450 Serra Mall, Building 250
Main Quad
Stanford, CA 94305-2000
Jan Fischer was born in Prague in 1951 to a family of mathematical statisticians and actuarial mathematicians. His father was a scientific employee of the Mathematics Institute of the Czech Academy of Science and devoted himself to statistical applications in genetics, breeding and medicine.
Fischer finished his studies at the national economics faculty of the University of Economics, Prague with a degree in statistics and econometrics in 1974. He joined the statistical office after university, where he worked until the beginning of the 1980s as a research employee of the Research Institute of Socioeconomic Information (then a part of the statistics office). In 1985, he finished his post-graduate studies at the Prague School of Economics and gained the title of Candidate of Science in the field of economic statistics. He served in various functions at the Federal Statistical Office until 1990, when he became deputy chairman of the office. After the creation of an independent Czech Republic in 1993, he became the deputy chairman of the Czech Statistical Office.
From the beginning of the 1990s he led teams processing the results of parliamentary and municipal elections. He was also in charge of contacts with the European Union's Eurostat statistical office. In the spring of 2001, he worked on a mission of the International Monetary Fund which examined the possibility of building statistical services in East Timor.
From September 2000 he worked as the director of the production department for the Taylor Nelson Sofres Factum company, and from March 2002 until his naming as chairman of the Czech Statistical Office, he was the head of the research facilities of the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics of the Prague School of Economics.
He was named chairman of the Czech Statistical Office by the President of the Czech Republic on 24 April 2003.
He was named Prime Minister by the President of the Czech Republic on 9 April 2009.
He is a member of a number of prestigious institutions, including the Czech Statistics Society, the International Statistics Institute, the Science Council, the Board of Trustees of the University of Economics, Prague, as well as the Science Council of the University of J.E. Purkyně in Ústí nad Labem.
Jan Fischer is married for the second time and is the father of three children.
Ambassador Stephen W. Bosworth, the U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy, spoke March 4 at Shorenstein APARC to members of the Stanford community and invited guests. Bosworth had just returned from a round of consultations the previous week with foreign counterparts in Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo.
In his off-the-record remarks at Shorenstein APARC, Bosworth reviewed the North Korean nuclear weapons problem since his appointment as Special Representative a year ago. He discussed recent developments, including his own visit to Pyongyang in December 2009, and noted his talks with his Six Party Talks counterparts. The Six Party Talks are hosted by the People's Republic of China, and include the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia. These talks are aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons development in exchange for security guarantees and a lifting of international sanctions.
Ambassador Bosworth is concurrently dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. A former career diplomat, he served as U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines and South Korea. During this visit to Stanford, he also consulted with Stanford policy experts, including George P. Shultz, the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution; William J. Perry, the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor at FSI and Engineering; and Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow Michael H. Armacost.
The extent and existence of "defensive medicine" -- excessive medical care to defend a physician against malpractice claims -- is a perennial subject of both policy and academic debate. For example, malpractice liability and associated defensive medicine are among the most-cited reasons for escalating health-care spending in the United States.
In this colloquium, Dr. Brian Chen will present results from his research investigating the extent of defensive medicine in Taiwan. He studies the impact of a series of court rulings in Taiwan that increased physicians’ liability risks, and a subsequent amendment to the law that reversed the courts’ rulings, on physicians’ test-ordering behavior and propensity to perform Caesarean sections. He finds that physicians faced with higher malpractice pressure increased laboratory tests as expected, but unexpectedly reduced Caesarean sections. (The reduction in Caesarean deliveries may be due to the fact that liability risks were more closely aligned with physicians’ standard of care after the court rulings.) After the law was amended to negate the court decisions, physicians reversed their previous behavior by reducing laboratory tests and increasing Caesarean deliveries.
This pattern of behavior is highly suggestive of the existence of defensive medicine among physicians in Taiwan. In other words, by studying physicians' response to legal changes in Taiwan, we find that greater malpractice liability may, under certain circumstances, prompt physicians to perform more services without necessarily improving patient health.
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.
Philippines Conference Room
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E-301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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.
AGENDA
8:50-9:00 Welcome Remarks by Christer Prusiainen and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss
9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. "Political Transformation in Russia"
Chair: Linda Jakobson, Senior Fellow, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Paper Presenter: Christer Pursiainen, the Council on Baltic States
Discussant: Dr. Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Deputy Director, CDDRL, Stanford University
10:00-11:00 a.m. "Political Transformation in China"
Chair: Linda Jakobson, Senior Fellow, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Paper Presenter: Minxin Pei, Professor of Government, Claremont McKenna College
Discussant: Kevin O'Brien, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkley
11:00-11:15 a.m. Coffee Break
11:15 a.m. -12:15 p.m. "Chinese Foreign Policy in the New Era"
Chair: Christer Pursiainen, the Council on Baltic States
Paper Presenter: Sergei Medvedev, Professor, Moscow Higher School of Economics
Discussant: Steven Fish, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
12:15-13:15 p.m. Lunch (Outside the Conference Room)
13:15-14:15: "Russia Foreign Policy in the New Era"
Chair: Christer Pursiainen, the Council on Baltic States
Paper Presenter: Linda Jakobson, Senior Fellow, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Discussant: Tom Fingar, Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University
14:15-15:15 p.m. "Social Stratification in China since Reform"
Chair: Minxin Pei, Professor Claremont McKenna College
Paper Presenter: Dr. Li Chunling, Professor, Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Discussant: Andrew Walder, Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology, Stanford University
15:15-15:30 p.m. Coffee Break
15:30-16:30 p.m. "Social Stratification in Russia"
Chair: Minxin Pei, Professor, Claremont McKenna College
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Edited by center faculty members Jean C. Oi, Xueguang Zhou, and Scott Rozelle, Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunity in China's Transformation contains new analytical and empirical research on the challenges that China must face if it is to continue its upward trajectory.
In One Alliance, Two Lenses, Shorenstein APARC director Gi-Wook Shin examines U.S.-Korea relations in a short but dramatic period that witnessed the end of the Cold war, South Korea's full democratization, inter-Korean engagement, two nuclear crises, and the start of the U.S. war on terror.
The question of whether President Ma Ying-jeou will be reelected has already become a hot issue in Taiwan, two years in advance of the next presidential election. In this special seminar, Professor Ying-lung You, a political scientist and one of the most prominent political strategists in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), will analyze the current political and electoral landscape of Taiwan and the possible future trends. Whereas some may argue that the question of Ma’s reelection is a question mark only for those who oppose him, Professor You argues that the reality is rather different. This is particularly so after the ruling KMT party has encountered five consecutive setbacks in the recent elections. In this seminar, Professor You will provide firsthand information about the recent election campaigns in Taiwan. By carefully examining Taiwan’s shifting political landscape, he will give us his prediction about the prospects of both the DPP and the KMT in the 2012 presidential election.
Dr. Ying-lung You received his B.A. and M.A. from National Taiwan University, and his Ph.D. in political science from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 1995-96, he was executive director of Election Strategy and Campaigning for the DPP. In 1999, he directed election strategy and public opinion polls in the campaign headquarters of then former Taipei City major Chen Shui-Bian, who later won the presidential election in March 2000. In 2000-01, he served as vice-chairman of the Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission of the Executive Yuan. In 2002-03, he served as Deputy Secretary General for the DPP and in 2003-05 as Vice President of the Katagalan Institute. From 2005 to 2008, he served as the vice chairman of the Mainland Affairs Commission of the Executive Yuan and concurrently served as vice Chairman and secretary-general of the Strait Exchanges Foundation, through which positions he was mainly responsible for Taiwan’s Cross-Strait policy making under the DPP administration. His research interests are public opinion, voting behavior, democratization, constitutional choices, and cross-strait relations. He is the author/editor of 4 books and more than 20 scholarly articles.
Philippines Conference Room
