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Stanford Magazine Highlights REAP's Success in Influencing Policymakers

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Anemia and malnutrition stunt the cognitive development of children in poor, rural areas of China. A Stanford-PRC research team led by FSI Senior Fellow Scott Rozelle, co-director of the Rural Education Action Program (REAP), found answers to help give millions of kids a better future. And Beijing is already taking action.

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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.

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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
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Shorenstein APARC titles bring new perspective to China's ongoing transformation and U.S.-ROK relations

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Edited by center faculty members Jean C. Oi, Xueguang Zhou, and Scott Rozelle, Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunity in China's Transformation contains new analytical and empirical research on the challenges that China must face if it is to continue its upward trajectory.

In One Alliance, Two Lenses, Shorenstein APARC director Gi-Wook Shin examines U.S.-Korea relations in a short but dramatic period that witnessed the end of the Cold war, South Korea's full democratization, inter-Korean engagement, two nuclear crises, and the start of the U.S. war on terror.

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One Alliance, Two Lenses

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In a recently published book (One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era) based on analysis of newly collected data from major American and Korean newspapers, Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Asia-Pacific Research Center, argues that U.S.-ROK relations, linked to the issue of national identity for Koreans, are largely treated as a matter of policy for Americans -- a difference stemming from each nation's relative power and role in the international system.
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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.

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