In November-December 2022 Indonesia hosted two international events, the Group of Twenty Summit (G20) and the Bali Democracy Forum (BDF).  Being in the country then, Gita Wirjawan gained impressions of the G20 and attended the BDF.  At both gatherings, he noted, concerns were expressed over the rise of autocracy, the growth of populism, and their effects on state integrity and performance, including an inability to recruit and select national leaders based on their actual talent—proven merit—above other considerations.  This tendency is increasingly common, Wirjawan will argue, in developed as well as developing countries.

A vital requisite for the economic and democratic success of open economies, in Southeast Asia as elsewhere, is trust.  International transfers of capital are like flows of water driven by gravity.  The power of that attraction depends on the extent to which the receiving country is perceived as trustworthy.  For liberal democracy to thrive in Southeast Asia, the region needs good governance by talented and trusted leaders who can ensure that appropriate rules are enforced and that the benefits of economic growth accrue to all layers of society.  Wirjawan’s recommendations in that context will include a priority on widely available quality education.

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Gita Wirjawan is an Indonesian entrepreneur and educator.  Having established a successful investment business in Indonesia, the Ancora Group, he created the Ancora Foundation.  The foundation has endowed scholarships for Indonesians to attend Stanford and other high-ranked universities around the world and has funded the training of teachers at hundreds of Indonesian kindergartens serving underprivileged children.  Wirjawan’s public service has included positions as Indonesia’s minister of trade, chairman of its Investment Coordinating Board, and chair of a 159-nation WTO ministerial conference in 2012 that focused on easing global trade barriers.  He led his country’s national badminton association in 2012-16 when Indonesia won four gold medals in the sport at world championships including the Olympics.  As an educator, he advises Indonesia’s School of Government and Public Policy (SGPP) and Yale’s School of Management, among other institutions.  At SGPP he hosts a public-policy podcast called endgame, to which an estimated 471,000 people subscribe and which has recently carried several interviews with Stanford faculty.  His degrees are from the Harvard Kennedy School (MPA), Baylor University (MBA), and the University of Texas at Austin (BSc). 

This event is co-sponsored with the Doerr School of Sustainability.

Attribute-based subsidies are commonly used to promote the diffusion of energy-efficient products in industries with significant market power. But what can they reveal about China's electric car market? In a first-of-its-kind study, Shanjun Li and his team have developed a theoretical framework for optimal policy design that incorporates endogenous product attributes, environmental externalities, and market power in order to estimate an equilibrium model of China's vehicle market using comprehensive data to evaluate the welfare impacts of different subsidy designs. 

Their findings reveal that uniform subsidies are effective in promoting small and environmental-friendly vehicles, but exacerbate the quantity distortion from market power for high-quality products. In contrast, attribute-based subsidies (such as those based on the driving range or battery capacity) generate a larger consumer surplus by mitigating market power and improving product quality. Capacity-based subsidies are the most effective in inducing attributes valued by consumers and mitigating market power, and result in the largest welfare gain at a moderate loss of environmental benefit.

Taken together, Li will discuss how these findings highlight the importance of incorporating endogenous product-attributes and market power considerations in the design of attribute-based environmental regulations.

Download a draft of the paper "Attribute-based Subsidies and Market Power: an Application to Electric Vehicles."

About the Speaker:

Shanjun Li is a Professor of Applied Economics and Policy, and he holds the Kenneth L. Robinson Chair in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. He serves as the Director of the Cornell Institute for China Economic Research (CICER), the Director of Graduate Studies in the Dyson School, an editor for the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, and a co-editor for International Journal of Industrial Organization. He also is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a university fellow at Resources for the Future (RFF).

Li's research focuses on pressing sustainability issues in China and their global implications in order to inform evidence-based policymaking. His recent work has centered on understanding the effectiveness and welfare impacts of various policy options to promote transportation electrification, to improve air quality, and to alleviate urban traffic congestion in China. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, and the World Bank among others. He has advised government agencies, NGOs, and corporations, and his research findings have been cited by such media outlets as the Economist, National Public Radio, the Associated Press, Washington Post, Forbes, the Hill, Vox, People’s Daily in China, and Daily Mail in UK.

Co-sponsored by Peking University Institute for Global Health and Development, and the Asia Health Policy Program

Depression is the most common mental disorder and is more prevalent among people who live in poverty. Emerging economic literature studies the ways that depression may affect economic decision-making and contribute to intergenerational poverty. Dr. Bennett will describe recent developments in the literature and discuss his recent study of the socioeconomic impacts of depression treatment among underpriviledged adults in Karnataka, India.

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Daniel Bennett is an economist at the Center for Economic and Social Research and the Department of Economics at the University of Southern California. He studies economic development and global health in Africa and South Asia. Recent work examines the relationship between poverty and poor mental health, as well as the indirect consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. Other work considers sanitation and hygiene behavior and the organization of pharmaceutical markets. Dr. Bennett collects primary data and uses both experimental and quasi-experimental methods. He received his Ph.D. in 2008 from Brown University.

About the Event: What explains the use of different strategies of counterproliferation? Drawing on her new book, All Options on the Table: Leaders, Preventive War, and Nuclear Proliferation, Rachel Whitlark will explore the use of preventive military force as a counter-proliferation strategy by the United States and Israel against a variety of adversaries pursuing nuclear weapons. Discussing a new book project, she will also examine the use of targeted assassination of nuclear scientists as a counter-proliferation strategy and its potential consequences.

About the Speaker: Rachel Whitlark is an Associate Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security as well as a fellow with the Bridging the Gap Project. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from George Washington University. Whitlark has previously been a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She was also a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard and a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program. 

Whitlark's interests lie within international security and foreign-policy decision-making, with a focus on the role of the individual executive in foreign and security policy, as well as on nuclear technology, nuclear proliferation, and counter-proliferation. She has regional interests in the Middle East and East Asia. Her book, All Options on the Table: Leaders, Preventive War, and Nuclear Proliferation, was published with Cornell University Press’s Studies in Security Affairs Series and investigates the use of preventive military force as a counter-proliferation strategy, drawing on archival research conducted at multiple U.S. Presidential Libraries. 

She has published in Security Studies, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, The Washington Quarterly, International Studies Perspectives, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Survival, among other outlets. Her research has been funded by, among others, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Stanton Foundation, and a variety of Presidential library foundations.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.