Join Professor Falcon for a discussion of where our food comes from now, where it will come from in the future, and how these changes may affect international relations. Lunch will be provided!
Room 280A in the Law school (Crown Quadrangle, 559 Nathan Abbott Way)
In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:
Wataru Ishii, "Promotion of Tourism in Japan: Policies and Plans for Development and Involvement of Local Institutions"
Tourism is an industry that covers a lot of areas, such as hotels, transportation, food services and one of a few industries where growth can be expected in the future. Because of the economic importance of tourism, the Japanese National Government established the Japan Tourism Agency in 2008 and has begun to try to make Japan "Tourism Nation" and local governments are following suit. Ishii studies the significance of tourism in Japan and policies to attract foreign tourists that will compensate for stagnant domestic tourists.
Yuichi Moronaga, "The Essential Value - Connecting and Sharing Emotions - Storytelling in the Social Media Era"
Customers have high expectations when making purchases. They expect products to provide value and, at the same time, satisfy their sense of emotions. Storytelling is an important factor when it comes to these customer purchases. Knowing the story behind the product or company can create strong attachments and this "essential value" is an important factor in the buying cycle. These emotions may encourage our next behavior, whether it's repeat buying or long-term usage. With the increased usage of social media, this type of cycle that is created is vital for a company's marketing plan as well as providing increased motivation of a company's employees. In this presentation, Moronaga shares examples of storytelling, demonstrating how dynamically storytelling is changing people's purchasing behaviors and the opportunities presented.
Hirofumi Takinami, "Political Economy of the Financial Crises in Japan and the United States: Why the Difference in Speed to Respond and Recover?"
Within the last two decades, the United States and Japan each experienced the same type of financial crisis, notably triggered by the collapse of major financial institutions. Both were under the political economic conditions of one of the largest economies in the world as well as of an advanced democratic country. However, it is symbolically different that Japan let the institutions go into chain-reaction bankruptcies without injecting public money in 1997, while the U.S. undertook a bailout of AIG just after the Lehman bankruptcy in 2008. And now the U.S. economy is showing earlier recovery compared to what Japan experienced. -- What made this difference in speed to respond and recover? To explain this puzzle, Takinami focuses on (a) existence of precedent & learning, (b) speed and process of economic downturn toward the crisis, (c) action by national leader & secretarial organization, and (d) status of global standard setter, together with assessing the alternative explanations. Then, he argues some implications of these analyses.
Philippines Conference Room
Agriculture in Africa has grown steadily for the past 15 years. But that economic improvement is just making up for the preceding two decades of stagnation, says Ousmane Badiane, Africa director for the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
And future progress toward industrialization depends on continued agricultural growth, he says.
Badiane will deliver a lecture on April 7, titled Why Has Africa Been Slow in Developing its Agriculture?. He will discuss the current state of agriculture in Africa, the technological resources available and policies needed for economic growth, and how agriculture can address the country's challenge of poverty.
The talk will begin at 4 p.m. at the Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall. It is free and open to the public.
A citizen of Senegal working in IFPRI's Washington, D.C., office, Badiane coordinates the organization's food policy research and communications throughout Africa.
From 1998 until mid-2008, Badiane worked at the World Bank as a lead specialist for food and agricultural policy for the Africa region.
As a senior research fellow at IFPRI from 1989 until 1997, Badiane led the institute's work on market reforms and development. He taught as an adjunct professor at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies from 1993 until 2003.
Stanford's Program for Food Security and the Environment (FSE) sponsors the two-year Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series, which is funded by a $1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Jeff Raikes, chief executive officer of the Gates Foundation, and Greg Page, chief executive officer and chairman of Cargill Inc., delivered the first lecture, Improving Food Security in the 21st Century: What are the Roles for Firms and Foundations, in February.
Future seminars will cover policy development to increase wealth, agricultural productivity and resource stewardship.
All lectures will be videotaped and posted on the symposium website, Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series.
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
Tenancy markets provide an opportunity to trade land between labor-scarce farmers, that is those who engage in off-farm employment, and land-scarce farmers, that is those who want to expand agricultural production. For emerging middle-income countries where rural to urban migration is active, facilitating a well-functioning tenancy markets is important to increase farmer's income and improve agricultural productivity. Although the existing literature argues that high transaction costs are the major source of market failure, the nature of transaction costs is seldom explored. We hypothesize that the search and negotiation costs and the expected loss of land, due to weak property rights, are the major components of the transaction costs in tenancy markets and that they lead to smaller numbers of rental transactions. We also find empirical evidence in support of these hypotheses using farm household data from China.
It is now widely recognized that a rigorous, policy-relevant impact evaluation embeds the counterfactual analysis of impact in a wider analysis of the underlying program theory (theory of change) of the intervention, also referred to as causal chain analysis. Unpacking the causal chain requires a combination of factual and counterfactual analysis. The seminar will present examples of causal chains. The types of data collection and analysis – both quantitative and qualitative – to analyze the different links in the chain will be discussed. A major challenge in mixed methods is to truly integrate quantitative and qualitative approaches.
About the speaker
Howard White formerly led the impact evaluation program of the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank, where he was responsible for impact studies on basic education in Ghana, health and nutrition in Bangladesh, rural electrification, rural development in Andhra Pradesh and a review of impact studies of water supply and sanitation.
Philippines Conference Room
