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Skyline Scholars Seminar Series


Tuesday, February 4, 2025 | 1:00 pm -2:30 pm Pacific Time
Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall, 616 Jane Stanford Way



The Anatomy of Chinese Innovation: Insights on Patent Quality and Ownership


In this study we look at the evolution of patenting in China from 1985-2019. We develop a new method to measure the importance of an individual patent for innovation based on the use of a Large Language Model to process patent text data and a new theory of the innovation process. We also classify patent ownership using a comprehensive business registry. We highlight three insights. First, patents that are important for innovation have become less important on average. Second, knowledge within China has become more important than knowledge outside of China for directing innovation in China. Finally, knowledge produced by Chinese entities within China has become more important than knowledge produced by foreign entities.

Please register for the event to receive email updates and add it to your calendar.



About the Speaker 
 

Loren Brandt headshot

Loren Brandt is the Noranda Chair Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto specializing in the Chinese economy. He is also a research fellow at the IZA (The Institute for the Study of Labor) in Bonn, Germany. He has published widely on the Chinese economy in leading economic journals and been involved in extensive household and enterprise survey work in both China and Vietnam. With Thomas Rawski, he completed Policy, Regulation, and Innovation in China’s Electricity and Telecom Industries (Cambridge University Press, 2019), an interdisciplinary effort analyzing the effect of government policy on the power and telecom sectors in China. He was also co-editor and major contributor to China’s Great Economic Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2008), which provides an integrated analysis of China’s unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. Brandt was also one of the area editors for Oxford University Press’ five-volume Encyclopedia of Economic History (2003). His current research focuses on issues of entrepreneurship and firm dynamics, industrial policy and innovation and  economic growth and structural change.

Interested in meeting with Professor Brandt one-on-one? 
Sign up to speak with him during his office hours: 
Wednesday, 1/29 or 2/12 | 2:00-5:00 PM 

Please schedule a meeting in advance and use your Stanford email to log in. 



Questions? Contact Xinmin Zhao at xinminzhao@stanford.edu
 


Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall

Loren Brandt, Skyline Scholar; Professor of Economics, University of Toronto
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Bassam Haddad webinar

Join CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Development (ARD) for a discussion on the future of Syria following the downfall of Bashar Al-Assad in December 2024. The webinar will feature Bassam Haddad, Associate Professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, who will speak in conversation with ARD Associate Director Hesham Sallam. The webinar will address the conditions that contributed to the downfall of the Assad regime, relevant regional and international dimensions, as well as the prospects for the presumably transitional ruling formula under Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham. The session will also address the major historical trends that shaped the trajectory of the Syrian uprising in 2011, the eventual collapse of the Assad regime in 2024, and the post-Assad era.

Co-sponsored by CDDRL's Program on Turkey and the Middle Eastern Studies Forum.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Bassam Haddad is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Haddad is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film About Baghdad and director of the acclaimed three-part documentary series Arabs and Terrorism. Haddad served on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio-Visual Podcast. He is also the Executive Editor of the Knowledge Production Project and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Haddad is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding The Syrian Tragedy: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press)

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Online via Zoom

Bassam Haddad
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Michael Albertus seminar

For millennia, land has been a symbol of wealth and privilege. But the true power of land ownership is even greater than we might think. Who owns the land determines whether a society will be equal or unequal, whether it will develop or decline, and whether it will safeguard or sacrifice its environment. Modern history has been defined by land reallocation on a massive scale. From the 1500s on, European colonial powers and new nation-states shifted indigenous lands into the hands of settlers. The 1900s brought new waves of land appropriation, from Soviet and Maoist collectivization to initiatives turning large estates over to family farmers. The shuffle continues today as governments vie for power and prosperity by choosing who should get land. Drawing on a career’s worth of original research and on-the-ground fieldwork, Land Power shows that choices about who owns the land have locked in poverty, sexism, racism, and climate crisis—and that what we do with the land today can change our collective fate.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michael Albertus is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and the author of five books. His research examines democracy and dictatorship, inequality and redistribution, property rights, and civil conflict. His newest book, Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies, was published by Basic Books in January 2025. In addition to his books, Albertus is also the author of nearly 30 peer-reviewed journal articles, including at flagship journals like the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and World Politics. The defining features of Albertus' work are his engagement with big questions and puzzles and the ability to join big data and cutting-edge research methods with original, deep on-the-ground fieldwork everywhere from government offices to archives and farm fields. He has conducted fieldwork throughout the Americas, southern Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere. His books and articles have won numerous awards and shifted conventional understandings of democracy, authoritarianism, and the consequences of how humans occupy and relate to the land.
 

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Room E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Michael Albertus Professor of Political Science Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago University of Chicago
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Sherry Glied 3

Talk Title: TBD

Glied’s principal areas of research are in health policy reform and mental health care policy. She has written or co-edited books on health care reform, mental health policy, and health economics. She has served as the Dean of NYU's Graduate School of Public Service, a professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia, a member of the U.S. Senate, a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, and a member of the Clinton Health Care Task Force.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email. For Zoom participants, the link will be in the confirmation email. 

Registration 

Hybrid Seminar: Lunch will be provided for on-campus participants.
Please register if you plan to attend, both for in-person and via Zoom.

Log in on your computer, or join us in person:
Encina Commons, Room 119
615 Crothers Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Eric Sun

Talk Title: TBD

Eric's research examines questions of health economics and health policy, with a focus on economics and policy in the perioperative setting. Current research topics include the economics of treatments for chronic pain, as well as how physician practice organization affects outcomes and costs.
 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email. For Zoom participants, the link will be in the confirmation email. 

Registration 

Hybrid Seminar: Lunch will be provided for on-campus participants.
Please register if you plan to attend, both for in-person and via Zoom.

Log in on your computer, or join us in person:
Encina Commons, Room 119
615 Crothers Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Chris Bennett

Talk Title: TBD

Chris Bennett is a clinically active emergency physician and faculty scientist in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University, and also a faculty affiliate with the Stanford Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and Imaging (AIMI) and the Stanford Center for Digital Health (CDH). As an NIH-funded principal investigator, his research group focuses on understanding and improving the quality of care Americans receive in our nation’s emergency departments, as well as identifying who is providing that care. His interests include how policy can inform precision medicine and in developing innovations to optimize healthcare delivery.
 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email. For Zoom participants, the link will be in the confirmation email. 

Registration 

Hybrid Seminar: Lunch will be provided for on-campus participants.
Please register if you plan to attend, both for in-person and via Zoom.

Log in on your computer, or join us in person:
Encina Commons, Room 119
615 Crothers Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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SCCEI Seminar Series (Winter 2025)


Friday, February 7, 2025 | 12:00 pm -1:20 pm Pacific Time
Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall, 616 Jane Stanford Way



Homemade Foreign Trading: Insider Evasion in China’s Stock Connect Program


Using cross-border holding data from all custodians—financial institutions that safeguard and manage assets—in China’s Stock Connect program, we provide evidence that Chinese mainland insiders evaded see-through surveillance, a tracking mechanism to monitor the true beneficiaries of financial transactions, by engaging in round-tripping trades that disguise domestic capital as foreign investments. Following the 2018 regulatory reform of Northbound Investor Identification, which enhanced regulatory oversight and identification of investors, the correlation between insider trading and northbound flows—capital moving from offshore markets into mainland-listed stocks—weakens. Additionally, the reform reduced the return predictability of these flows, meaning that insider activity within northbound flows no longer strongly predicts future stock performance. This reduction in return predictability is particularly pronounced among less prestigious foreign custodians and cross-operating mainland custodians, who were more commonly used by mainland insiders to conceal their activities. Our analysis highlights the critical role of regulatory cooperation in managing capital market integration and addressing cross-border regulatory arbitrage.

Please register for the event to receive email updates and add it to your calendar. Lunch will be provided.



About the Speaker 
 

Zhiguo He headshot

Professor Zhiguo He is the James Irvin Miller Professor of Finance at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is a financial economist whose expertise covers financial markets, financial institutions, and macroeconomics broadly. He is also conducting academic research on Chinese financial markets, and writing academic articles on new progress in the area of cryptocurrency and blockchains. Before joining Stanford GSB, he was on the faculty of Chicago Booth from 2008 to 2023, where he received tenure in 2015 and led Becker Friedman Institute China from 2020 to 2023.

His research has been published in leading academic journals in finance and economics. After serving as associate editors for several leading academic journals, He served as the guest editor of the Review of Finance ”Special Issue on China” and currently serves as the editor of the Review of Asset Pricing Studies.

Professor He received his bachelor and master degrees from the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University before receiving his PhD from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 2008. 

 


A NOTE ON LOCATION

Please join us in-person in the Goldman Conference Room located within Encina Hall on the 4th floor of the East wing.



Questions? Contact Xinmin Zhao at xinminzhao@stanford.edu
 


Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall

Zhiguo He, Professor of Finance, Stanford Graduate School of Business
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Rita Hamad

Talk Title: Health Impacts of Pandemic-era Food Assistance Policies: A Quasi-experimental Study

Dr. Rita Hamad is a social epidemiologist and the Director of the Social Policies for Health Equity Research (SPHERE) Center at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research examines the health effects of social and economic policies using interdisciplinary quasi-experimental methods to generate actionable evidence to inform policymaking. She serves as an Advisory Editor for the journal Social Science & Medicine and an Associate Editor at Health Affairs Scholar. In 2020-2022, she was the James C. Puffer American Board of Family Medicine / National Academy of Medicine Fellow. She provides consultation to state and federal legislators on the design of poverty alleviation and social safety net policies. She has over 100 peer-reviewed publications, including many in top health policy, clinical, and epidemiology journals, and her research has been featured in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Hill. Dr. Hamad received a PhD in Epidemiology from Stanford, an MD from UCSF, master’s degrees from UC Berkeley, and an AB from Harvard University. She saw patients as a family physician for 10 years in safety net clinics throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, although she is no longer a practicing doctor.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email. For Zoom participants, the link will be in the confirmation email. 

Registration 

Hybrid Seminar: Lunch will be provided for on-campus participants.
Please register if you plan to attend, both for in-person and via Zoom.

Log in on your computer, or join us in person:
Encina Commons, Room 119
615 Crothers Way
Stanford, CA 94305

Seminars
Date Label
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Portrait of Daniel Smoth on a flyer for his talk, "Winning Elections with Unpopular Policies: Valence Advantage and Single-Party Dominance in Japan"

An enduring puzzle in comparative politics is why voters in some democracies continuously support dominant parties in elections, and whether their support is based on policy congruence or non-policy factors like valence. Smith and his team consider the preeminent case of a dominant party—Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)—and investigate whether voters’ support for its policies can explain its recent landslide election victories. They first introduce a new measurement strategy to infer individuals’ utility for parties’ policy platforms from conjoint experiments. Unlike most other uses of conjoint designs, their approach quantifies individual preferences for entire platforms rather than the average effect of any one component. Using this measure, they then show that many voters supported the LDP in the 2017 and 2021 elections despite preferring the opposition’s policies. To understand what accounts for this disconnect, Smith and his team experimentally manipulate party label and decompose its effect, revealing that trust is an important non-policy factor motivating LDP voters. Together, their findings support the argument that the LDP’s recent dominance can be attributed to its valence advantage over the opposition rather than voters’ support for its policies.

This event is part of APARC's Contemporary Asia Seminar Series.

 

Headshot for Daniel Smith

Daniel M. Smith is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests cover a range of topics in comparative politics and Japanese politics, with a core focus on elections and democratic representation. He is the author of Dynasties and Democracy: The Inherited Incumbency Advantage in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2018), and articles appearing in the American Political Science ReviewAmerican Journal of Political ScienceThe Journal of Politics, and Comparative Political Studies, among other journals and edited volumes. He also co-organizes the Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS), and co-edits the Japan Decides election series.

Philippines Room, Encina Hall (3rd floor), Room C330
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

Daniel Smith Associate Professor of Political Science University of Pennsylvania
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