Stanford University

Foreign Policy

Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

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Kara Sex
Please join us for a lecture and book signing with Siddharth Kara, author of Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. In 1995, Mr. Kara first encountered sexual slavery in a Bosnian refugee camp. He has since dedicated his life to traveling and learning the mechanisms behind the business of sex trafficking. Mr. Kara has taken a rare look at analyzing the local drivers and global macroeconomic trends that give rise to this burgeoning industry, in addition to quantifying the size, growth, and profitability of sex trafficking and other forms of modern slavery.

Synopsis

Employing his comprehensive research throughout his talk, Siddarth Kara begins by explaining that sex trafficking is the most profitable form of slavery. Therefore, to Mr. Kara, it is crucial to take a business approach to the issue. Using powerful stories as key examples to ensure focus also remains on the human cost of sex slavery, Mr. Kara divides the operation of sex slavery into three steps. The first is acquisition which most commonly occurs by deceit, seduction, or sometimes even sale by family. The second step is movement which involves all forms of transportation, the use of false documentation, and bribery. The third step is exploitation of the victims which takes place in many forms such as rape, torture, and violent coercion. The sale of women and girls often takes place in brothels, hotels, and streets. Mr. Kara reveals that their fate often involves HIV infection, drug addictions, exclusion from families, and most terrifyingly, retrafficking.

Mr. Kara goes on to argue that current abolition attempts are deficient in four key areas. These include a poor understanding of the trade, lack of funding for and lack of coordination between international organizations, inappropriate laws and insufficient enforce of them, and an improper business analysis of the situation.

However, Mr. Kara stresses repeatedly that this “war on slavery” as he puts it is a war we can win. He boils the industry down to slave trading which is the supply aspect and slavery itself which is the demand aspect. Mr. Kara argues that, like all industries, the slave trade is governed by these two forces as well. Therefore, Mr. Kara’s main argument is that sex slavery must be destroyed by reducing the aggregate demand for sex slaves by attacking the industry’s profitability. In terms of profit making, his research shows it is the demand side which must be focused on the most. Mr. Kara argues the demand for sex slaves is very vulnerable. He personally saw this in a particular brothel when prices rose. In addition, he emphasizes that the fact that business must be conducted between consumer and trader in relative daylight means these criminals can be caught.

Consequently, Mr. Kara proposes a multi-faceted approach of seven tactical interventions to hurt profitability and crucially increase risk for traders. Firstly, Mr. Kara believes in the need to create an international inspection force which works closely with paid locals of the community who are trained to spot such activities in everyday life. Mr. Kara stresses the importance of targeted, proactive raids on centers of such criminal activity. In addition, to avoid bribery and other forms of undermining law enforcement, he feels it is vital to improve the pay of trafficking authorities including judges and prosecutors. This is linked to Mr. Kara’s idea of specialized, fast-track courts for trafficking to quickly close cases. Cases often fall apart because victims or their families are intimidated, Mr. Kara therefore argues for at least 12 months of paid witness protection for victims and their families to avoid intimidation or outright murder. Finally, Mr. Kara stresses the need to increase financial penalties for those found guilty of trafficking to increase the risk in the business.

What Mr. Kara really emphasizes is that more resources are needed in tackling this criminal activity by attacking profitability, increasing risk, and reducing aggregate demand. Mr. Kara concludes by stating that sex trafficking is a “stain on humankind that must be buried.”

In engaging with the audience, Mr. Kara discusses several key issues of his presentation. One central area that is emphasized is his methods in gathering research and formulating statistics. Mr. Kara also explains where the money would come from to fund the global abolitionist movement he presents. In addition, Mr. Kara reveals what ordinary citizens can do in their everyday lives to help the cause.

About the speaker

Siddharth Kara is a former investment banker and business executive with an MBA from Columbia University. He set aside his corporate career to pursue anti-slavery research, advocacy, and writing, and, more recently, a law degree. He currently serves on the board of directors of Free the Slaves, an organization dedicated to abolishing slavery worldwide. In 2005, he testified on contemporary slavery to the United States Congressional Human Rights Committee.

Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Public Management Program of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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Siddharth Kara Author Speaker
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Human Trafficking

Russia expert Michael McFaul appointed to senior national security posts

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Stanford political science Professor Michael A. McFaul, who has been deputy director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, director of its Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, has been tapped by President Obama to serve as special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council.

McFaul served as senior advisor on Russia and Eurasia to Barack Obama during the presidential campaign and continued to advise on foreign policy issues during the transition.  He now joins the National Security Council headed by retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones.

“President-elect Obama was fortunate to have the benefit of Mike’s counsel on a range of vital issues during the campaign – including dealing with a resurgent Russia,” said FSI Director Coit D. Blacker, the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies. “Now, from the White House, the president can call on Mike’s expertise and experience in the region to build more constructive relationships with Russia, Eurasia, and our allies across a broad strategic front.”

McFaul is a globally acknowledged expert on U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-Russian relations, political and economic reform in the postcommunist world, and democracy promotion. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including the edited volume with Anders Aslund, Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine’s Democratic Breakthrough; with Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Postcommunist Political Reform; and with Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions.

McFaul is a non-resident senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  He serves on the editorial boards of Current History, Journal of Democracy, Demokratizatsiya, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Post Soviet Affairs, and the Washington Quarterly.  He has served as a consultant for numerous companies and government agencies.

McFaul is a frequent commentator on international politics and American foreign policy in the national and international media.  He has appeared on all major television and radio networks, while his op eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New Republic, the International Herald Tribune, and the Moscow Times, among others.

McFaul has been called on frequently to testify before the U.S. Congress on the state of and prospects for U.S.-Russian relations.

McFaul received a BA in international relations and Slavic languages and an MA in Slavic and East European studies from Stanford University in 1986.  He was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford where he completed his PhD in International Relations in 1991.

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"The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power"

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David E. Sanger covers the White House for The New York Times and is one of the newspaper's senior writers. In a 24-year career at the paper, he has reported from New York, Tokyo and Washington, covering a wide variety of issues surrounding foreign policy, globalization, nuclear proliferation, Asian affairs and, for the past five years, the arc of the Bush presidency. Twice he has been a member of Times reporting teams that won the Pulitzer Prize. Sanger's new book, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power (Harmony, 2009), is an examination of the challenges that the tumultuous events of the past eight years have created for the new president.

Before covering the White House, Mr. Sanger specialized in the confluence of economic and foreign policy, and wrote extensively on how issues of national wealth and competitiveness have come to redefine the relationships between the United States and its major allies. As a correspondent and then bureau chief in Tokyo for six years, he covered Japan's rise as the world's second largest economic power, and then its humbling recession. He also filed frequently from Southeast Asia, and wrote many of the first stories about North Korea's secret nuclear weapons program in the 1990's. He continues to cover proliferation issues from Washington.

Leaving Asia in 1994, he took up the position of chief Washington economic correspondent, and covered a series of global economic upheavals, from Mexico to the Asian economic crisis. He was named a senior writer in March, 1999, and White House correspondent later that year.

Mr. Sanger joined the Times in the Business Day section, specializing in the computer industry and high-technology trade. In 1986 he played a major role in the team that investigated the causes of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, writing the first stories about what the space agency knew about the potential flaws in the shuttle's design and revealing that engineers had raised objections to launching the shuttle. The team won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. He was a member of another Pulitzer-winner team that wrote about the struggles within the Clinton Administration over controlling exports to China.

In 2004, Mr. Sanger was the co-recipient of the Weintal Prize for diplomatic reporting for his coverage of the Iraq and Korea crises. He also won the Aldo Beckman prize for coverage of the presidency, awarded by the White House Correspondent's Association. The previous year he won another of the association's major prizes, the Merriman Smith Memorial Award, for coverage of the emergence of a new national security strategy for the United States. In 2004 he and four other colleagues also shared the American Society of Newspaper Editor's top award for deadline writing, for team coverage of the Columbia disaster.

Mr. Sanger appears regularly on public affairs and news shows. Twice a week he delivers the Washington Report on WQXR, the radio station of the Times. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group.

Born in 1960 in White Plains, N.Y.,  Mr. Sanger was educated in the public school system there and graduated magna cum laude in government from Harvard College in 1982.

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David E. Sanger Chief Washington Correspondent Speaker The New York Times
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Evaluating International Influences on Democratic Development - Authors Workshop

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Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

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Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Kathryn Stoner

FSI
Stanford University
Encina Hall C140
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 736-1820 (650) 724-2996
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Satre Family Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
kathryn_stoner_1_2022_v2.jpg MA, PhD

Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and a Senior Fellow at CDDRL and the Center on International Security and Cooperation at FSI. From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and she teaches in the Department of Political Science, and in the Program on International Relations, as well as in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.

Prior to coming to Stanford in 2004, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Princeton School for International and Public Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School). At Princeton she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. 

In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author or co-editor of six books: "Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective," written and edited with Michael A. McFaul (Johns Hopkins 2013);  "Autocracy and Democracy in the Post-Communist World," co-edited with Valerie Bunce and Michael A. McFaul (Cambridge, 2010);  "Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia" (Cambridge, 2006); "After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions" (Cambridge, 2004), coedited with Michael McFaul; and "Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional" Governance (Princeton, 1997); and "Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order" (Oxford University Press, 2021).

She received a BA (1988) and MA (1989) in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University (1995). In 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Iliad State University, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.

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Mosbacher Director, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Stanford University
Senior Fellow (by courtesy), Hoover Institution
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Ray Jennings

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(202) 421-5184
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Visiting Scholar
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Ray Salvatore Jennings is a practitioner scholar with extensive experience within war to peace transitions in over 20 countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Indonesia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Peru, and Sierra Leone. Over the last twenty years, he has served as country director and senior consultant with the United States Institute of Peace, the United Nations, the United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and many non-governmental organizations. He has served as a Senior Fellow with the United States Institute of Peace, and as a Public Policy Scholar and an Eastern European Research Scholar with the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He is currently conducting research with the Stanford University Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law on comparative cases of democratic breakthrough, teaching post-conflict reconstruction and transitional development at Georgetown and Syracuse Universities and is a social development consultant to the World Bank on Middle East and North African affairs. He is the author of numerous articles and is co-authoring a book on democratic breakthrough with Michael McFaul. His media appearances include CNN, CSPAN, NPR and the BBC.

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Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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Alberto Díaz-Cayeros

Encina Hall, C149
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 725-0500
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
alberto_diaz-cayeros_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros is a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and co-director of the Democracy Action Lab (DAL), based at FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL). His research interests include federalism, poverty relief, indigenous governance, political economy of health, violence, and citizen security in Mexico and Latin America.

He is the author of Federalism, Fiscal Authority and Centralization in Latin America (Cambridge, reedited 2016), coauthored with Federico Estévez and Beatriz Magaloni, of The Political Logic of Poverty Relief (Cambridge, 2016), and of numerous journal articles and book chapters.

He is currently working on a project on cartography and the developmental legacies of colonial rule and governance in indigenous communities in Mexico.

From 2016 to 2023, he was the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford University, and from 2009 to 2013, Director of the Center for US-Mexican Studies at UCSD, the University of California, San Diego.

Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
Director of the Center for Latin American Studies (2016 - 2023)
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Beatriz Magaloni

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
beatriz_magaloni_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
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Desha Girod

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CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow 2008-2009
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Desha Girod is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University where she manages the program Evaluating International Influences on Democratic Development.  Her research focuses on the influence of external actors on political and economic development.  In 2009, she will join the faculty of the Department of Government at Georgetown University.
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Workshops

Health Care Reform Under Progressive Governments in Korea; and Late Life Inequality in Health, Work, and Economic Resources in Korea

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This seminar will feature two presentations: an attempt to evaluate the impact of health policy under a decade of progressive governments in Korea; and an investigation into the health and economic well-being of the elderly in Korea. The presenters will be Dr. Byongho Tchoe, a 2008-09 visiting scholar at Stanford University, and Dr. Young Kyung Do, the inaugural postdoctoral fellow in the Asia Health Policy Program at Stanford.

Korea achieved universal health care coverage in 1989 only twelve years after the introduction of social health insurance under an authoritarian government. In 1992 a civil government won the presidential election. Consistent with a conservative ideology oriented toward market principles and globalization, that government emphasized competitive principles in health care policy. However, at the end of 1997 in the face of economic crisis, the progressive party won the Korean presidential election; their health emphasized strengthening equity, redistribution, and regulation of providers’ rent seeking behavior. Under successive progressive governments from 1998 to 2007, ambitious health policy reforms integrated insurers, separated prescribing from dispensing, reformed provider payment, expanded benefits coverage, increased medical-aid enrollees, and increased the role of government providers in the health care market. But in the election of 2007, they were defeated by a conservative party, which insists that competition among insurers and providers will enhance efficiency and quality in health care, and stresses consumer choice and responsibility.

Dr. Tchoe's talk will attempt to evaluate impact of health care policy under a decade of progressive governments in Korea. Although equity in both access to care and financial responsibility appear to be enhanced, there is controversy about whether the policies were cost-effective or improved health, and what will happen as the new government repeals regulations in the health care market. The return of economic crisis also brings renewed urgency to debates of economic and social policy.

Byongho Tchoe is a 2008-09 visiting scholar at Stanford University. After working at the Korea Development Institute from 1983 to 1995, he took up his current post with the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. He has been influential in formulating health and social policy in Korea, having served as an advisor to the minister of health and social welfare and participated in many task forces and committees. In 2007, he was awarded a National Medal in honor of 30 years achievement related to Korea’s National Health Insurance. He has published many articles and books and served as president of the Korean Association of Health Economics and Policy and as vice president of the Korea Association of Social Security. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Georgia.

Young Kyung Do is the inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow in Asia Health Policy Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He completed his Ph.D. in health policy and administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health in August 2008. He has also earned M.D. and Master of Public Health degrees from Seoul National University (in 1997 and 2003, respectively). He earned board certification in preventive medicine from the Korean Medical Association in 2004. He received the First Prize Award in the Graduate Student Paper Competition in the Korea Labor and Income Panel Study Conference in 2007. He also is the recipient of the Harry T. Phillips Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Doctoral Student from the UNC Department of Health Policy and Administration in 2007. In May 2008, he was selected as a New Investigator in Global Health by the Global Health Council.

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Byongho Tchoe

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-6530
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Visiting Scholar, 2008-09
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Byongho Tchoe is a 2008-09 visiting scholar at Stanford University. He began his research career at the KDI (Korea Development Institute) which is a topnotch government think tank in Korea and served from 1983 to 1995. After earning his PhD in economics, he continued his research career at KIHASA (Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs) from 1995 up to now. 

He has always been an influential resource in formulating health and social policy in Korea, and served as an advisor to the minister of health and social welfare in 2000. He participated as a member of many task forces and committees for health and social policy making. He was awarded a National Medal for contributing 30 years achievement of National Health Insurance in 2007. 

He was also active in academic society. He published many articles and books. He served as a president of Korean Association of Health Economics and Policy and a vice president of Korea Association of Social Security. He holds a master's degree in public policy from Seoul National University and a PhD in economics from the University of Georgia. 

Byong Ho Tchoe Visiting Scholar, 2008-09 Speaker Shorenstein APARC
Young Kyung Do Postdoctoral Fellow, 2008-09 Speaker Shorenstein APARC
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February 2009 Dispatch - Gender Inequality in Earnings in Industrialized East Asia

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Chin-fen Chang
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Since 2005, research teams comprised of participants from across East Asia have been working on a collaborative survey project known as the East Asian Social Survey (EASS).1  The participating research teams include the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Renmin University in China; Osaka University of Commerce in Japan (JGSS); SungKyunKwan University in Korea (KGSS); and the Taiwan Social Change Survey (TSCS) at the Academia Sinica, Taiwan. The plan of the project is to conduct a survey with different topics for every two years. The first EASS survey, which focused on Family, was conducted in 2006. KGSS had now integrated the data that the four research teams compiled by the end of 2008. This data set is now ready for research use, both by members of the teams and by other interested parties. The topic for the 2008 survey is Globalization and Culture.

During the past two decades, the export-oriented economies of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan experienced strong economic growth and rising income levels. More women entered the labor markets and obtained better-paid jobs. However, in the regions surveyed, men and women often do not equally share in economic prosperity and there still exists a sex gap in earnings. A paper recently co-written by this author and Paula England,2  using the 2006 EASS data, may be the first attempt to explore the size of the sex gap, the factors that explain the gap, and the variations among Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.3

To explain the disparity between the pay of men and women in the survey nations, we used regression analysis to predict the hourly wage from various characteristics, using separate regressions for men and women in each nation. Then we assessed how much human capital factors may contribute to the sex gap in pay. For each factor, there are two estimates of how much it explains, reflecting whether we use male or female slopes, or rates of return. The table below summarizes some of the paper’s preliminary findings. The last row of the table shows that the sex wage gap is highest in Korea, with Japan coming in second place. In Taiwan, women earned about 82 percent of what men earned. For comparison, in the United States in 2003, the comparable wage ratio of female-over-male was 79.4 percent.

What factors might explain the sex gap in earnings? In Japan, the table shows (20 percent for the make slope and 34 percent for the female slope) that education is a key factor—notably, women are less likely to be college graduates. Another key factor is that women are more likely to work in contingent or temporary jobs than in permanent, full-time employment. In the Korea case, the difference between the male or female slopes is small, and 37 percent (male) to 32 percent (female) of the gap is explained, again, by education, as fewer Korean women have completed college than men. In Taiwan, a much lower share (6 percent for men and to 0 percent for women) is explained, mainly due to potential work experience, followed by employment status. In Taiwan, women actually have more education than men, as more women than men have completed college. This education imbalance supports our finding that the sex gap is largest in Korea, where women are less educated than men, and smallest in Taiwan, where the reverse is true.

Human capital factors (education and potential work experiences) seem to explain smaller proportions in the societies with a smaller gap. On the one hand, if we were to attribute all the elements of the gap not explained by mean differences in our supply-side measures to be sex discrimination, this would imply that a higher portion of Taiwan’s (albeit smaller) gap can explained by pay discrimination. On the other hand, women in Japan and Korea are disadvantaged, both in their educational achievements and their opportunities for regular employment. The contingent or part-time jobs that these women do pay less per hour than do the permanent or full-time jobs in which their male counterparts are employed. The EASS survey indicates, thus far, that economic prosperity and advancement in human capital factors may not naturally bring about sex equality in earnings.

Notes

1  More information on the EASS can be found at http://www.eass.info.

2  Chin-fen Chang and Paula England "Gender Inequality in Earnings in Industrialized East Asia," to be presented at the Beijing RC28 Meeting, Renmin University, Beijing, China, May 14-16, 2009.

3  In this paper, we excluded Chinese data because the other three societies are more comparable to one another in terms of their economic development.

 

 

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The New Transatlantic Agenda

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Ambassador Eliasson sets out the current status of Europe-US relations and acknowledges the wide range of daunting problems the world must face today. He emphasizes the need for an enhancement of the transatlantic relationship, as well as the need for multilateral cooperation. Mr. Eliasson also reinforces the importance of a continued awarenesss of the economy, the environment, and ethics.

Synopsis

Although unsure whether there will in fact be a new transatlantic agenda, Ambassador Eliasson repeatedly highlights that it is crucial that it does happen if we are to challenge the ‘huge’ issues of today. Mr. Eliasson notes the current financial climate and its possible effects on the social and political spheres as worrying. He also expresses particular concern at what he calls ‘fortress building,’ which involves protectionism and intolerance. Mr. Eliasson goes on to explain that as it stands, current US-Europe relations are dominated by mutual interest on security and the economy. However, to Mr. Eliasson, this relationship is marred by several issues. Inside the EU, democracy is in a predicament with politicians being accountable nationally while the issues are international. Moreover, Mr. Eliasson feels that the nature of the US and Europe relationship is not representative of the responsibility it should carry by being the most prosperous regions of the world.

How is this transatlantic relationship to move forward? If we are to arrive at what Mr. Eliasson describes as ‘scenario 1,’ which involves long term thinking, regulation, an emphasis on ethics, and a realization of interdependence in an internationally cooperative system, then Mr. Eliasson argues this requires reform. Mr. Eliasson argues it is urgent not to separate politics and economics. In dealing with a financial crisis, we must employ a multilateral approach and learn lessons for the future, particularly not fearing international regulation in a globalized economy. Mr. Eliasson also explains we can avoid this protectionist ‘fortress building’ by embracing ‘multipolarity.’ Mr. Eliasson underscores the importance of tolerance and good governance as central to progress. In addition, Mr. Eliasson reinforces that the problems of today are on such a massive scale that they must be dealt with internationally, as well as regionally and in the private sector.

Dealing with such issues, which involve collective engagement in Afghanistan and a cooperative approach in Africa, is what Mr. Eliasson believes must be added as a ‘third pillar’ to the US and Europe’s relationship. Mr. Eliasson also stresses concrete action on poverty by the US and Europe as central to this effort. In particular, he places emphasis a program for education of women and the establishment of clean water access. Mr. Eliasson believes that such efforts, which would add a pivotal ethical dimension to the transatlantic agenda, would enhance the reputation of democracy across the globe through concrete action.

In engaging with the audience in a question-and-answer session, one of the most emphasized subjects was diplomatic standards for international relations. Mr. Eliasson strongly reinforced the notion that the transatlantic agenda should stand with clear ethical standards. Other issues addressed included Iran's nuclear capabilities, religion, and the role of Russia.

About the Speaker

Ambassador Jan Eliasson was until July 1, 2008 Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General for Darfur. Previously, Jan Eliasson was President of the 60th session of the United Nations General Assembly 2005-2006. He was Sweden’s Ambassador to the United States, 2000-2005. Mr. Eliasson was Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden in 2006.

Mr. Eliasson served from 1994 to 2000 as State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, a key position in formulating and implementing Swedish foreign policy. Earlier, 1988-1992, he was Sweden’s Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. During this period, he also served as the Secretary-General’s Personal Representative for Iran/Iraq.

In 1992, Mr. Eliasson was appointed the first United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and was involved in operations in Somalia, Sudan, Mozambique and the Balkans. He also took initiatives on landmines, conflict prevention and humanitarian action.

1980-1986, Mr. Eliasson was part of the UN mediation missions in the war between Iran and Iraq, headed by former Prime Minister Olof Palme. In 1993-94 Mr. Eliasson served as mediator in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). He has been Visiting Professor at Uppsala University and Göteborg University in Sweden, lecturing on mediation, conflict resolution and UN reform.

During his diplomatic career, Mr. Eliasson has been posted to New York (twice) Paris, Bonn, Washington (twice) and Harare, where he opened the first Swedish Embassy in 1980. He served as Diplomatic Adviser to the Swedish Prime Minister 1982-1983, and as Director General for Political Affairs in the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs 1983-1987.

Mr. Eliasson has authored and co-authored numerous articles and books and is a frequent lecturer on foreign policy and diplomacy. He is recipient of honorary doctorate degrees from i. a. American University, Washington, D.C., Uppsala University and Göteborg University, Sweden. He has been decorated by a number of Governments.

He is the Chairman of the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund of Sweden and is Member of the Advisory Group to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Geneva.

Born in Göteborg, Sweden, in 1940, Mr. Eliasson was an exchange student in the United States 1957-1958. He graduated from the Swedish Naval Academy in 1962 and earned a Master’s degree in Economics and Business Administration in 1965.

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Jan Eliasson Former Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General for Darfur; Former President of the United Nations General Assembly; Former Minister for Foreign Affairs for Sweden Speaker
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