Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Using Economics to Confront Climate Change

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PESD Director Frank Wolak will be among a number of speakers participating at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research's Policy Forum - "Using Economics to Confront Climate Change."

Frank will be moderating a discussion of difficult challenges posed by the rapidly rising use of coal in India and China, and challenges to trade policy as studied by PESD researchers Richard Morse, Mark Thurber, and Jeremy Carl.

Bechtel Conference Center

Frank Wolak

Stanford University 
Economics Department 
579 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6072 

Website: https://fawolak.org/

(650) 724-1712 (650) 724-1717
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in Economics
Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
frank_wolak_033.jpg MS, PhD

Frank A. Wolak is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His fields of specialization are Industrial Organization and Econometric Theory. His recent work studies methods for introducing competition into infrastructure industries -- telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services -- and on assessing the impacts of these competition policies on consumer and producer welfare. He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He is a visiting scholar at University of California Energy Institute and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Professor Wolak received his Ph.D. and M.S. from Harvard University and his B.A. from Rice University.

Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
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Workshops

SLAC Colloquium: Reconciling the Rapid Growth of Coal and CO2 Emissions in Global Energy Markets

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Coal is both the world's fastest growing fossil fuel and a leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. While in the West coal use is under pressure, much of the developing world is predicating economic growth on cheap, reliable electricity from coal. As a result, the next few decades are likely to witness a massive build out of coal capacity.

Morse will explore where coal markets are growing, examine what economic and political variables have the greatest impact on coal use and the global coal trade, and discuss possible leverage points for CO2 mitigation. One mitigation option is a technology called carbon capture and storage, or CCS. Should we place big bets on this expensive and largely unproven option? Morse will discuss whether the current state of CCS deployment for coal-fired power falls short of mitigation levels required by many widely publicized targets and proceed to analyze the potential for commercial deployment of CCS technology at scale.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Panofsky Auditorium
Building 43

Richard Morse Speaker
Seminars

2010 MIIS International Trade and Investment Conference: Opportunities and Strategies in Emerging Economies

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The "Carbon Markets: Developing Countries & the Next Clean Development Mechanism" panel will be held from 3:25PM to 4:45PM

PESD researcher Richard K. Morse to speak at the 2010 MIIS International Trade and Investment Conference: Opportunities and Strategies in Emerging Economies on the "Carbon Markets: Developing Countries & the Next Clean Development Mechanism" panel.

The Monterey Institute of International Studies (an affiliate of Middlebury College) will be hosting this all day conference.  This event is being held with the purpose of bringing together stakeholders in the fields of trade policy, business, and human development to enhance knowledge of and create constructive dialogue around the global trends shaping international trade policy, business innovation, and social ventures in emerging economies.

Monterey Institute of International Studies
Irvine Auditorium
499 Pierce Street
Monterey, CA 93940

Richard K. Morse Panelist
Neal Dikeman Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board for Carbonflow Panelist
Barbara Haya PhD Candidate at the UC Berkeley Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory Panelist
Conferences

Stressed by Strife: ASEAN from Pattaya to Preah Vihear

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The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is Asia’s most resilient regional organization.  Its ambitious new charter aims to foster, in a dynamic but disparate region, a triply integrated region comprising a Political and Security Community, an Economic Community, and a Socio-Cultural Community.  The charter’s debut under Thailand’s 2008-09 chairmanship of the Association was badly marred, however, by political strife among Thai factions, clashes on the Thai-Cambodian border, and border-crossing risks of a non-military kind.  How have these developments affected ASEAN’s regional performance and aspirations?  Are its recent troubles transitional or endemic?  Do they imply a need for the Association to reconsider its modus operandi, lest it lose its role as the chief architect of East Asian regionalism?

Dr Thitinan Pongsudhirak is director of the Institute of Security and International Studies and an associate professor of international political economy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.  He is a prolific author, having written many op eds, articles, chapters, and books on Thailand’s politics, political economy, foreign policy, and media, and on ASEAN and East Asian security and economic cooperation.  He has worked for The Nation newspaper (Bangkok), The Economist Intelligence Unit, and Independent Economic Analysis (London).  His degrees are from the London School of Economics (PhD), Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (MA), and the University of California (BA).  His doctoral study of the 1997 Thai economic crisis won the United Kingdom’s Lord Bryce Prize for Best Dissertation in Comparative and International Politics—currently the only work by an Asian scholar to have been so honored. 

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa St.
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-3052
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FSI-Stanford Humanities Center International Visiting Scholar

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is a high-profile expert on contemporary political, economic, and foreign-policy issues in Thailand today  He is also a prolific author; witness his op ed, "Moving beyond Thaksin," in the 25 February 2010 Wall Street Journal.

Pongsudhirak is not senior in years, but he is in stature.  His career path has been meteoric since he earned his BA in political science with distinction at UC-Santa Barbara not long ago. In 2001 he received the United Kingdom's Best Dissertation Prize for his doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics on the political economy of Thailand's 1997 economic crisis.

Since 2006 he has held an associate professorship in international relations at Thailand's premier institution of higher education, Chulalongkorn University, while simultaneously heading the Institute of Security and International Studies, the country's leading think tank on foreign affairs.

His many publications include: "After the Red Uprising," Far East Economic Review, May 2009; "Why Thais Are Angry," The New York Times, 18 April 2009; "Thailand Since the Coup," Journal of Democracy, October-December 2008; and "Thaksin: Competitive Authoritarian and Flawed Dissident," in Dissident Democrats: The Challenge of Democratic Leadership in Asia, ed. John Kane et al. (2008).  He has written on bilateral free-trade areas in Asia, co-authored a book on Thailand's trade policy, and is admired by Southeast Asianist historians for having insightfully revisited, in a 2007 essay, the sensitive matter of Thailand's role during World War II.

He was a Salzburg Global Seminar Faculty Member in June 2009, Japan Foundation's Cultural Leader in 2008, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore) in 2005.  For ten years, in tandem with his academic career, he worked as an analyst for The Economist's Intelligence Unit.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak 2010 FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor, Stanford University Speaker
Seminars

International Courts and the U.S. Constitution

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Professor Jenny S. Martinez is a leading expert on international courts and tribunals, international human rights, and the laws of war. Her scholarship focuses on the role of courts and tribunals in advancing human rights, ranging from her work on the all-but-forgotten 19th-century international tribunals involved in the suppression of the trans-Atlantic slave trade through her work on contemporary institutions like the International Criminal Court and the role of courts in policing human rights abuses in the "war on terror." An experienced litigator, she argued the 2004 case of Rumsfeld v. Padilla before the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to clarify the constitutional protections available to post-9/11 "enemy combatants" who are U.S. citizens. Professor Martinez was named to the National Law Journal's list of "Top 40 Lawyers Under 40" and the American Lawyer's "Young Litigators Fab Fifty." She serves on the board of directors for the Open Society Justice Initiative and has served as a consultant on international human rights issues for both Human Rights First and the International Center for Transitional Justice.

Before joining the Stanford faculty in 2003, Professor Martinez was a senior research fellow at Yale University and an attorney at Jenner & Block. She clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer (BA '59) of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; she was an associate legal officer for Judge Patricia Wald of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Stuart Graham Lounge-4th Floor
Encina Hall West

Jenny Martinez Professor of Law Speaker Stanford University
Workshops

Ambassador Stephen W. Bosworth discusses North Korea policy at Shorenstein APARC

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David Straub
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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.

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Strict Liability for Medical Malpractice? The Impact of Increasing Malpractice Liability on Obstetrician Behavior in Taiwan

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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

Brian Chen

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E-301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 736-0771 (650) 723-6530
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2011 AHPP/CEAS Visiting Scholar
IMG_5703.JPG JD, PhD

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.

Brian Chen Shorenstein-Spogli Fellow in Comparative Health Policy Speaker
Seminars

At the Crossroads of Modernization: China and Russia

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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

Kathryn Stoner-Weiss Senior Research Scholar, Deputy Director Panelist CDDRL
Minxin Pei Professor of Government Panelist Claremont McKenna College
Sergei Medvedev Professor Panelist Moscow High School of Economics
Linda Jakobson Senior Fellow Panelist Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Li Chunling Professor, Institute of Sociology Panelist Chinese Academy of Social Science
Markku Kivinen Professor of Sociology and Director of the Aleksanteri Institute Panelist University of Helsinki
Christer Pursiainen Panelist
Igor Tomashov Panelist
Workshops
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