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.

Guest Lecture: China’s Coal and Power Conflict and Its Broad Impacts

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PESD researcher Gang He will be guest lecturing in Stanford University's China Energy System course on China's coal and power conflict and its broad impacts on Chinese energy and climate policy.  He will discuss the most important feature in China's energy market - coal and power conflict, explain why there is a conflict and how it come into being, and analyze the broad impacts of the conflict on deploying CCS at scale and applying CDM in the Chinese power market.  Gang will also highlight some possible solutions to the coal and power conflict in China's energy market.

China Energy System(CEE 276F) is a directed readings course that studies the energy resources and policies in use and under development in the world's most populous nation.  As a country undergoing rapid and sustained economic growth, China's decisions as to how to meet its energy requirements will affect global energy markets and impact the global environment.  This course focuses on the areas of major impact that are forecast and will present a comparative analysis of China's energy management strategies.

Y2E2 111

Gang He

616 Serra St.
E420 Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 725-4249 (650) 724-1717
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Research Associate
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Gang He's work focuses on China's energy and climate change policy, carbon capture and sequestration, domestic coal and power sectors and their key role in both the global coal market and in international climate policy framework.  He also studies other issues related to energy economics and modeling, global climate change and the development of lower-carbon energy sources. 

Prior to joining PESD, he was with the World Resources Institute as a Cynthia Helms Fellow.  He has also worked for the Global Roundtable on Climate Change of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. With his experiences both in US and China, he has been actively involved in the US-China collaboration on energy and climate change. 

Mr. He received an M.A. from Columbia University on Climate and Society, B.S. from Peking University on Geography, and he is currently doing a PhD in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley.

Gang He Speaker
Lectures

How and Why US Counties and UK Registration Areas Differ in the Distribution of Age at Death

This project aimed to assemble a US mortality data series with county-level identifiers and assembled data on covariates at the county level (education, income, health care). The researcher analyzed changes in variance at adult death and the age distribution of deaths within counties as well as among them. In addition he assembled a UK mortality data set at the local area level and analyzed change in the age distribution of deaths within and among local areas.

Making the Connection: Partnerships in Sustainable Energy & Development Finance

Yale School of Management
General Motors Room
55 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT.

Mark C. Thurber

Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall East, Rm E412
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 724-9709 (650) 724-1717
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Mark C. Thurber is Associate Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) at Stanford University, where he studies and teaches about energy and environmental markets and policy. Dr. Thurber has written and edited books and articles on topics including global fossil fuel markets, climate policy, integration of renewable energy into electricity markets, and provision of energy services to low-income populations.

Dr. Thurber co-edited and contributed to Oil and Governance: State-owned Enterprises and the World Energy Supply  (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and The Global Coal Market: Supplying the Major Fuel for Emerging Economies (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is the author of Coal (Polity Press, 2019) about why coal has thus far remained the preeminent fuel for electricity generation around the world despite its negative impacts on local air quality and the global climate.

Dr. Thurber teaches a course on energy markets and policy at Stanford, in which he runs a game-based simulation of electricity, carbon, and renewable energy markets. With Dr. Frank Wolak, he also conducts game-based workshops for policymakers and regulators. These workshops explore timely policy topics including how to ensure resource adequacy in a world with very high shares of renewable energy generation.

Dr. Thurber has previous experience working in high-tech industry. From 2003-2005, he was an engineering manager at a plant in Guadalajara, México that manufactured hard disk drive heads. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.S.E. from Princeton University.

Associate Director for Research at PESD
Social Science Research Scholar
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Workshops

April 2010 Dispatch - Breaking the News to North Koreans

Authors
Peter M. Beck
News Type
News
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North Korea is usually described as the “most isolated country on earth,” its people effectively cut off from the outside world. My research tells a different story—that perhaps one million North Koreans are secretly listening to foreign radio broadcasts. The number of listeners is believed to be growing, which is all the more amazing when one considers that North Korean authorities only distribute radios with fixed dials, assiduously jam foreign broadcasts, and send citizens caught listening to foreign radio to the country’s notorious gulags for as long as ten years.

Over a dozen radio stations from the United States, South Korea, and Japan currently broadcast to North Korea. Voice of America (VOA), one of the most popular stations, has been broadcasting to the North since 1942, while the equally popular Radio Free Asia (RFA) began its Korean broadcasts soon after being created by Congress in 1997. VOA focuses on news of the United States and the world, while RFA concentrates on the two Koreas. RFA also carries commentaries by two Korean speakers who grew up in the former Soviet Union and Romania. RFA serves as a substitute for the lack of a “free” station in North Korea, but unlike a typical “surrogate station”—which would be staffed largely by émigrés—RFA only employs one North Korean defector.

South Korea’s “Global Korean Network” has been declining in popularity since it ceased to focus on North Korea and adopted a decidedly soft approach after the election of Kim Dae-jung as president in 1997. However, three stations run by North Korean defectors have sprouted up over the past few years, led by Free North Korea Radio (FRNK). These stations employ stringers in North Korea who can communicate by cell phone or smuggle out interviews through China. As a result, information is flowing in and out of the North more rapidly than ever. For example, when major economic reforms were undertaken in 2002, it was months before the rest of the world knew. In contrast, when the regime launched a disastrous currency reform on November 30, 2009, FNKR filed a report within hours.

How do we know that North Koreans are actually listening to foreign broadcasts? First, on dozens of occasions, authorities in Pyongyang have used their own media to attack foreign broadcasters. The North reserves the insult “reptile” exclusively to describe foreign broadcasters. In late March 2010, the regime likened defector broadcasters to “human trash.” Ironically, this diatribe also contained the first official mention of the currency revaluation, so broadcasters have clearly struck a nerve. If they were in fact irrelevant, the regime would ignore them instead of lavishing them with free publicity.

Broadcasters to North Korea frequently receive heartbreaking messages from North Koreans in China, thanking them for their efforts. One listener described RFA as “our one ray of hope.” More importantly, over the past several years, thousands of North Korean defectors, refugees, and visitors to China have been interviewed about their listening habits. An unpublished 2009 survey of North Koreans in China found that over 20 percent had listened to the banned broadcasts, and almost all of them had shared the information with family members and friends. Several other surveys confirm these findings. While we cannot generalize the listening habits of a self-selected group to the general population, it is not unreasonable to conclude that there are more than a million surreptitious listeners. The North Korean regime is not only losing its monopoly on the control of information; defectors also cite foreign radio listening as one of the leading motivations to defect.

Despite valiant efforts and growing impact, much more could be done to improve broadcasting to North Korea. VOA and RFA only broadcast five hours a day, and the defector stations limp along with shoestring budgets, due to a pervasive indifference within South Korea.

President Obama’s human rights envoy for North Korea, Robert King, has pledged to expand funding for Korean broadcasting. For its part, Pyongyang claims that foreign broadcasts are part of the Obama administration’s “hostile policy” toward the North. Only time will tell if these efforts will lead to change we can believe in—both in Washington and Pyongyang.

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Shorenstein APARC Dispatches are regular bulletins designed exclusively for our friends and supporters. Written by center faculty and scholars, Shorenstein APARC Dispatches deliver timely, succinct analysis on current events and trends in Asia, often discussing their potential implications for business.

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The Greatest Nuclear Risks

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This talk is part of the Defusing the Nuclear Threat lecture series.

Siegfried Hecker is Director Emeritus of Los Alamos National Laboratories and co-Director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He describes his talk as follows: The exchange of hundreds of nuclear weapons which would threaten life on Earth as we know it has all but disappeared with the end of the Cold War. The potential of a limited nuclear exchange has increased with the spread of nuclear weapons to places like South Asia. Yet, the greatest nuclear risk stems from the potential of sub-national or terrorist groups obtaining fissile materials, building an improvised nuclear device, and exploding it in a major city somewhere in the world. I will present my list of the greatest threats, headed by Pakistan, and explore what we must do to manage these risks.

A map and parking information can be found here.

Hewlett Teaching Center, Room 201

Siegfried S. Hecker

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C220
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-6468 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Research Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
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Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.

Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.

Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.

Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

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Siegfried Hecker Co-Director of CISAC and Professor (Research), Department of Management Science and Engineering; FSI Senior Fellow Speaker
Lectures

Nuclear Deterrence: Past, Present and Future

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This talk is part of the Defusing the Nuclear Threat lecture series.

Joseph Martz is the inaugural William Perry CISAC Fellow at Stanford, on leave from Los Alamos, where he headed their RRW (Reliable Replacement Warhead) design team. This talk reviews US nuclear weapons development and its close linkage to deterrence during the Cold War. Looking forward, the shift in policy to a goal of further reductions in, and ultimate elimination of, nuclear weapons presents new challenges. It will be suggested how – contrary to popular thinking – redesigning our nuclear weapons and reconfiguring the nuclear weapons complex could contribute to further reductions, and potentially, the elimination of nuclear weapons.

 

A map and parking information can be found here.

Hewlett Teaching Center, Room 201

Joseph C. Martz Consulting Professor Speaker CISAC
Lectures

Automating Counterinsurgency

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This is part of the Stanford seminar series on Science, Technology, and Society.

Hugh Gusterson
Born in the UK, Hugh Gusterson took a B.A. in history at Cambridge University in 1980, a Masters degree in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1982, and a PhD in anthropology at Stanford University in 1992.  Somewhere in between he worked for a couple of social change organizations.  He was a professor at MIT from 1992-2006, when he came to George Mason University.  He has done fieldwork in the United States and Russia, where he has studied the culture of nuclear weapons scientists and antinuclear activists.  He also writes about militarism and about science more generally, and has a strong interest in professional ethics.  He is the author of Nuclear Rites (UC Press, 1996) and People of the Bomb (Minnesota, 2004) and co-editor of Cultures of Insecurity (Minnesota, 1999) and Why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong (UC Press, 2005).  As well as writing for scholarly journals, he has a regular online column for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and has published in numerous newspapers and magazines.

Co-sponsored by STS and CISAC.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Hugh Gusterson Professor of Cultural Studies Speaker George Mason University
Seminars

The Nature of Technology

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This is part of the Stanford seminar series on Science, Technology, and Society.

Abstract
How do transformative new technologies arise, and how does innovation really work? Conventional thinking ascribes the invention of technologies to “thinking outside the box,” or vaguely to genius or creativity, but Arthur shows that such explanations are inadequate. Rather, technologies are put together from pieces  themselves technologies  that already exist. Technologies therefore share common ancestries, and combine, morph, and combine again, to create further technologies. Technology evolves much as a coral reef builds itself from activities of small organisms  it creates itself from itself; and all technologies are descended from earlier technologies.

W. Brian Arthur is an External Faculty Member at the Santa Fe Institute, IBM Faculty Fellow, and Visiting Researcher in the Intelligent Systems Lab at PARC (formerly Xerox Parc). From 1983 to 1996 he was Morrison Professor of Economics and Population Studies at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. from Berkeley in Operations Research, and has other degrees in economics, engineering and mathematics.

Arthur pioneered the modern study of positive feedbacks or increasing returns in the economy--in particular their role in magnifying small, random events in the economy. This work has gone on to become the basis of our understanding of the high-tech economy. He has recently published a new book: The Nature of Technology: What it Is and How it Evolves, "an elegant and powerful theory of technology's origins and evolution."He is also one of the pioneers of the science of complexity.

Arthur was the first director of the Economics Program at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, and has served on SFI's Science Board and Board of Trustees. He is the recipient of the Schumpeter Prize in economics, the Lagrange Prize in complexity science, and two honorary doctorates.

Arthur is a frequent keynote speaker on such topics as: How exactly does innovation work and how can it be fostered? What is happening in the economy, and how should we rethink economics? How is the digital revolution playing out in the economy? How will US and European national competitiveness fare, given the rise of China and India?

Lynn Eden is Associate Director for Research at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford. In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Co-sponsored by STS, CISAC, and WTO.

Arthur's new book, The Nature of Technology, will be available for purchase.

Please bring lunch; drinks and light refreshments will be provided.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Brian Arthur External Professor Speaker Santa Fe Institute

Lynn Eden

Not in residence

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Affiliate
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Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.

In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.

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Lynn Eden Senior Research Scholar and Associate Director of Research Speaker CISAC
Seminars

Corruption in Africa

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Nuhu Ribadu is a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development. His work at the Center, which began in April 2009, is to draw lessons from his experience for combating corruption worldwide and to provide fresh thinking on the role of international institutions in this fight. Before joining CGD, Nuhu was head of Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) from 2003 to 2007. He served on several economic and anti-corruption commissions and was a key member of Nigeria's economic management team that drove wide-ranging public sector reforms. Nuhu was awarded with the World Bank's Jit Gill Memorial Award for Outstanding Public Service in recognition of his efforts. Prior to leading the EFCC, Nuhu spent 18 years in the Nigerian police force. A lawyer by training, he received his Bachelors and Masters in Law from Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria. Nuhu is also a Senior Fellow at St. Anthony's College at Oxford University in the UK.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Nuhu Ribadu Visiting Fellow Speaker Center for Global Development
Seminars

Some Nukes

Authors
Leonard Weiss
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs
CISAC Affiliate Leonard Weiss responds to a March 22, 2010 article by New Yorker Senior Editor Hendrik Hertzberg

Hendrik Hertzberg writes that the end of the Cold War and the coming of global warming have brought about increased support for nuclear power, even among some environmentalists (The Talk of the Town, March 22nd). But many of us who work on nuclear-proliferation issues are dismayed by the growth of nuclear energy. Expanded nuclear power in industrial countries will inevitably mean expanded nuclear exports to less developed countries as manufacturers try to recoup their investments in a limited domestic market by selling abroad. It can be shown statistically that countries that receive nuclear assistance are more likely to build nuclear weapons, especially when they perceive threats to their security. India, Pakistan, and Israel started their nuclear programs with the importation of research reactors carrying peaceful-use requirements; with help from other countries, they were able to then realize their desire for weapons. Iran appears to be heading in the same direction. Given the documented interest in nuclear materials of terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, and given the questionable assumptions that nuclear-energy economics is fraught with, it makes little sense to push nuclear power at a time when protections against proliferation are still so problematic. Improved energy efficiency is a safer, greener, and cheaper alternative.

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