Il Rae Cho, "Preparing Financially for Aging and Retirement"

Recently, many issues related to aging have become more serious in both economic and social aspects all over the world.  Aging is something that nobody can avoid or neglect. However, most people tend to consider the issue of aging and retirement less serious than needed in real situations.  The lack of preparation for retirement may cause an economic turmoil to an individual's retirement life and national finance for social security.  In this presentation, Cho will show the current situations about aging and retirement and will offer practical solutions.

Yong Je Kim, "Next Generation Multimedia - What Will That Be?

Can you imagine the future TV and mobile phone?  What will they look like?

Only a few years ago, the main feature of a mobile phone was to make simple voice calls.  Today, we can do so much more - watch drama shows, sports and movies; take pictures and send them anywhere; and stay up-to-date checking the news and stock information of all countries in real time.  Through social media, we can share our opinion with many people regardless of location.  We can purchase goods or buy tickets for a concert simply using our mobile phones - without needing actual money or credit cards.  At the same time, TVs are getting smarter - providing useful functions like online shopping, remote video calls and watching movies without going to the movie theater. 

There are many technologies to enable these improvements, but the key technology is multimedia.  In this presentation, Kim will introduce some noticeable multimedia components and their progress, including examples of possible future TV and mobile phones. 

A tremendous amount of radioactive products were discharged as a result of the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011, which resulted in radioactive contamination of the plant and surrounding areas. While geographical distribution of radioactive iodine, tellurium, and cesium in the surface soils was smoothly (but not always systematically) widespread all over the region, health risk information by the government, media, and other organizations is most likely to be given in terms of administrative boundaries (cf. prefectures, municipalities, etc.) and/or distance from the radiation source.

This paper estimates the effect of such health risk information rather than the actual health risks of radiation on land and other prices in different locations. We find that the prefecture and municipality border effects – but not the distance effect from the nuclear power plant – are significantly related to a reduction in land and other prices after the accident. This shows that people responded to health risk information based on administrative boundaries rather than the actual health risk of radiation after the disaster. Although health risk information based on prefecture and municipality boundaries has an obvious advantage of distilling large and complex risk information into a simple one, the government, media, and other organizations need to recognize and carefully examine the potential of misclassifying non-contaminated areas into contaminated prefectures. Doing so will avoid unintentional consequences to the region’s economy.

Hiroaki Matsuura is currently Departmental Lecturer in the Economy of Japan in the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford and a Junior Research Fellow of St. Antony’s College. His main interests are health economics and demography, with a special interest in the relation between laws and population health. Hiroaki received his B.A. in Economics from Keio University, M.A. in Social Science from the University of Chicago, M.S. in Project Management from Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Sc.D. in Global Health and Population (Economics track) from Harvard University’s School of Public Health. In the past, he was affiliated with Institute of Quantitative Social Sciences, Human Rights in Development, and Takemi Program in International Health at Harvard University. He also worked as a research assistant at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His doctoral dissertation research explores a right to health or to health care in national constitutions of 157 countries and state constitutions of the 50 U.S. states and estimates the impact of introducing (or removing) a right to health or to health care into national and state constitutions on health system and population health outcomes. His most recent article, “The Right to Health in Japan: Challenges of a Super Aging Society and Implication from Its 2011 Public Health Emergency” (with Eriko Sase) will be appeared on “Advancing the Human Right to Health”, edited by José M. Zuniga, Stephen P. Marks, and Lawrence O. Gostin, Oxford University Press, 2013. 

From his journalistic point of view, Jaekwon Son will discuss competitiveness and weaknesses of Samsung and Psy that have recently made top news stories.

Son is a 2012-2013 visiting scholar with the Korean Studies Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Son, a reporter at the Maeil Business Newspaper in Korea, conducts research on the impact of new media journalism, such as social networking through smart devices. He has co-authored several books including The Appstore Economics (2010), Mobile Changes the World (2010), and The Naver Republic (2007). He has been awarded Jounalist of the Month from the Korea Jounalist Association (2012) and Jounalist of the Year from the Hanvit Culture Foundation (2008).

Son holds a BA in classical Chinese from Korea University.

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In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Yasuaki Hanai, "Are Japanese Electric Companies Becoming Obsolete? –  Rethinking Strong Points for Japanese Electric Companies

In recent years, it has become very common to take pictures using a smart phone or tablet, such as an iPad, and to share this information via social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  Japanese electric companies and products have been noticeably absent from this area, except for the single-lens reflex camera.  How has this happened?  Why have Japanese electric companies suffered a decline?  In his research, Hanai tries to answer these questions by analyzing the financial reports of various Japanese companies after the bubble economy collapse.  Hanai also considers strong points for Japanese electric companies and what the next actions should be to reverse the decline.

Saiko Nakagawa,  "Systemic Risks in the Japanese Banking Sector"

“Systemic risk” has become a buzzword after the global financial crisis in 2007-08.  Due to its elusive nature, there have been active discussions among scholars, international organizations and national regulators on how to measure and address the risk in order to prevent the next crisis.  In her presentation, Nakagawa will introduce these recent discussions and argue the implications to Japan’s financial sector.

Masashi Suzuki, "Dismal Software Industry in Japan – Will It Be Disrupted or Will It Discover Its Own Way like U.S. Players?"

In his research, Suzuki provides an historical analysis of the software market in Japan and the United States as well as a comprehensive analysis of the status quo of these two countries. Are there ways to improve the unfavorable situation in Japan?  Suzuki attempts to provide an answer to this question in his research presentation. 

Bin Wang, "Innovation and New Venture Strategies in China"

In recent years, entrepreneurship has played an increasing role in promoting economic growth in China.  The Chinese government began to pay more attention to encourage entrepreneurship in order to reform the economic structure.  Wang’s research examines the characteristics of the emerging industry and reveals a positive relationship between innovation capabilities and growth of new venture.  He developed a framework to classify new venture strategies based on market characteristics and innovation capabilities, identified ten strategic types, and reviewed their impact on performance in new ventures in China.  Wang’s research attempts to provide important guidelines for venture capital to identify potential investment opportunities.  These guidelines will also help entrepreneurs to identify an appropriate strategy to pursue business opportunities in given situations. 

Why are Japan and China perpetually at odds?  In this talk, Christian Collet will discuss the growing role of public opinion in bilateral tensions and the conflicting images that are held by Chinese and Japanese of one another.  While there has long been a mixture of affection, anger and rivalry at the diplomatic level, Collet will explain that the roots of contemporary discontent lie, in part, in contradistinctive citizen impressions: in China, perceptions of threat borne of history and new media; in Japan, discontent manifest in domestic political culture, including eroding trust and right-wing ideology.  Collet will examine the potential of soft power for ameliorating the relationship, providing some evidence to suggest that pop cultural exchanges may have a desired impact on segments of both publics.  But soft power can only go so far to soften a negative image; concerted efforts, Collet will argue, also need to be made by opinion leaders to reassure citizens and restore trust in governmental decision-making.

Christian Collet (PhD, University of California, Irvine) joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2012–13 academic year from International Christian University, Tokyo, where he serves as senior associate professor of American politics and international relations.

His research interests focus on public opinion in Asian Pacific/American contexts and the influence of race, ethnicity and nationalism on political mobilization. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, he is working on a project that uses comparative survey data to examine the dynamics of Japanese opinion toward domestic politics, China and Southeast Asia. He is also finishing up a project concerning the role of Vietnam in the political incorporation of first generation Vietnamese Americans. In 2004–05, he held a visiting appointment at Viet Nam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, under the U.S. Fulbright Program.

Collet's work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, The Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Japanese Journal of Political Science, PS, Amerasia Journal and Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts. He is the co-editor, with Pei-te Lien, of The Transnational Politics of Asian Americans (Temple University Press, 2009).