Modern-day markets do not arise spontaneously or evolve naturally. Rather they are crafted by individuals, firms, and most of all, by governments. Thus "marketcraft" represents a core function of government comparable to statecraft and requires considerable artistry to govern markets effectively. Just as real-world statecraft can be masterful or muddled, so it is with marketcraft. 

In his new book, Steven Vogel builds his argument upon the recognition that all markets are crafted then systematically explores the implications for analysis and policy. In modern societies, there is no such thing as a free market. Markets are institutions, and contemporary markets are all heavily regulated. The "free market revolution" that began in the 1980s did not see a deregulation of markets, but rather a re-regulation. Vogel looks at a wide range of policy issues to support this concept, focusing in particular on the US and Japan. He examines how the US, the "freest" market economy, is actually among the most heavily regulated advanced economies, while Japan's effort to liberalize its economy counterintuitively expanded the government's role in practice. 

Marketcraft demonstrates that market institutions need government to function, and in increasingly complex economies, governance itself must feature equally complex policy tools if it is to meet the task. In our era-and despite what anti-government ideologues contend-governmental officials, regardless of party affiliation, should be trained in marketcraft just as much as in statecraft.

SPEAKER

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Steven K. Vogel, Il Han New Professor of Asian Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley

BIO

Steven K. Vogel is the Il Han New Professor of Asian Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in the political economy of the advanced industrialized nations, especially Japan. He recently completed a book, entitled Marketcraft: How Governments Make Markets Work (Oxford, 2018), which argues that markets do not arise spontaneously but rather are crafted by individuals, firms, and most of all by governments.  Thus “marketcraft” represents a core function of government comparable to statecraft.  The book systematically reviews the implications of this argument, critiquing prevalent schools of thought and presenting lessons for policy.  Vogel is also the author of Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry Are Reforming Japanese Capitalism (Cornell, 2006) and co-editor (with Naazneen Barma) of The Political Economy Reader: Markets as Institutions (Routledge, 2008). His first book, Freer Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries  (Cornell, 1996), won the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. He edited his mother’s book, Suzanne Hall Vogel, The Japanese Family in Transition: From the Professional Housewife Ideal to the Dilemmas of Choice(Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), and a volume on U.S.-Japan Relations in a Changing World(Brookings, 2002).  He won the Northern California Association of Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Excellence Award in 2002, and the UC Berkeley Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship of Graduate Student Instructors in 2005.  He has been a columnist for Newsweek-Japan and the Asahi Shimbun, and he has written extensively for the popular press.  He has worked as a reporter for the Japan Times in Tokyo and as a freelance journalist in France. He has taught previously at the University of California, Irvine and Harvard University. He has a B.A. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

The event is jointly sponsored by the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.

Japan is one of the world’s most prominent military space powers around. With the inescapable ambiguity of dual-use, Japan has acquired its impressive capabilities in full view of a pacifist public and under constitutional constraints. At this stage, as the country races to keep abreast of the latest space technology trends, its national security trajectories are openly and officially sanctioned in both law and policy. These realities are not well understood by Japan’s allies or rivals, which limits our appreciation about where Japan is headed in its own national interest in the region, the world, and beyond.  

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The event is jointly sponsored by the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.

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Robert Dekle is a Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Southern California. His field of research include international finance, open-economy and development, macroeconomics and the economies of Japan and East Asia.    He obtained his Ph.D in economics at Yale University and B.A in economics at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Symposium on "History of US-Japan Relations"

March 6, 2018

Philippines Conference Room

Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (Stanford University)

Program

9:00am     Registration and Breakfast
 

9:30am     Welcome Remark
                 Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University)
 

9:40am  Session 1: From Perry to the War with China

Presenter:
Kaoru Iokibe (University of Tokyo)

Discussant:
Peter Duus (Stanford University)
 

10:40am  Break
 

11:00am  Session 2: Pacific War and Occupation

Presenter:
Fumiaki Kubo (University of Tokyo)

Discussant:
Kenji Kushida (Stanford University)

12:00pm  Lunch
 

1:00pm   Session 3: Pax Americana and Japan's Postwar Resurgence

Presenter:
Makoto Iokibe (Prefectural University of Kumamoto and Hyogo)

Discussant:
Tsuneo Akaha (Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey)

2:00pm   Session 4: Neoliberalism and Redefinition of the US-Japan Alliance

Presenter:
Masayuki Tadokoro (Keio University)

Discussant:
Michael Armacost (Stanford University)

3:00pm  Break
 

3:20pm   Session 5: US-Japan Leadership Today

Presenter:
Koji Murata (Doshisha University)

Discussant:
Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University)

4:20pm   Closing Remark
               Makoto Iokibe (Prefectural University of Kumamoto and Hyogo)

Stanford Conference on "The Political Economy of Japan under the Abe Government"

February 8 - February 9, 2018

Philippines Conference Room

Sponsored by: Japan Society for Promotion of Science, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (Stanford University), and Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (Stanford University)

Organizers: Takeo Hoshi and Phillip Lipscy

Program

2/8/2018

8:30am     Breakfast
 

9:15am     Welcome remarks
                 Gi-Wook Shin (Stanford University)
                Toru Tamiya (Japan Society for Promotion of Science)
 

9:30am  "Transformation of the Japanese Political System: Expansion of the Power of the Japanese Prime Minister", Harukata Takenaka (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)

Discussant:
Saori Katada (University of Southern California)
 

10:30am  Break
 

10:50am  "Constitutional Revision Under the Abe Administration", Kenneth McElwain (University of Tokyo)

Discussant:
Yu Jin Woo (Stanford University)

11:50am  Lunch
 

1:00pm    "Do election results reflect voters' policy preferences? Evidence from the 2017 Japanese general election", Yusaku Horiuchi (Dartmouth College), Shiro Kuriwaki (Ph.D, Harvard University), Daniel Smith (Harvard University)

Discussant:
Rob Weiner (Naval Postgraduate School)

2:00pm   "Japan's Security Policy in 'the Abe Era': Radical Transformation or Evolutionary Shift?", Adam Liff (Indiana University)

Discussant:
Ashten Seung Cho (Stanford University)

3:00pm  Break
 

3:20pm   "Abenergynomics: The Politics of Energy and Climate Change under Abe", Trevor Incerti (Yale University) and Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University)

Discussant:
Kent Calder (Johns Hopkins SAIS)

4:20pm   "Innovation Policy", Kenji Kushida (Stanford University)

Discussant:
John Zysman (University of California, Berkeley)
 

5:20pm     Adjourn
 

6:30pm     Group Dinner

2/9/2018

9:00am   Breakfast
 

9:30am   "Abenomics, Monetary Policy, and Consumption", Joshua Hausman (University of Michigan), Takashi Unayama (Hitotsubashi University), and Johannes Wieland (University of California, San Diego)

Discussant:
Huiyu Li (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)
 

10:30am  Break

10:50am "The Great Disconnect: The Decoupling of Wage and Price Inflation in Japan", Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University) and Anil Kashyap (University of Chicago)

Discussants:
Joshua Hausman (University of Michigan)
Johannes Wieland (University of California, San Diego)
 

11:50pm  Lunch
 

1:00pm  "Corporate Governance Reform", Hideaki Miyajima (Waseda University)

Discussant:
Curtis Milhaupt (Stanford University)
 

2:00pm   "Womenomics", Nobuko Nagase (Ochanomizu University)

Discussant:
Steve Vogel (University of California, Berkeley)
 

3:00pm  Break
 

3:20pm  "Japanese Agricultural Reform Under Abe Shinzo: Two Steps Forward, A Half-Step Back?", Patricia Maclachlan (University of Texas at Austin) and Kay Shimizu (University of Pittsburgh)

Discussant:
Takatoshi Ito (Columbia University and National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)
 

4:20pm   "Yen Depreciation and Competitiveness of Japanese Firms", Kyoji Fukao (Hitotsubashi University) and Shuichiro Nishioka (West Virginia University)

Discussant:
Katheryn Russ (University of California, Davis)
 

5:20pm  "Next Step", Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University) and Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University)
 

5:50pm  Adjourn

Confronting a declining population and increased aging, the government of Japan currently implements measures for Regional Revitalization (chiho sosei), a policy to vitalize local economies by shaping “a social framework more amenable to bearing and raising children.” One of the most important policy issues to shape such a framework is to secure employment opportunities in regional economies, and establishment of new firms, or startups, plays a significant role in providing new employment opportunities.

For the success of startups, money (fund raising) is the chief obstacle because startups are rarely creditworthy and have significant asymmetry of information on its repayment ability with lenders. Such firms have difficulty in raising funds, or financial constraint, and cannot help but depend on internal funds from their CEOs or families. Whether and to what extent do startups confront with financial constraint? How does finance matter for the performance of startups? And first of all, how do various types of startups raise funds?

To answer these questions, Uchida currently leads a research project on startup finance in Japan with support from a large-scale research grant in Japan (JSPS Kakenhi). In this seminar, he reports findings from this ongoing project. He presents an overview of, and some empirical results on, the current statu of startups firms and startup finance in Japan using publicly available data and data from original surveys that his research team has conducted. He also provides some findings from international comparisons with findings from the U.S., which he currently undertakes as a visiting scholar at APARC (with support from Abe Fellowship).

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Hirofumi Uchida joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2017-2018 academic year from the Kobe University’s Graduate School of Business Administration where he serves as a professor of Banking and Finance.

Uchida’s research interests focus on banking, financial institutions, and financial system architecture. During his stay at Shorenstein APARC, Uchida will conduct research on startup finance in the U.S. from the perspective of an international comparison with Japan. For this research, he receives Abe Fellowship (Social Science Research Council).

Uchida's research has been published in International Economic Review, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Economica, and Journal of Banking and Finance, among others. He is also an associate editor of Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, and a member of the Study Group for Earthquake and Enterprise Dynamics (SEEDs) and the Money & Finance Research Group (MoFiR). 

Uchida received his M.A. in Economics in 1995 and his Ph.D. in Economics in 1999, both from Osaka University. Prior to joining Kobe University in 2009, Uchida was with the Kyoto Institute for Economic Research at Kyoto University, and the Faculty of Economics at Wakayama University. He was also a visiting scholar at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University as a 2003 Fulbright Scholar.