Stanford University

The Foreign Exchange Origins of Japan's Economic Slump and Low Interest Rate Trap

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Japan's macroeconomic problem has yet to be properly diagnosed. Throughout the 1990s, policy makers could not decide on the proper macro economic measures to combat the country's severe economic slump. We propose a unified explanation, with deep historical roots, of why aggregate private demand failed to recover after Japan's stock and real estate bubbles burst in 1991 and deflationary pressure continues into the new millenium. Ron McKinnon is William D. Eberle Professor of International Economics at the Department of Economics, Stanford University. His research interests cover trade and financial policy in less-developed countries, the transition from socialism in Asia and Eastern Europe, the foreign exchange market and U.S.-Japan trade disputes, European monetary unification and international monetary reform, and the economics of market-preserving federalism. Rishi Goyal is a Ph.D graduate student in international economics working with Professor McKinnon on a Japan project--and will be writing his dissertation in this area. His undergraduate B.A. (with distinction) is from Swarthmore College in 1995. He expects to complete his Ph.D in 2001.

Okimoto Conference Room, Encina Hall, East Wing, Third Floor

Ronald I. McKinnon

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

(650) 723-9741 (650) 723-6530
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William D. Eberle Professor of International Economics
R_McKinnon_headshot.jpg PhD

Ronald McKinnon is the William D. Eberle Professor of International Economics at Stanford University. Currently, he is researching trade and financial policy in less-developed countries, the transition from socialism in Asia and Eastern Europe, the foreign exchange market and U.S.-Japan trade disputes, European monetary unification and international monetary reform, and the economics of market-preserving federalism.

Recent books by McKinnon include The Order of Economic Liberalization: Financial Control on the Transition to a Market Economy, 2nd edition (1993); The Rules of the Game: International Money and Exchange Rates (1996); and Dollar and Yen: Resolving Economic Conflict between the United States and Japan (with K. Ohno, 1997). Recent (1997) articles include "Credible Liberalizations and International Capital Flows: The Overborrowing Syndrome" (with H. Pill); "The East Asian Dollar Standard, Life after Death?" (1999); and "The Syndrome of the Ever-Higher Yen: American Mercantile Pressure on Japanese Monetary Policy" (with K. Ohno and K. Shirono, 1999). McKinnon teaches international trade and finance, economic development, money and banking, and financial control in developing and transitional socialist economies.

Ronald I. McKinnon Professor Speaker
Rishi Goyal Graduate Student Speaker Department of Economics, Stanford University
Seminars

Political Change in Taiwan: Implications for American Policy

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Since 1997, Dr. Richard Bush has been the leadig on-site practitioner of US-Taiwan relations. He was appointed to the Board of the American Institute of Taiwan by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and named Chairman and Managing Dircetor at the same time. Prior to his appointment, he was staff to the International Relations Committee in the United States House of Representatives, and also served as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia. He holds a doctorate in political science from Columbia University.

Bechtel Conference Center

Dr. Richard Bush Chairman of the Board and Managing Director Speaker The American Institute in Taiwan
Workshops
Walter H. Shorenstein Forum for Asia Pacific Studies

Inter-Korean Relations: What Will Happen Next?

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In the midst of preparing for the upcoming Inter-Korea Summit in June, the South Korean government and many North Korea experts struggle with how to manage this historic opportunity for breakthrough in the Korean peninsula. What happened behind closed doors to reach this agreement to have the summit meeting and what uncertainties lie along the way? What issues will be discussed at the summit? What will some of the challenges be in the post-summit era, not only in inter-Korean relations but in neighboring countries' policies toward the Korean peninsula? These questions and more will be discussed during this seminar. Dr. Kil has worked for the last four years in the Washington bureau of the Korean newspaper, Joong Ang Ilbo, closely monitoring the U.S.-North Korea talks. He is currently on leave for research at the Tokyo Foundation. Dr. Kil has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.

AP Scholars Lounge, Encina Hall, South Wing, Third Floor

Jeong-Woo Kil Diplomatic Correspondent and Columnist Speaker Joong Ang Ilbo
Seminars

Jean C. Oi

Department of Political Science
Stanford University
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-26044

(650) 723-2843 (650) 725-9401
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics
jean_oi_headshot.jpg PhD

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the department of political science and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She is the founding director of the Stanford China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Professor Oi is also the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University.

A PhD in political science from the University of Michigan, Oi first taught at Lehigh University and later in the Department of Government at Harvard University before joining the Stanford faculty in 1997.

Her work focuses on comparative politics, with special expertise on political economy and the process of reform in transitional systems. Oi has written extensively on China's rural politics and political economy. Her State and Peasant in Contemporary China (University of California Press, 1989) examined the core of rural politics in the Mao period—the struggle over the distribution of the grain harvest—and the clientelistic politics that ensued. Her Rural China Takes Off (University of California Press, 1999 and Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 1999) examines the property rights necessary for growth and coined the term “local state corporatism" to describe local-state-led growth that has been the cornerstone of China’s development model. 

She has edited a number of conference volumes on key issues in China’s reforms. The first was Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunity in China's Transformation (Brookings Institution Press, 2010), co-edited with Scott Rozelle and Xueguang Zhou, which examined the earlier phases of reform. Most recently, she co-edited with Thomas Fingar, Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China’s Future (Stanford University Press, 2020). The volume examines the difficult choices and tradeoffs that China leaders face after forty years of reform, when the economy has slowed and the population is aging, and with increasing demand for and costs of education, healthcare, elder care, and other social benefits.

Oi also works on the politics of corporate restructuring, with a focus on the incentives and institutional constraints of state actors. She has published three edited volumes related to this topic: one on China, Going Private in China: The Politics of Corporate Restructuring and System Reform (Shorenstein APARC, 2011); one on Korea, co-edited with Byung-Kook Kim and Eun Mee Kim, Adapt, Fragment, Transform: Corporate Restructuring and System Reform in Korea (Shorenstein APARC, 2012); and a third on Japan, Syncretism: The Politics of Economic Restructuring and System Reform in Japan, co-edited with Kenji E. Kushida and Kay Shimizu (Brookings Institution, 2013). Other more recent articles include “Creating Corporate Groups to Strengthen China’s State-Owned Enterprises,” with Zhang Xiaowen, in Kjeld Erik Brodsgard, ed., Globalization and Public Sector Reform in China (Routledge, 2014) and "Unpacking the Patterns of Corporate Restructuring during China's SOE Reform," co-authored with Xiaojun Li, Economic and Political Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2018.

Oi continues her research on rural finance and local governance in China. She has done collaborative work with scholars in China, including conducting fieldwork on the organization of rural communities, the provision of public goods, and the fiscal pressures of rapid urbanization. This research is brought together in a co-edited volume, Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization (Brookings Institution Shorenstein APARC Series, 2017), with Karen Eggleston and Wang Yiming. Included in this volume is her “Institutional Challenges in Providing Affordable Housing in the People’s Republic of China,” with Niny Khor. 

As a member of the research team who began studying in the late 1980s one county in China, Oi with Steven Goldstein provides a window on China’s dramatic change over the decades in Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County (Stanford University Press, 2018). This volume assesses the later phases of reform and asks how this rural county has been able to manage governance with seemingly unchanged political institutions when the economy and society have transformed beyond recognition. The findings reveal a process of adaptive governance and institutional agility in the way that institutions actually operate, even as their outward appearances remain seemingly unchanged.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative

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Fiscal Politics and Central-Local Relations in China

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Structural Change in China

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Director of the China Program
Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
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Peri-Urbanization in Chengdu, Western China: From "Third Line" to Market Dynamics

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Peri-urbanization in the Chengdu extended urban region is the subject of this discussion paper. Characteristics of peri-urbanization processes in East Asia in general, and China in particular, have been described in previous outputs of the Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) and Institute of Geographical Science and Natural Resource Research (IGSNRR) research team. In a nutshell, peri-urbanization refers to the dynamic process of physical and socioeconomic change beyond the contiguously built-up areas of large cities. In East Asia, the process is usually driven by investment (foreign and domestic) in manufacturing. Development in the Chengdu peri-urban region (and in Chongqing) has taken a very different route to date than in coastal China, the subject of previous research by our Urban Dynamics of East Asia Project.

The Chengdu region, in the past, has been shaped to a greater extent by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and explicit national spatial policy than has the coastal region. It has been significantly influenced by the "Third Line" development program, which Mao Zedong initiated in the 1960s to protect industries strategic to national defense by locating them in interior western China. Starting in the late 1970s, the movement of "Third Line" firms from extremely remote locations to more central locations drove the development of the ring of peri-urban satellite cities around Chengdu. Unlike other western Chinese cities, the Chengdu peri-urban region was the location of considerable Township and Village Enterprise (TVE) development for a twenty-year period, also beginning in the late 1970s. However, over time, market forces have become the dominant force shaping the development of Chengdu, not unlike coastal cities, albeit with a lag effect.

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Shorenstein APARC
Authors
Douglas Webster
Number
1-931368-05-8

Some Thoughts on the People's Liberation Army and on Sino-American Security Relations

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A Stanford Alumnus, Brigadier General Eikenberry currently serves as Defense Attache in Bejing, China - an assignment he has held since November, 1997. Earlier in his distinguished career in the United States Army, Brigadier General Eikenberry served in such assignments as National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government; Chief of Foreign Area Officer Proponency Division in the Strategy Plans and Policy Directorate; and Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. *** Luncheon will be provided. RSVP required. 650-725-6501. ***

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Brigadier General Karl W. Eikenberry Defense Attache, Beijing Speaker United States Army
Panel Discussions

1999-2000 Visiting Fellows' Research Presentations (session 2)

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12.00 p.m. Mr. Noriaki OZAWA (Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Japan) What is Japan? A Look at Japan's Changing Sociocultural Identity. 12.20 p.m. Mr. Nobutake SHIRAI (Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, Japan) Internet Business in U.S. and Japan: A Comparative Study. 12.40 p.m. Mr. Raita SUGIMOTO (Toyota Motor Corporation, Japan) Reorganization of the Automobile Industry and its Impact on the Asian Market. 1.00 p.m. Mr. Takeo TAKIUCHI (The Patent Office, Japan) Entrepreneurship through Technology Transfer in Silicon Valley. 1.20 p.m. Mr. Kenji UCHIDA (The Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc., Japan) Setting Up New Ventures In-house at Kansai Electric Power Company. 1.40 p.m. Mr. Zhi-Jie ZENG (CITIC Pacific, Hong Kong) China's WTO bid and the Effect on China's Internet Business. Research Introductions: Mr. Yong-Ky EUM (Hyundai Heavy Industry, Korea) Mr. Jiang FENG (People's Bank of China, PRC) Ms. Xiaohui ZHANG (People's Bank of China, PRC)

Okimoto Conference Room, Encina Hall, East Wing, Third Floor

Seminars

1999-2000 Visiting Fellows' Research Presentations (session 1)

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12.00 p.m. Mr. Hiroyuki FUNAGURA (Toyobo Co., Ltd., Japan) Digital Subscriber Line Research. 12.15 p.m. Ms. Reiko HAYASAKA (Sankei Shimbun, Japan) The Outlook of the Japanese Press Club. 12.30 p.m. Mr. Toshiya KOINUMA (Asahi Shimbun, Japan) Open Source Software Development and its Influence on the Software Industry. 1.00 p.m. Mr. Hidenori MITSUI (Ministry of Finance, Japan) Comparison of American and Japanese Law Fundamentals: Focusing on Tax Law. 1.20 p.m. Mr. Yoshihiko MURASAWA (The Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc., Japan) Decision-Making Systems of Building Nuclear Power Stations in Japan. 1.40 p.m. Mr. Kiyoshi NOGUCHI (Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan) The Future of Japanese E-commerce.

Okimoto Conference Room, Encina Hall, East Wing, Third Floor

Seminars

Database Protection Laws in Japan

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TBD

Kenji Inoue Fellow Speaker Stanford Program in International Legal Studies
Seminars
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