Thailand is at a crossroads. On 14 May 2023, Thai voters took part in their country’s first fully free and fair election after nearly a decade under military and conservative-elite rule. The results gave a resounding victory in the 500-member House of Representatives to Thailand's two most progressive parties: the Pheu Thai Party affiliated with former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and the relative newcomer Move Forward Party. Exceeding even the most optimistic predictions, Move Forward won the most House seats, while the two most pro-military parties together took only 12 percent. Thai voters have conveyed their preferences. But will their votes decide who forms the government and what if any policy reforms are allowed to proceed? Looming over that question for the present is the chance of a more democratic future and the legacy of an authoritarian past.

Image

Allen Hicken, in addition to his professorship, is affiliated with the University of Michigan’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies, its Center for Political Studies, and its Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies. His work focuses on political institutions, political economy, and policymaking with an emphasis on Southeast Asia. His many publications include a recent co-authored book, Mobilizing for Elections: Patronage and Political Machines in Southeast Asia (2022). Prof. Hicken has held visiting-scholar positions in Thailand (twice), the Philippines, Singapore, and Australia. His higher degrees are from the University of California San Diego (PhD) and Columbia University (MA).

Image

Ken Mathis Lohatepanont, alongside his doctoral studies, writes regularly for the Thai Enquirer, an English-language news website based in Bangkok.  Before coming to the University of Michigan he worked for the Thailand Development Research Institute as part of its Innovation Policy for Sustainable Development Team.  In that capacity he helped to generate policy recommendations as to how the Thai economy could be restructured to make it more competitive. Earlier affiliations included a stint as a Journalism Intern with the Asia Focus section of the Bangkok Post reporting and commenting on economics, politics, and business in the Asia-Pacific region.  His BA in political science is from UC-Berkeley.

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

Adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa have some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence across the globe. This paper evaluates the impact of a randomized controlled trial that offers females a goal setting activity to improve their sexual and reproductive health outcomes and offers their male partners a soccer intervention, which educates and inspires young men to make better sexual and reproductive health choices. Both interventions reduce female reports of intimate partner violence. Impacts are larger among females who were already sexually active at baseline. We develop a model to understand the mechanisms at play. The soccer intervention improves male attitudes around violence and risky sexual behaviors. Females in the goal setting arm take more control of their sexual and reproductive health by exiting violent relationships. Both of these mechanisms drive reductions in IPV.

Image

Manisha Shah is the Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., Endowed Chair in Social Justice and Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Founding Director of the Global Lab for Research in Action. She is an affiliate of NBER, CEGA, JPAL, BREAD, and IZA. Her research focuses on development economics, particularly applied microeconomics, health, and development. She has written several papers on the economics of sex markets in order to learn how more effective policies and programs can be deployed to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. She also works in the area of child health and education. . Shah has been the PI on various impact evaluations and randomized controlled trials and is currently leading projects in Tanzania, Indonesia, and India. She has also worked extensively in Ecuador and Mexico. Her research has been supported by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the World Bank, and the National Science Foundation among others. She is an editor at Journal of Health Economics and an Associate Editor at The Review of Economics and Statistics. Shah received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.

About the Event: This talk will look at the experience of India in terms of its security, identity, and the command of nuclear weapons since 1998.

About the Speaker: Professor Amitabh Mattoo is Professor of Disarmament Studies at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is also Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. He has been an Advisor of Cabinet-Rank to the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, and a Vice Chancellor of the University of Jammu. He has been a member of India’s National Security Council’s Advisory Board and a member of the Prime Minister’s National Knowledge Commission. He was awarded the Padma Shri by the President of India for his contribution to public life.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Anna H. Grummon is an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Stanford School of Medicine. She is a behavioral scientist whose work seeks to identify and evaluate policies that encourage healthy eating and help us live long, healthy lives. In her work, Grummon uses randomized trials, quasi-experiments, and simulation modeling to examine how food policies like warning labels, beverage taxes, and food assistance programs affect what we eat and how healthy we are. She also studies strategies for encouraging people to choose foods that are more environmentally sustainable. Grummon holds a PhD and MSPH in Health Behavior from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and a BA with Honors in Human Biology from Stanford. She completed her postdoctoral training at Harvard.

Talk Title: Improving Diet Through Food Policy

Abstract: Unhealthy diet is a leading cause of death in the US. Policy changes could improve diet and help prevent the 500,000 deaths attributable to unhealthy diet in the US each year. This talk will provide evidence about the potential for three policies to improve diet: warning labels for sugary drinks, mandatory calorie disclosures on restaurant menus, and minimum price laws for sugary drinks. Using data from randomized controlled trials, quasi-experiments, and simulation models, we examine how these policies are likely to affect consumer behavior, the food supply, and population health outcomes like obesity.   

Image

Wesley Yin is an Associate Professor of Economics at UCLA, in the Luskin School of Public Affairs and the Anderson School of Management. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and currently a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Yin’s research focuses on health care, consumer finance, and economic inequality. Previously, he served in the Obama Administration as Acting Chief Economist and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomic Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, and in the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Abstract: One in six Americans has unpaid medical debt in collections amounting to more than $140 billion nationally, yet there is limited understanding of its impacts on households. This study examines the effect of randomized medical debt relief totaling $175 million across more than 80,000 households. We examine outcomes from three data sources: (1) administrative data on future debt sent to collections; (2) quarterly credit report data spanning at least two years before and after debt relief; and (3) survey measures of self-reported health (clinically-validated screenings for depression, anxiety, and general health), health care utilization, and financial well-being elicited one year after treatment. 

Yin will be joining the seminar in person and is happy to arrange meetings with attendees.

Michael McFaul, director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and several other members of the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions will speak about and answer questions about the group's new white paper, "Action Plan 2.0 on Strengthening Sanctions against the Russian Federation." The event will begin with brief presentations from the following working group members, with additional commentary from other members afterwards: 
 

• Anders Åslund, Senior Fellow, Stockholm Free World Forum
• Andriy Boytsun, Founder and Editor of the Ukrainian SOE Weekly; Independent Corporate Governance Consultant; Former Member of the Strategic Advisory Group for Supporting Ukrainian Reforms
• Benjamin Hilgenstock, Senior Economist, KSE Institute in Frankfurt, Germany
• Dr. Craig Kennedy, Center Associate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, and Former Vice Chairman, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
• Oleksandr Novikov, Head of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention
• Nataliia Shapoval, Vice President for Policy Research, Kyiv School of Economics
   

Additional comments by:
 

• James Hodson, Director and Chief Executive Officer of AI for Good; Researcher at the Jozef Stefan Institute Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Slovenia
• Dr. Benjamin Schmitt, Project Development Scientist at Harvard University; Senior Fellow for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis; Rethinking Diplomacy Fellow at Duke University
• Pavlo Verkhniatskyi, Managing Partner and Director at COSA

690 million people. 11 countries.  A $3 trillion-plus GDP.  Southeast Asia is a critical region of growing strategic and economic importance. Yet in the United States it does not receive the attention and study it deserves.  Ambassador Scot Marciel, who spent the bulk of his 35-year diplomatic career working in and on the region, has written an essential new book – “Imperfect Partners:  The United States and Southeast Asia” – that combines extensive research and his first-hand experience to explore the ups and downs in U.S. relations with key partners in the region over the past 30-40 years.  The book offers practical, timely recommendations on how to strengthen U.S.-Southeast Asian ties in this new era of U.S.-China competition.

Please join APARC’s Southeast Asia Program for Ambassador Marciel’s conversation with Program Director Professor Don Emmerson.  Ambassador Marciel will discuss how and why U.S.-Southeast Asian relations have brought both benefits and disappointments on both sides of the Pacific.  He will argue that the U.S. can best advance its strategic interests by engaging the region on its own substantial merits rather than viewing it through a lens focused on China.

Image

Ambassador Scot Marciel is the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  He retired from the U.S. State Department in April 2022 after a 37-year career that included assignments as the first U.S. Ambassador to ASEAN, Ambassador to Indonesia and to Myanmar, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific.  He witnessed the Philippine People Power revolt as a junior foreign service officer in Manila and was the first U.S. diplomat to serve in Hanoi after the Vietnam War.

Lunch will be provided