Stanford University

Economic Affairs

More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa

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Lyman and Morrison will discuss the Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force Report on the US and Africa. The Report argues that Africa is becoming steadily more central to the United States and to the rest of the world in ways that transcend humanitarian interests. Africa now plays an increasingly significant role in supplying energy, preventing the spread of terrorism, and halting the devastation of HIV/AIDS. Africa's growing importance is reflected in the intensifying competition with China and other countries for both access to African resources and influence in this region. A more comprehensive U.S. policy toward Africa is needed, the report states, and it lays out recommendations for policymakers to craft that policy. The report is available at www.cfr.org.

Princeton N. Lyman is the Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow and Director for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. Ambassador Lyman served for over three decades at the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), completing his government service as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. He was previously Ambassador to South Africa, Ambassador to Nigeria, Director of Refugee Programs and Director of the USAID Mission to Ethiopia.

From 1999 to 2000, he was Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. Ambassador Lyman held the position of Executive Director of the Global Interdependence Initiative of the Aspen Institute (1999 to 2003) and has received the President's Distinguished Service Award and the Department of State Distinguished Honor Award. Ambassador Lyman has published on foreign policy, African affairs, economic development, HIV/AIDS, UN reform, and peacekeeping. He coauthored the Council on Foreign Relations Special Report entitled Giving Meaning to "Never Again": Seeking an Effective Response to the Crisis in Darfur and Beyond. His book, Partner to History: The U.S. Role in South Africa's Transition to Democracy, was published in 2002. He earned his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. He serves as the Co-Director of the Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force on Africa.

J. Stephen Morrison is Director of the Africa Program and the Task Force on HIV/AIDS at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He joined CSIS in January 2000 and in late 2001, launched the CSIS Task Force on HIV/AIDS. The task force is a multiyear project co-chaired by Senators Bill Frist (R-TN) and John Kerry (D-MA) and funded by the Gates Foundation and the Catherine Marron Foundation. Dr. Morrison co-chaired the reassessment of the U.S. approach to Sudan that laid the basis for the Bush administration push for a negotiated peace settlement, and in the summer of 2002 he organized an energy expert mission to the Sudan peace negotiations in Kenya.

From 1996 through early 2000, Dr. Morrison served on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, where he was responsible for African affairs and global foreign assistance issues. In that position, he led the State Department's initiative on illicit diamonds and chaired an interagency review of the U.S. government's crisis humanitarian programs. From 1993 to 1995, Dr. Morrison conceptualized and launched USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives; he served as the office's first Deputy Director and created post-conflict programs in Angola and Bosnia. From 1992 until mid-1993, Dr. Morrison was the Democracy and Governance Adviser to the U.S. embassies and USAID missions in Ethiopia and Eritrea. He serves as the Co-Director of the Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force on Africa.

CISAC Conference Room

Princeton Lyman Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow and Director for Africa Policy Studies Keynote Speaker Council on Foreign Relations
J. Stephen Morrison Director of the Africa Program and Task Force on HIV/AIDS Keynote Speaker Center for Strategic and International Studies
Seminars

Silicon Valley's Changing Role in the Global Economy

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Five years after the dot-com collapse, what is Silicon Valley's competitive position in the global economy? Russell Hancock and Doug Henton will present overall findings from the 2006 Silicon Valley Index, a document which tracks economic and social trends on an annual basis.

Hancock and Henton will show that the region has experienced a turbulent five-year period of economic restructuring and occupational change, producing both unprecedented job losses and substantial wage gains. This striking juxtaposition -- of job loss against rising per capita income -- indicates a fundamental shift to higher-skilled occupations, suggesting that Silicon Valley has solidified its position as a global center for high-end creativity.

Russell Hancock is President & Chief Executive Officer of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, an organization providing analysis and action on a host of regional problems. Doug Henton is founder and President of Collaborative Economics Inc., a consultancy providing analysis and advice to civic leaders.

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Philippines Conference Room

Russell Hancock President & CEO Speaker Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network
Doug Henton President Speaker Collaborative Economics, Inc.
Seminars
Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE)

The Chinese Labor Market in the Reform Era

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Professor Park will address the changes that have occurred in the Chinese labor market over the past quarter century, focusing on the extent to which labor market reforms have successfully created a well-functioning market for labor with a high degree of labor mobility. Like other rapidly growing developing countries, China has experienced rapid structural change featuring a steady flow of labor from agriculture to industry, and from rural areas to urban areas. As a transition economy, China has shifted gradually from planned allocation of labor in state-sector jobs to a more open labor market. Although the large magnitudes of these changes are impressive, reform of the labor market has been halting, uneven, and difficult, with much additional reform still required. Prof. Park will look at several dimensions of the Chinese labor market: labor allocation, wage setting, regional differences, and ownership sectors. He will conclude by discussing the key policy challenges that lie ahead.

Albert Park is Associate Professor of Economics and Faculty Associate of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. He is also a research affiliate at the Population Studies Center and chairs the faculty steering committee for Michigan's China Data Center. Dr. Park has been a visiting professor and researcher at Harvard University and Peking University, as well as other research institutions in China and Taiwan, and has served as a consultant for the World Bank on several projects analyzing economic development issues in China, including the Bank's current China Poverty Assessment project. Dr. Park earned a Ph.D. in applied economics from the Food Research Institute and Department of Economics at Stanford University in 1996. His research interests include economic development, economic transition, labor, applied microeconomics, and the Chinese economy. He is involved in numerous collaborative research activities in China, including several large survey projects to study labor market developments in urban areas, and rural education, health, and labor outcomes. He has published over thirty journal articles and chapters in edited volumes, and is the coeditor of a forthcoming volume titled Education and Reform in China. At Michigan, he teaches a graduate course on the microeconomics of development and an undergraduate course on the Chinese economy.

This series is co-sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University.

Philippines Conference Room

Albert Park Associate Professor of Economics Speaker University of Michigan
Seminars

CESP senior fellows receive funding from the Presidential Fund to support the launch of the new program on Food Security and the Environment

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"Feeding the World in the 21st Century: Exploring the Connections Between Food Production, Health, Enviromental Resources and International Security," was one of eight projects to be be awarded.

Eight research projects led by multidisciplinary-faculty teams have jointly received $1.05 million in the first round of awards made by Stanford's new $3 million Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies.

Coit D. Blacker, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said the fund is the first program launched by the university's International Initiative, which seeks to encourage collaborative, cross-disciplinary approaches to address the global challenges of pursuing peace and security, improving governance and advancing human well-being.

The multi-year projects, selected by the International Initiative's executive committee from 37 proposals, will bring together faculty from fields that traditionally do not collaborate to produce new courses, symposia, conferences and research papers. Blacker, who chairs the executive committee, said additional awards totaling about $2 million will be made in 2007 and 2008.

President John Hennessy said he supports the research projects. "The world does not come to us as neat disciplinary problems, but as complex interdisciplinary challenges," he said. "The collaborative proposals we have selected for this first round of funding offer great potential to help shed light on some of the most persistent and pressing political issues on the global agenda today."

Projects in the first round of funding include:

Governance under Authoritarian Rule. Stephen Haber and Beatriz Magaloni, political science; Ian Morris, classics, history; and Jennifer Trimble, classics. The researchers will examine the political economy of authoritarian systems and determine why some authoritarian governments are able to make the transition to democracy, stable growth and functioning institutions, while others prove predatory and unstable.

Addressing Institutional and Interest Conflicts: Project Governance Structures for Global Infrastructure Development. Raymond Levitt, civil and environmental engineering; Doug McAdam and W. Richard Scott, sociology. The project will analyze the challenges of creating efficient and effective public/private institutions for the provision of low-cost, distributed and durable infrastructure services in emerging economies.

Combating HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa: The Treatment Revolution and Its Impact on Health, Well-Being and Governance. David Katzenstein, infectious diseases; and Jeremy Weinstein, political science. Based on the 2005 Group of 8's commitment to put 10 million people infected with HIV/AIDS on treatment within five years, this project will research the impact of this treatment revolution on health, well-being and governance in sub-Saharan Africa.

Evaluating Institutional Responses to Market Liberalization: Why Latin America Was Left Behind. Judith Goldstein, political science; Avner Greif, economics; Steven Haber, political science; Herb Klein, history; H. Grant Miller, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI)/medicine; and Barry Weingast, political science. The project will research the interaction between inequality and Latin American institutions in explaining the poor economic performance of countries in the region during the past two decades, examining why reforms such as trade liberalization have failed to yield expected results.

Feeding the World in the 21st Century: Exploring the Connections Between Food Production, Health, Environmental Resources and International Security. Rosamond L. Naylor, FSI/economics; Stephen J. Stedman, FSI/political science; Peter Vitousek, biological sciences; and Gary Schoolnik, medicine, microbiology and immunology. The group will launch a new research and teaching program, titled "Food Security and the Environment," with an initial priority on determining linkages between food security, health and international security, and globalization, agricultural trade and the environment.

The Political Economy of Cultural Diversity. James D. Fearon, political science; and Romain Wacziarg, Graduate School of Business. The researchers will assess the impact of ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity on economic growth, trade and capital flows, governance, development of democracy and political stability.

In addition, two grants to plan forthcoming research projects have received $25,000:

Global Health by Design. Geoffrey Gurtner, plastic and reconstructive surgery; David Kelley, mechanical engineering; Thomas Krummel, surgery; Julie Parsonnet, medicine, health research and policy; and Paul Yock, medicine, bioengineering. The group will design a project to examine how new technology can be used to develop effective, affordable and sustainable methods and devices to prevent disease in the world's poorest countries.

Ecological Sanitation in Rural Haiti: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Sanitation and Soil Fertility. Ralph Greco, surgery; and Rodolfo Dirzo, biological sciences. The researchers will develop a plan to test the efficacy of ecological sanitation in decreasing disease and enhancing soil fertility in rural Haiti.

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Role of R&D in Indian IT Services Companies

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Having developed domain expertise in offshore outsourcing of software development services, some Indian IT companies have moved up the value chain and expanded the sophistication of their offerings. For example, Tata Consultancy Services has developed unique competence and intellectual property in areas such as automation of software development, engineering services, life sciences, and enterprise software products, through investments in R&D. Dr. Shroff's presentation will discuss the increasing role of R&D and intellectual property in the Indian IT industry with TCS as a leading example.

Prior to joining TCS in 1998, Dr. Shroff had been on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA, after which he joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India. Dr. Shroff graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, in 1985 and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY, USA, in 1990.

Philippines Conference Room

Gautam Shroff Vice President of Technology Programs Speaker Tata Consultancy Services
Seminars

New Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies awards eight grants totaling $1.05 million

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Stanford, CA - The Office of the President and the Stanford International Initiative announced today that eight new interdisciplinary research grants totaling $1.05 million have been awarded to Stanford faculty. The grants are the first to be awarded from Stanford's new $3 million Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies (PFIIS), created to support interdisciplinary research and teaching on three overarching global challenges: pursuing peace and security, improving governance, and advancing human well-being.

"The world does not come to us as neat disciplinary problems, but as complex interdisciplinary challenges," said Stanford President John Hennessy. "The collaborative proposals we have selected for this first round of funding offer great potential to help shed light on some of the most persistent and pressing political issues on the global agenda today - issues acutely important to our common future," he stated.

The research projects qualifying for first round funding of $1.025 million are:

  • Governance under Authoritarian Rule. Stephen Haber and Beatriz Magaloni, Political Science. Ian Morris, Classics, History and Jennifer Trimble, Classics. Will examine the political economy of authoritarian systems and determine why some authoritarian governments are able to transition to democracy, stable growth and functioning institutions, while others prove predatory and unstable.
  • Addressing Institutional and Interest Conflicts: Project Governance Structures for Global Infrastructure Development. Raymond Levitt, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Doug McAdam and W. Richard Scott, Sociology. Will analyze the challenges of creating efficient and effective structures for the provision of low cost, distributed and durable infrastructure services in emerging economies.
  • Combating HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa: The Treatment Revolution and its Impact on Health, Well-Being and Governance. David Katzenstein, Infectious Diseases, and Jeremy Weinstein, Political Science. Based on the 2005 Group of 8 commitment to put 10 million people infected with HIV/AIDS on treatment within five years, will research the impact of this treatment revolution on health, well-being and governance in Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Evaluating Institutional Responses to Market Liberalization: Why Latin America Was Left Behind. Judith Goldstein, Political Science, Avner Greif, Economics, Stephen Haber, Political Science, Herb Klein, History, H.Grant Miller, FSI/Medicine, and Barry Weingast, Political Science. Will research the interaction between inequality and Latin American institutions in explaining the poor economic performance of Latin American countries in the past two decades, examining why reforms such as trade liberalization have failed to yield expected results.
  • Feeding the World in the 21st Century: Exploring the Connections Between Food Production, Health, Environmental Resources, and International Security. Rosamond Naylor, FSI/Economics, Stephen Stedman, FSI/Political Science, Peter Vitousek, Biological Sciences, and Gary Schoolnik, Medicine, Microbiology & Immunology. Launches new research and teaching program on "Food Security and the Environment," with an initial priority on determining linkages between Food Security, Health and International Security, and Globalization, Agricultural Trade and the Environment.
  • The Political Economy of Cultural Diversity. James D. Fearon, Political Science, and Romain Wacziarg, Graduate School of Business. Will assess the impact of ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity on economic growth, trade and capital flows, governance, development of democracy and political stability.

Two planning grants were also awarded:

  • Global Health by Design. Geoffrey Gurtner, Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, David Kelley, Mechanical Engineering, Thomas Krummel, Surgery, Julie Parsonnet, Medicine, Health Research & Policy, and Paul Yock, Medicine, Bioengineering. Will design a project to examine how new technology can be used to develop effective, affordable and sustainable methods and devices to prevent disease in the world's poorest countries.
  • Ecological Sanitation in Rural Haiti: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Sanitation & Soil Fertility. Ralph Greco, Surgery, and Rodolfo Dirzo, Biological Sciences. Will develop a plan to test the efficacy of ecological sanitation in decreasing disease and enhancing soil fertility in rural Haiti.

"Addressing some of the most significant problems of our day, in the fields of security, governance and human well-being, will require imaginative thinking, bold approaches, and interdisciplinary collaboration," stated Coit D. Blacker, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and Chair of the International Initiative's Executive Committee. "The Executive Committee was encouraged to receive more than 35 proposals of an impressive caliber, and after careful review, to award these first grants," Blacker said.

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Nuclear Fuel Supply Assurance

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Michael May is emeritus professor Emeritus (research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with FSI. He is the former co-director of CISAC, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000.

May is emeritus director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the laboratory from 1965 to 1971. May was technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards. May's current research interests are in the area of safeguarding the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear terrorism, energy, security and environment, and the relation of nuclear weapons and foreign policy.

Chaim Braun is a vice president of Altos Management Partners, Inc., and a CISAC science fellow and affiliate. He is a member of the Near-Term Deployment and the Economic Cross-Cut Working Groups of the Department of Energy (DOE) Generation IV Roadmap study. He conducted several nuclear economics-related studies for the DOE Nuclear Energy Office, the Energy Information Administration, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Non-Proliferation Trust International, and others.

Braun has worked as a member of Bechtel Power Corporation's Nuclear Management Group, and led studies on power plant performance and economics used to support maintenance services. Braun has worked on a study of safeguarding the Agreed Framework in North Korea, he was the co-leader of a NATO Study of Terrorist Threats to Nuclear Power Plants, led CISAC's Summer Study on Terrorist Threats to Research Reactors, and most recently co-authored an article with CISAC Co-Director Chris Chyba on nuclear proliferation rings. His research project this year is entitled "The Energy Security Initiative and a Nuclear Fuel Cycle Center: Two Enhancement Options for the Current Non-Proliferation Regime."

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Michael M. May Speaker
Chaim Braun Speaker
Seminars
Preventing Nuclear Proliferation and Terrorism

Tokugawa Social Status Reconsidered

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Dr. Mario Oshima will argue that Tokugawa social status should be understood as a two-line system comprised by occupational statuses such as warriors (bushi) and nobles (kuge), and regional ones such as farmers (hyakusho) and merchants (chonin), rather than single line system of warrior-peasant-artisan-merchant. He will explain why the typical four story single line conception has prevailed. Finally, he will address how this two-line conception sheds light on some comparisons between the US and Japan in terms of the relation between the individual and the organization in society.

Co-sponsored by CEAS.

Philippines Conference Room

Mario Oshima Professor, Economic History of Japan, Graduate School of Economics Speaker Osaka City University
Lectures
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