises: Evidence from Randomized Field Experiements", Koichiro Ito (Stanford University), Takanori Ida (Kyoto University), and Makoto Tanaka (GRIPS)

Discussants:
Masahiko Aoki (Stanford University)
Matthew Kahn (University of California, Los Angeles)

10:25-10:50  Break

10:50-12:00  Session II:

"Choice of Invoicing Currency: New evidence from a questionnaire survey of Japanese export firms", Satoshi Koibuchi (Chuo University), Takatoshi Ito (RIETI), Kiyotaka Sato (Yokohama National University), Junko Shimizu (Gakushuin University)

Discussants:
Katheryn Russ (University of California, Davis)
Mark Spiegel (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)

12:00-1:00  Lunch

1:00-2:10    Session III:

"Banks restructuring sonata: How capital injection triggered labor force rejuvenation in Japanese banks", David Vera (California State University, Fresno), Kazuki Onji (Australian National University), Takeshi Osada (Bunri University of Hospitality)

Discussants:
Masami Imai (Wesleyan University)
Kelly Wang (Federal Reserve Board)

Stanford Summer Juku on Political Economy

Stanford scholars hold dialogue in New Delhi

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The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) hosted its inaugural event in New Delhi, a public seminar titled India’s Relations with its Northeast Asian Neighbors, in late 2014. Experts from Shorenstein APARC and the Brookings Institution’s India Center spoke about recent developments in India’s foreign policy under the nation’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, and provided an outlook on where India fits in the context of an emerging Northeast Asia.

The panel consisted of Stanford scholars: Gi-Wook Shin, professor of sociology and director of Shorenstein APARC; Michael Armacost, a Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow; and Karl Eikenberry, a Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow; and Brookings scholars: Vikram S. Mehta, executive chairman; and W.P.S. Sidhu, a senior fellow.

Video and transcript of the event are available below. A list of key discussion points was also written up by Brookings India and is available by clicking here.

 

 

The seminar was one event in a larger visit by Shorenstein APARC to New Delhi. Armacost, Eikenberry, Shin, and Huma Shaikh, the associate director for administration, hosted a series of private roundtable discussions at two universities, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Delhi University.

Kathleen Stephens, the then-charge d’affaires for the United States in India, also hosted Shorenstein APARC at Roosevelt House, the official U.S. ambassadorial residence. There, at the entrance, the group was greeted with a Stanford “S” prepared in “rangoli” style, an Indian custom of welcoming guests with an intricate design made of colored rice and flowers.

On Twitter, Stephens (@AmbStephens) shared a series of tweets, a few are included below:

 

stephens tweets

 

Stephens was the Koret Distinguished Fellow in the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC from 2013-14; she served as U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea from 2008 to 2011, among other posts. 

The events were part of an effort to reinvigorate the South Asia Initiative, a Stanford program that seeks to conduct policy-relevant research and convene conferences on topics related to the United States and the nations of South Asia.

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An entrance to the Taj Mahal in New Delhi, India.
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The Tropical Oil Crop Revolution: Food, Feed, Fuel, and Forests

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Over the last two decades global production of soybean and palm oil seeds have increased enormously. Because these tropically rainfed crops are used for food, cooking, animal feed, and biofuels, they have entered the agriculture, food, and energy chains of most nations despite their actual growth being increasingly concentrated in Southeast Asia and South America. The planting of these crops is controversial because they are sown on formerly forested lands, rely on large farmers and agribusiness rather than smallholders for their development, and supply export markets. The contrasts with the famed Green Revolution in rice and wheat of the 1960s through the 1980s are stark, as those irrigated crops were primarily grown by smallholders, depended upon public subsidies for cultivation, and served largely domestic sectors.  

The overall aim of the book is to provide a broad synthesis of the major supply and demand drivers of the rapid expansion of oil crops in the tropics; its economic, social, and environmental impacts; and the future outlook to 2050. After introducing the dramatic surge in oil crops, chapters provide a comparative perspective from different producing regions for two of the world's most important crops, oil palm and soybeans in the tropics. The following chapters examine the drivers of demand of vegetable oils for food, animal feed, and biodiesel and introduce the reader to price formation in vegetable oil markets and the role of trade in linking consumers across the world to distant producers in a handful of exporting countries. The remaining chapters review evidence on the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the oil crop revolution in the tropics. While both economic benefits and social and environmental costs have been huge, the outlook is for reduced trade-offs and more sustainable outcomes as the oil crop revolution slows and the global, national, and local communities converge on ways to better managed land use changes and land rights. 

THE TROPICAL OIL CROP REVOLUTION
Food, Feed, Fuel, and Forests
by Derek Byerlee, Walter P. Falcon, and Rosamond L. Naylor
will be published by Oxford University Press on November 10, 2016
$74.00 | 304 Pages | 9780190222987
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Why implementation matters for impact evaluation and what to do about it

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Howard White, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation

About the speaker: Howard White is the Executive Director of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), co-chair of the Campbell International Development Coordinating Group and Adjunct Professor at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute, Deakin University. His previous experience includes leading the impact evaluation program of the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group and before that, several multi-country evaluations. Other experience includes leading large projects like the World Bank published report African Poverty at the Millennium, and developing the overall direction of poverty training for 2,000 DFID staff at country offices around the world. 

Howard White

At Stanford, innovation experts cultivate US-Japan ties

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Innovation is a vital component of economic development, and the United States and Japan provide clear examples of how a knowledge-based economy can lead to sustainable growth. But Japan has sometimes encountered obstacles in bringing its wealth of ideas into the global market. A conference at Stanford seeks to help shift that reality.

“Japan is changing,” said panelist Gen Isayama, founder of the World Innovation Lab. “We’re seeing entrepreneurs…but we need a new role model – new stars emerging in Japan to excite younger people.”

For two days, 21 experts from Japan and the United States gathered at the Stanford-Sasakawa Peace Foundation New Channels Dialogue to discuss innovation, promote exchange of best practices, and enhance connections between the two countries.

The conference was sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) and organized by the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), in association with the U.S.-Japan Council.

“The New Channels project is intended to open a new arena of dialogue between new voices, and a new generation of experts and policymakers on both sides of the Pacific. And to tie them back into the existing structure of alliance governance,” said SPF President Yuji Takagi, in his opening remarks.

“The complex challenges of today’s world provide even greater momentum to work together across sectors,” Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin added.

In its second year, the conference hosted more than 100 attendees from the San Francisco Bay Area, drawing students, scholars and industry and government people to Encina Hall for the daylong public forum on Jan. 22. The first and second panels focused on the state of innovations in Silicon Valley and Japan, the third and fourth panels examined how the two countries could better work together toward innovation-driven growth.

The first set of panelists started by discussing characteristics of Silicon Valley, and how it defined itself during the tech boom of the 1980s/90s, and led to the rise of the Internet and telecomm industries that rapidly spread around the world.

Silicon Valley is often identified for its innovative ideas, and its ability to convert those ideas into market-ready goods and services. Panelists said that networks and open access to venture capital drive that ability to push ideas through quickly, an essential characteristic in today’s real-time world.

“It’s never been easier to start a company,” said Patrick Scaglia, a consultant at Startup Ventures and former senior executive at Hewlett Packard.

Silicon Valley continues to attract entrepreneurs and potential investors, and is positioned to continue to do so. Scaglia noted that 47.3 million dollars was invested in startups last year alone, the highest seen since 2009.

Areas currently being pioneered by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs include medical and mobile technologies. Norman Winarsky, president of SRI Ventures, pointed to breakthroughs in robotics and wearable devices, showing a clip from a TED talk on bionic prosthetics. Additional predicted trends include a return to hardware and possibly greater entrepreneurism coming directly out of universities, particularly from students.

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(Left photo) Tak Miyata (left), a general partner at Scrum Ventures, talks with Ryuichiro Takeshita (right), a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC. (Right photo) Japan Program Research Associate Kenji Kushida leads a discussion on Japan's innovation ecosystem. A gallery of photos from the public forums can be viewed here.

Japan has historically produced successful entrepreneurs such as Konosuke Matsushita (founder of Panasonic Corporation), Akio Morita (founder of Sony Corporation), and Soichiro Honda (founder of Honda Motor Company), but large firms have come to dominate the economy. Recently, however, the country has been producing a cadre of successful startups, some of which have already grown to become quite large. For example, Japanese companies Rakuten and DeNA have commanded the e-commerce space, and similarly, Mixi in the social media space.

Panelists noted that more Japanese startups are going global compared to a decade ago. Yusuke Asakura, a visiting scholar at Stanford’s U.S.-Asia Tech Management Center, pointed to companies that produced applications like Metaps, an Android monetization app, and Gumi, a social networking gaming app.

But Japan hasn’t reached its greatest potential due to various barriers – market, institutional, and cultural. Mr. Isayama said, at the moment, there aren’t enough ventures and risk capital in Japan. Greater accessibility to both could propel startups more fully into the global market.

C. Jeffrey Char, president of J-Seed Ventures, said another obstacle was the quantity of mergers & acquisitions (M&A).

“If there was more M&A, it would actually improve the ecosystem a lot more – it would turbocharge it,” he said. “Because when investors get their money back quicker and when entrepreneurs get paid off quicker, a lot of times they will go and start another company.”

If greater M&A existed in Japan it would create a “benevolent cycle” of funding and inject the momentum necessary to support an environment for entrepreneurial success.

Networking, labor mobility, and a highly skilled workforce are additional components that aided in Silicon Valley’s success, and areas that Japan could learn from. Government support for entrepreneurs is rising; the third arrow of ‘Abenomics’ policy aims to jumpstart growth based on a number of measures, including diversification of its workforce through increased immigration and female participation.

Offering an additional point, Professor Kazuyuki Motohashi, the Sasakawa Peace Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, suggested that cultural differences might pose one of the biggest challenges to U.S.-Japan collaboration.

Americans are more likely to embrace failure as an essential part of the creative process; Japanese typically don’t celebrate failure as much nor valorize the entrepreneur to the same degree.

“We don’t have to change the culture,” Motohashi said. “The important [thing] is to overcome these differences and develop a mutual understanding.”

Teaching younger generations about the entrepreneurial mindset could also improve societal attitudes toward risk-taking. Former U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos said celebrating the entrepreneur was the most important factor in creating a vibrant innovation ecosystem in Japan. “In the end, if you have the proper mindset, you can overcome everything else."

A detailed summary report of the New Channels Dialogue will be released in the coming months on the Shorenstein APARC website.

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Panelists pose for a group shot outside Encina Hall. A conference agenda, final report and listing of the panelists can be viewed here.

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A Stanford conference brings together 21 experts on innovation in Japan and Silicon Valley. | Rod Searcey
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Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) speaker series seeks to promote critical discussions around questions of political change, social and economic rights, power and resistance in the countries of the Arab world. Scholars from across disciplines are invited to present new, innovative research that sheds light on the nuances of ongoing, salient developments and trends in the Arab world, while situating them in a rich historical context.

Thirteenth Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum

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The thirteenth session of the Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum, held in Seoul on December 11, 2014, convened senior South Korean and American policymakers, scholars and regional experts to discuss North Korea policy and recent developments in the Korean peninsula. Hosted by the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, the Forum is also supported by the Korea National Diplomatic Academy.

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The Middle East, North Africa and the World, 1907-2008

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Convened by Professor Joel Beinin and Professor Robert Crews, this one-day conference will explore the global history of the Middle East and North Africa. The conference is chronologically delimited by two New York-centered financial panics that had substantial consequences for the Middle East and North Africa. While the region has long been engaged in global circuits of commerce, culture, and migration, this choice of chronological frame highlights the renewed salience of political economy in several academic disciplines.

 

Conference Program

8:45 -9:00 Welcoming Remarks

9:00 -10:30 Political Economy

Chair: Robert Crews (Stanford University)

Toby Jones (Rutgers University) “Energy and War in the Persian Gulf” (Abstract)

Brandon Wolfe-Honnicutt (California State University, Stanislaus) “Oil, Guns, and Dollars: U.S. Arms Transfers and the Breakdown of Bretton Woods” (Abstract)

10:45-12:15 Ideas and Institutions

Chair: Aishwary Kumar (Stanford University)

Yoav Di-Capua (University of Texas at Austin) “An Iconic Betrayal: Jean Paul Sartre and the Arab World” (Abstract)

Omnia El Shakry (University of California, Davis) “The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and the Psyche in postwar Egypt” (Abstract)

1:30-3:30 Global Palestine

Chair: Hesham Sallam (Stanford University)

Laleh Khalili (University of London, SOAS) “Palestine and Circuits of Coercion” (Abstract)

Ilana Feldman (George Washington University) “Humanitarianism and Revolution: Samed, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, and the work of liberation” (Abstract)

3:15-4:45 Circulation of Popular Culture

Chair: Alexander Key (Stanford University)

Hisham Aidi (Columbia University)  “Frantz Fanon and Judeo-Arab Music” (Abstract)

Paul A. Silverstein (Reed College) “A Global Maghreb: Crossroads, Borderlands, and Frontiers in the Rethinking of Area Studies” (Abstract)

5:00 pm Concluding Remarks

Chair: Joel Beinin (Stanford University)

For more information, please contact The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies abbasiprogram@stanford.edu

*Organized by the The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and co-sponsored by the History Department, CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, The Mediterranean Studies Forum, Stanford Global Studies, and the Stanford Humanities Center*

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Conferences

The 1965-66 Politicide in Indonesia: Toward Knowing Who Did What to Whom and Why

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The nationwide massacres of 1965-66 in Indonesia must have numbered in the thousands, yet historians lack detailed information on particular killings. The scholarly literature on the killings of communist party members and sympathizers typically conveys broad generalizations based on a limited range of sources. In Indonesia today, many people remain confused as to the identity of the perpetrators. Were the massacres carried out by civilians or by army personnel? Were the killings spontaneous or were they officially planned? In addressing such questions, Prof. Roosa will draw upon the latest research on the politicide and his own oral history interviews in Java and Bali. He will argue that the army high command under General Suharto's leadership pushed regional and district commanders to organize the disappearances of detainees, that army officers called upon particular groups of civilians to assist them, and that the army personnel and civilians carried out the massacres in a semi-clandestine manner, ensuring that public knowledge of their dirty work would remain fragmented and confused.

John Roosa has been researching the mysterious events of 1965-66 for the past fifteen years. His book Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto's Coup d'État in Indonesia (2006) was called "the leading book about the 1965 massacres" by the New York Times. The book that he is currently writing presents case studies of specific massacres and explores the difficulties of interpreting memories of violence.

Philippines Conference Room

3rd Floor Encina Hall Central.

616 Serra Street,

Stanford, CA 94305

John Roosa Associate Professor Department of History, University of British Columbia
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