South Korea transformed its economy within three decades to emerge as an industrial powerhouse. Its influence has expanded into culture, with K-pop a global phenomenon. However, long before the pandemic and the current stagflation concern worldwide, the country's economy was sputtering and socioeconomic fractures were widening. Today Korea is facing challenges on multiple fronts that are radically different from those seen in the past. If the country pushes forward with bold structural reforms, it could regain its erstwhile momentum. The alternative, more likely by the day, is something more akin to "Eurosclerosis," or worse, Japanification. This talk addresses key current issues and foreseeable challenges of the economy in hopes of finding constructive ways forward.

About the Speaker:

Jaejoon Woo is an Associate Professor of Economics (with tenure) at DePaul University, Chicago and the author of Confronting South Korea's Next Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2022). Previously, Professor Woo served as Chief Korea Economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (2015-2017), Senior Economist at the IMF, Washington DC (2009-2014), and Economist at the OECD, Paris (2000-2002, 2009). Research areas are growth and productivity, public debt and fiscal policy, political economy, inequality, Korea and EM Asia. He has published 4 books and 37 articles (in addition to 145 market-oriented research notes published at BAML). His papers have been published in major economics journals such as Review of Economics and Statistics, European Economic Review, Economica, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Economic Inquiry, and IMF Economic Review. Some were featured in The Economist (London-based weekly magazine) and Financial Times. He also taught at Harvard, Helsinki School of Economics (Finland), and Sciences Po (France). He received his B.A. in Economics from Yonsei University, Seoul, and Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.

Directions and Parking

Despite its small population, South Korea has been consistently the third largest sender of international students to the American higher education sector for the last two decades. Previous work explaining this phenomenon often focuses on students’ desires for a global education alongside universities’ student recruitment efforts. Less understood is the role of other actors who broker the relationship between universities and students. Drawing from her recently published book Constructing Student Mobility (The MIT Press, 2023), higher education scholar Stephanie Kim illustrates how an expansive ecosystem of ancillary people and organizations funnel students to specific universities according to market demands, from education agents in South Korea to community college recruiters in California. Kim ultimately shows how these diverse stakeholders constitute a much broader industry of global higher education and reinforce the global student supply chain from South Korea to the United States.

Stephanie K. Kim is a scholar, educator, author, and practitioner in higher education. A specialist in comparative and international higher education, she researches and writes about international students and higher education policy in the United States and countries in Asia. She is a faculty member at Georgetown University, where she is Associate Professor of the Practice in the School of Continuing Studies and Faculty Director of the Master's in Higher Education Administration. She also serves as Senior Editor of the Journal of International Students and has held fellowships with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), East-West Center, and Fulbright Program. Prior to arriving at Georgetown, she held academic and administrative positions at UC Berkeley and received her Ph.D. in Education from UCLA.

Directions and Parking

This spring, we saw the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse, etc., and now we are observing collapses of Chinese real estate giants: Evergrande, and Country Garden. Would be there another financial crisis? 
Now, it is highly worthy to review the ‘lessons' of historically recent financial crises with significant seriousness, which happened in the two largest economies, the United States and Japan.

During the 1990s-2000s, Japan and the United States each experienced the same type of financial crisis, notably triggered by the collapse of major financial institutions, stemming from the real estate bubble burst. Namely, the Heisei Financial Crisis and the Lehman Brothers Collapse.

Both were under the political-economic conditions of one of the largest economies in the world, as well as of an advanced democracy. Enormous shock happened politically, economically, and historically, due to these two financial crises.

Then, as the research question, what were the ‘lessons’ of the United States and Japan's financial crises, concerning crisis response through public money injection, from the viewpoint of political economy? Where is the ‘learning’ between Japan and the United States?
Also, as the related research ‘puzzle’, why the difference in speed between these countries to respond and recover?

Based on his Ph.D. thesis, Senator Takinami, an alumnus of Stanford APARC, will elaborate on these issues by covering up and amending Hoshi & Kashyap(2010), thus establishing ‘7 lessons’ throughout the Japan and the United States financial crises on government bailout from the political economy viewpoint.

Speaker

Hirofumi Takinami (Ph.D.) is an Upper House Member of the Japanese Parliament, corresponding to a Senator in the U.S. He is a former Vice-Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, and also a former Vising Scholar, APARC, Stanford University. 

Dr. Takinami covers a wide range of policies, including not only energy, environment, and finance, but also innovation, infrastructure, welfare for the disabled, etc. He has been the Director of the Fisheries Division of LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) from last year.

Before starting his political career 10 years ago, he was a Director of the Ministry of Finance. During his about 20 years of service as a Japanese government official, he held management positions including Public Relations Director, and Deputy Budget Examiner at the Ministry of Finance. He also worked internationally, in charge of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) etc. 

He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1994, earning a Bachelor of Law. He received a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the University of Chicago in 1998. While in office as an upper house member, he obtained a Ph.D. in 2021 from Waseda University for the study on financial crises, which he started when he held research positions at Stanford University as a Visiting Fellow in 2009-2011 and as a Visiting Scholar in 2016. 

About the Event: Scholars are debating whether China’s rise will transform the current unipolar distribution of power. Although China clearly has the aggregate size to match (indeed, overtake) the United States, observers debate whether China can catch up technologically. Skeptics typically make two arguments: that 1) a large gap exists between the technological capabilities of China and the United States, and 2) that China will be unable to bridge this gap because its authoritarian institutions inhibit its innovative potential.

Jennifer Lind argues against both of these points. First, she shows empirically that China is defying pessimistic expectations by emerging as a global technological leader. China has already caught up to (and in some cases overtaken) other cutting-edge economies such as France, Israel, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, China and the United States are engaged in a rivalry with respect to the emerging technologies of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Second, institutions arguments fail to explain the Chinese case because they neglect significant heterogeneity among authoritarian regimes: namely that while some fail to foster growth and innovation, “smart authoritarians” provide public goods, constrain leaders, allow limited civil society, and pursue other policies that encourage growth. These findings have profound implications for the future balance of power (suggesting a shift to bipolarity), and add to an authoritarian politics literature that has demonstrated the increasing adaptability and resilience of authoritarian regimes. 

About the Speaker: Professor Lind holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; a Master’s from the School of Global Policy & Strategy from the University of California, San Diego; and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Lind is the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, a book that examines the effect of war memory on international reconciliation (Cornell University Press, 2008). She has  authored scholarly articles in International Security and International Studies Quarterly, and writes for wider audiences in outlets such as Foreign Affairs and National Interest. She has been quoted and interviewed by PBS Newshour, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Professor Lind is affiliated with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard, as well as Chatham House, London. In recent years she has been a visiting scholar at Waseda University, Japan, and at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Lind has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense. She has recently authored a book (under review) about China’s rise to great power, adaptation by authoritarian regimes, and the future of great-power politics.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event: When and how could technological advances undermine nuclear deterrence? Recent scholarship asserts that new remote sensing technologies may soon provide the capabilities needed to detect, track, and precisely target the delivery systems that constitute a nuclear-armed state’s second-strike capabilities. If true, this would have profound consequences for nuclear force structure planning and arms control. Even if such predictions are not technically feasible, exaggerated expectations generated by strategic interests or social influences could still negatively impact acquisition and force structure decisions critical to strategic stability and arms control policy. However, there has been remarkably little detailed, technical analysis to verify, refute, or qualify these claims. Furthermore, there is a lack of consensus around what type of capability would truly render a second strike vulnerable, injecting ambiguity into and ultimately constraining efforts to anticipate the disruption of new technologies.

This research informs these gaps through a mixed, sociotechnical approach. First, it provides a technical assessment of the likelihood that new sensing methods will significantly enhance accuracy in applications critical for targeting second-strike capabilities (i.e., the detection and tracking of nuclear submarines, and inertial navigation to improve missile accuracy). Second, it considers strategic narratives and social dynamics that have historically shaped conceptions of vulnerability used to justify second strike requirements. In doing so, it also identifies factors that are informing current debates over deterrence and mutual vulnerability requirements amidst technological innovation and yields a more dynamic set of policy recommendations aimed at deflating hype and mitigating arms-racing risks. This more integrated method for assessing how new technologies will impact nuclear deterrence is especially important as concerns over a great power competition reinvigorate interest in strategies that promote rapid technology innovation.

About the Speaker: Lindsay Rand is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Prior to Stanford, Lindsay was a Stanton predoctoral fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In her time at UMD, she was also the instructor of record for an undergraduate nuclear policy course and the Catherine Kelleher research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). She also has experience working as an adjunct research associate at the RAND Corporation, a research associate at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, a NSF fellow on the DHS Science and Technology Directorate quantum technology task force, and a research intern at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Her research draws on my interdisciplinary background in physics and policy to explore how social, political, and technological changes have contributed to the cyclical reconception of "vulnerability" in nuclear strategy and policymaking. In her dissertation, she analyzed the implications for nuclear deterrence due to quantum sensing, and leveraged technical analyses and historical case studies of previous emerging technologies to develop an integrated socio-technical analytic framework.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event: What are the domestic drivers of Iran’s nuclear strategy? Since the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran has adopted an incrementally more assertive approach in expanding various aspects of its nuclear program and limiting the IAEA’s monitoring and verification activities. Although Iran has not made the political decision to obtain a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. officials, Iran could produce enough fissile material for one bomb in less than two weeks. Experts argue that Iran’s nuclear advances are a bargaining tactic to extract economic concessions from Washington. However, as Iran approaches threshold status, its political calculations are also shifting, signaling more risk tolerance than before. The failure of the JCPOA has undermined bottom-up pressure in the form of elections and civil society movements, which had previously moderated Iran’s foreign policy. The ascendance of a hawkish government in Tehran in 2021 combined with Iran’s growing military capability within the emerging multipolar world order has hardened the Islamic Republic’s bargaining position, inching it toward the weaponization option.

About the Speaker: Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar is Associate Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service and a visiting scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Project on Managing the Atom. He is the author of Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran (Columbia University Press, 2018). His articles and commentaries have appeared in Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times. Mohammad has a B.A. in social sciences from the University of Tehran, an M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University. He is currently working on a book project on Iran's nuclear politics.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event: Despite the territorial demise of the Islamic State, threat assessments over the prospect of its resurgence remain divorced from a rigorous investigation into how it came to establish de-facto statehood in the first place. What explains how a single armed group out of many came to achieve such an astounding hegemonic feat, let alone in such short order? To the extent a consensus exists on its territorial success, conventional opinion emphasizes organizational sources of rebel power – hard, soft, and institutional – combined with the structural permissiveness of the environment. But contrary to widespread belief, the Islamic State was not established as a result of military victory. Instead, it was borne out of a unique and rapid acquisition of a pre-existing Iraqi rebellion, awarding it with a rebel monopoly in Iraq and an autonomous zone of territorial control to enact statehood. This model of consolidation was made viable in 2014 as a result of the organization’s complex embeddedness within Iraq’s Sunni community – a condition that had not existed in its participation in the Syrian rebellion or for its organizational predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, in the earlier years of the Iraqi rebellion.

About the Speaker: Ramzy Mardini is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and an associate at the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts at the University of Chicago.

His research interests include international security, conflict and conflict resolution, and the politics and security of the Middle East. Based on over three years of fieldwork across multiple countries, his book project examines the role and interplay of social networks on processes of rebellion, with an empirical focus on the Islamic State. His work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Education, the Minerva Research Initiative at the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Smith-Richardson Foundation, and was a 2019-2020 USIP-Minerva Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. and a 2018-2019 Fulbright Fellow in Jordan and Turkey.

Apart from his academic studies, Mardini was a nonresident fellow at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council; an adjunct fellow at the Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies; a research analyst on Iraq at the Institute for the Study of War; a Middle East analyst at the Jamestown Foundation; and a research assistant on Iran at the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan in Amman. He was also a consultant at the Dialogue Advisory Group, an Amsterdam-based organization that facilitates political dialogue between armed actors to reduce violence in active conflicts. From 2010-2011, he served at The White House within the Office of the National Security Advisor to the Vice President, and previously at the Executive Office of the President and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. He is the editor of two books, Volatile Landscape: Iraq and its Insurgent Movements and also The Battle for Yemen: Al-Qaeda and the Struggle for Stability, and has written commentary for the New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, among others.

He received a Ph.D., M.A., M.A. from the University of Chicago, where he was a William Rainey Harper Fellow within the Department of Political Science and studied international relations and comparative politics. He graduated summa cum laude with research distinction from Ohio State University. He was born in Dayton, Ohio. 

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.