Better Governance by Remote Control? How Foreign Donors Steer ASEAN
Few realize that foreign donors currently disburse funds of at least $ 50 million annually on behalf of the integration of the ASEAN region. This amount is more than the triple the size of ASEAN’s official annual budget of $ 14 million. Goals of this foreign support include speeding the establishment of a customs unit, strengthening regional intellectual-property regimes, and empowering civil society to further ASEAN’s plan to create a fully integrated regional community by 2015. The “ASEAN-US Technical Assistance and Training Facility” alone has a budget of US$ 20 million for the period 2008-2012.
Few also realize the extent to which ASEAN’s far-reaching dependence on donor support—financial help and expert advice—has diminished the organization’s ownership of the regional integration process. In this lecture, Prof. Dosch will argue that foreign donors have begun to steer Southeast Asian regionalism.
What motivations and assumptions inform the support of Southeast Asian integration by foreign donors? Do they cooperate—or compete—in pursuit of this goal? Do the projects they favor reflect one-size-fits-all formulas that neglect the extreme political and economic diversity of Southeast Asia? The talk will address these and other rarely asked questions that challenge the conventional image of ASEAN as a model of successful external diplomacy for regional development.
Jörn Dosch is Chair in Asia Pacific Studies and Director of the East Asian Studies Department at the University of Leeds, UK. He was previously a Fulbright Scholar at Shorenstein APARC and an assistant professor at the University of Mainz, Germany. Dosch has published some 70 books and academic papers on East and Southeast Asian politics and international relations Recent titles include The Changing Dynamics of Southeast Asian Politics (2007) and “ASEAN's Reluctant Liberal Turn and the Thorny Road to Democracy Promotion,” The Pacific Review (December 2008). He has also worked as a consultant for UNDP, the German Foreign Office, and the European Commission. Recently he evaluated the European Union's cooperation programs with ASEAN and several of its member states. His 1996 PhD in political science is from the University of Mainz.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
POSCO NGO Fellowship Program ended after three years
Sudarno Sumarto
Sudarno Sumarto is the Shorenstein APARC / Asia Foundation fellow for 2009-10. He has a PhD and an MA from Vanderbilt University and a BS from Satya Wacana Christian University (Salatiga), all in economics. Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC he was the director of SMERU for nearly 10 years. SMERU is an independent institution for research and public policy studies which professionally and proactively provides accurate and timely information, as well as objective analysis on various socioeconomic and poverty issues considered most urgent and relevant for the people of Indonesia. The institute has been at the forefront of the research effort to highlight the impact of government programs and policies, and has actively published and reported its research findings. The work expanded to include other areas of applied and economic research that are of fundamental importance to contemporary development issues. He was also a lecturer at Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), Bogor, Indonesia.
Sumarto has contributed to more than sixty co-authored articles, chapters, reports, and working papers, including "Agricultural Growth and Poverty Reduction in Indonesia," in Beyond Food Production (2007); "Reducing Unemployment in Indonesia," SMERU Working Paper, 2007; "Improving Student Performance in Public Primary Schools in Developing Countries: Evidence from Indonesia," Education Economics, December 2006; and “The Effects of Location and Sectoral Components of Economic Growth on Poverty: Evidence from Indonesia.” Journal of Development Economics, 89(1), pp. 109-117, May 2009. As well as conducting research and writing papers, Sumarto has worked closely with the Indonesian government, giving advice on poverty issues and government poverty alleviation programs.
Sumarto has spoken on poverty and development issues in Australia, Chile, Peru, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Japan, Morocco, Thailand, and the United Kingdom, among other countries.
Silicon Valley Leaders Forum: Changing Silicon Valley
On Thursday, September 24, 2009, the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center will be convening a Silicon Valley Leaders Forum.
This public forum will bring together area researchers and thought leaders to discuss the turbulent changes the Valley is experiencing and address the question of whether the fundamental drivers that have enabled the region to be an innovative and entrepreneurial world leader will continue to be in play in coming years.
This event will serve as the kickoff for SPRIE's latest research project on Silicon Valley's next phase of transformation, a further and updated exploration of the ideas in The Silicon Valley Edge.
The first part of the day will feature a lineup of Silicon Valley luminaries, and the afternoon will close with a panel focused on changes in the venture capital industry.
Lunch will be served and paid registration is required for this event.
Schedule:
| 8:00 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. | Registration |
| 8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. | "Stanford and its (changing) relationships with Silicon Valley"
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| 9:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. | "Change is the Medium of Opportunity: Channeling Silicon Valley's Strengths to Lead on the Challenges of the 21st Century"
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| 10:30 – 10:45 a.m. | Break |
| 10:45 -11:45 a.m. | "The Entrepreneur and The Cloud—Silicon Valley Rejuvenated"
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| 11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. | Lunch |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | "Silicon Valley's Innovation Engine: Are We a Resilient Region?"
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| 2:00 – 3:30 pm | Venture Capital Panel
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Keynote speakers:
John L. Hennessy joined Stanford's faculty in 1977 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering. He rose through the academic ranks to full professorship in 1986 and was the inaugural Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from 1987 to 2004.
From 1983 to 1993, Dr. Hennessy was director of the Computer Systems Laboratory, a research and teaching center operated by the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science that fosters research in computer systems design. He served as chair of computer science from 1994 to 1996 and, in 1996, was named dean of the School of Engineering. As dean, he launched a five-year plan that laid the groundwork for new activities in bioengineering and biomedical engineering. In 1999, he was named provost, the university's chief academic and financial officer. As provost, he continued his efforts to foster interdisciplinary activities in the biosciences and bioengineering and oversaw improvements in faculty and staff compensation. In October 2000, he was inaugurated as Stanford University's 10th president. In 2005, he became the inaugural holder of the Bing Presidential Professorship.
James C. Morgan is chairman emeritus of Applied Materials. He previously served as chairman of the board from 1987 to 2009 and as chief executive officer from 1977 to 2003. Prior to joining Applied Materials as president in 1976, he was a senior partner with WestVen Management, a private venture capital partnership affiliated with the Bank of America Corporation. Prior to WestVen, he was with Textron, a leading diversified manufacturing company.
With one of the longest tenures of any FORTUNE 500 CEO, Mr. Morgan has an extensive history in business and philanthropy. Mr. Morgan is a recipient of the 1996 National Medal of Technology for his industry leadership and for his vision in building Applied Materials into the world's leading semiconductor equipment company, a major exporter and a global technology pioneer which helps enable the Information Age. Awarded by the President of the United States, the Medal of Technology recognizes technological innovators who have made lasting contributions to America's competitiveness and standard of living. Among his many honors, Mr. Morgan is a recent recipient of the prestigious Semiconductor Industry Association Robert N. Noyce Award, the highest honor bestowed by the SIA, for outstanding achievement and leadership in support of the U.S. semiconductor industry, and the Spirit of Silicon Valley Lifetime Achievement Award from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, for his ethics, community engagement and business success.
John Seely Brown is the Independent Co-Chairman of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation. In addition, he is a Visiting Scholar and Advisor to the Provost at USC.
Prior to that he was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)--a position he held for nearly two decades. While head of PARC, Brown expanded the role of corporate research to include such topics as organizational learning, knowledge management, complex adaptive systems, and nano/mems technologies. He was a cofounder of the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL). His personal research interests include the management of radical innovation, digital youth culture, digital media, and new forms of communication and learning.
John, or as he is often called--JSB-- is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and of AAAS and a Trustee of the MacArthur Foundation. He serves on numerous public boards (Amazon, Corning, and Varian Medical Systems) and private boards of directors. He has published over 100 papers in scientific journals and was awarded the Harvard Business Review's 1991 McKinsey Award for his article, "Research that Reinvents the Corporation" and again in 2002 for his article "Your Next IT Strategy."
In 2004 he was inducted in the Industry Hall of Fame.
With Paul Duguid he co-authored the acclaimed book The Social Life of Information (HBS Press, 2000) that has been translated into 9 languages with a second addition in April 2002, and with John Hagel he co-authored the book The Only Sustainable Edge which is about new forms of collaborative innovation. It also provides a novel framework for understanding what is really happening in off-shoring in India and China and how each are inventing powerful news ways to innovate, learn and accelerate capability building.
JSB received a BA from Brown University in 1962 in mathematics and physics and a PhD from University of Michigan in 1970 in computer and communication sciences. In May of 2000 Brown University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science Degree. It was followed by an Honorary Doctor of Science in Economics conferred by the London Business School in July 2001. And in May of 2004 he received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Claremont Graduate School. In 2005, he received an honorary doctorate from University of Michigan and delivered their commencement speech.
Doug Henton has more than 30 years of experience in innovation and economic development at the national, regional, state, and local levels. Doug is nationally recognized for his work in bringing industry, government, education, research, and community leaders together around specific collaborative projects to improve regional competitiveness.
Doug is a consultant to the California Economic Strategy Panel, California's state economic strategy process linked to innovation, industry clusters, and regions. He has worked extensively in California to help develop regional economic and innovation strategies for Silicon Valley, Sonoma, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, San Diego, the Central Valley, and others. He was primary consultant to the Fresno's Regional Jobs Initiative, which used the clusters of opportunity methodology to identifying promising areas for development. Doug has also consulted with the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, advising on economic development strategies. He has worked with the Great Valley Center on identifying promising areas for economic development, including renewable energy. In addition, Doug has worked with Next 10 on the continued development of the California Green Innovation Index.
He has also been consultant to several other state and regional agencies and organizations, including the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, Chicago Metropolis 2020, the Potomac Conference, and Arizona Partnership for a New Economy. He has assisted Oregon with its current strategy for economic development, and has advised governors in New York, Ohio, Washington, and others on their economic and workforce policies.
Doug holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and Economics from Yale University and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Venture Capital Panelists:
Neal Bhadkamkar is a co-founder of Monitor Venture Partners, L.P. (MVP), an early stage venture capital fund affiliated with The Monitor Group. MVP invests in seed and first round companies that are commercializing technologies in markets where Monitor Group's knowledge and client base can be used to reduce market risk. He is currently on the boards of Nanostellar, a catalyst company based on nano-scale materials design, and Verdezyne, a "green chemistry" company based on synthetic biology. He is also a board observer at Matisse Networks, which designs, manufactures and sells metro-area Ethernet switches based on Ring Optical Burst Switching.
Prior to establishing MVP, Neal was VP of Engineering and Manufacturing at Zowie Intertainment, an Interval Research spin-off that made "smart-toys". At Zowie he oversaw the design and manufacture of custom ASICs, firmware, game software, plastic parts and the final product using a supply chain that spanned five countries. Before Zowie, Neal was at Paul Allen's Interval Research Corporation, initially as a member of the research staff and later as the head of Interval's commercialization activity, in which role he managed the transition of research projects into commercial ventures. Earlier in his career Neal was a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and with the Monitor Group, and was a Research Associate at the Harvard Business School.
Neal has a PhD. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Bachelor of Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Neal lives in Palo Alto, California with his wife and three children.
Bob Patterson is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist with Peninsula Ventures. He is now pursuing on a full time basis a career begun in the 70's while practicing international corporate law with Squire, Sanders & Dempsey. Educated in Physics and Nuclear Engineering at UCLA and the U.S. Navy, before attending Stanford Law School and the Stanford GSB Executive Program, his legal and business career has focused on technology based entrepreneurship and the study of the science of capital formation for entrepreneurial based businesses, both domestically and internationally.
Marianne Wu is a Partner at MDV where she focuses on Cleantech investments. These typically involve significant technology or business model breakthroughs applied to large, evolving markets such as solar, biofuels and chemicals, clean coal, energy efficiency, smart grid, and water treatment and management. She leverages over 15 years of technology development and business experience to help entrepreneurs build meaningful, successful businesses. At MDV, she is on the Board of Laurus Energy and works closely with Zeachem and Catilin.
Marianne has been named one of Top 10 Women in Cleantech and one of Silicon Valley's Women of Influence. She is on the Advisory Committees of the Cleantech Open, Western Governors' Association, SdForum and Astia. She is a member of the Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association (HYSTA) VC Group and Environmental Entrepreneurs.
Prior to joining MDV, Marianne was VP Marketing at ONI Systems where she was responsible for product strategy and market development. Earlier in her career, Marianne was a consultant at McKinsey and Company where she advised major technology clients on strategic and operational issues. Marianne has conducted state-of-the-art research in materials, devices, and systems at Stanford University and started her career as a design engineer at Nortel Networks where she developed high-speed networking technologies.
Marianne earned both her doctoral and master's degrees from the School of Engineering at Stanford University and her bachelor's in Applied Science at the University of British Columbia.
Bechtel Conference Center
February 2009 Dispatch - Gender Inequality in Earnings in Industrialized East Asia
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.
Global financial reformers must heed Asia's clout
Major international crises often produce tectonic shifts in international relations. Under pressure from key European counterparts, President Bush has agreed to a "new Bretton Woods" summit on Nov. 15.
It would be hard to overstate the potential significance of this meeting. The first Bretton Woods, in 1944, set the rules for monetary relations among nations, and it created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
While European leaders are pushing for greater regulation and a major overhaul of the international financial order, US policymakers have been lukewarm, emphasizing the preservation of free-market capitalism. This transatlantic drama has obscured the more fundamental problem—how to accommodate the historic shift of economic power away from the West toward Asia.
Including India, broader East Asia encompasses more than half of the world's population. The region already accounts for about one-third of global economic output, oil consumption, and CO2 emissions, and this is only likely to grow in the future. Over the course of the 21st century, Asia's economic and geopolitical weight in the world will, in all likelihood, come to rival that of Europe in the 19th century. Asian problems will become increasingly indistinguishable from global problems.
In the face of such dramatic change, the IMF and World Bank are becoming relics of a bygone era. At the time of their creation, by US and European negotiators, the major challenge was to get capital flowing from the US to war-ravaged Europe. The days of the US as creditor state are long gone—our massive current account deficit is financed by importing nearly $1 trillion in foreign capital every year. Major US banks are being rescued by sovereign wealth funds and financial institutions from the Middle East and East Asia. China and Japan alone held over $600 billion of securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, making the bailout of those institutions a major foreign policy issue.
Despite these changed realities, both Bretton Woods institutions remain dominated by the West. By convention, the IMF is led by a European, the World Bank by a US national. The US is the only country with veto power over important decisions in either body.
My analysis of voting shares in the IMF indicates that the Allied powers of World War II have been consistently overrepresented compared to Axis powers despite the passing of more than 60 years since the end of that war. Studies show that IMF lending is biased in favor of recipients with strong economic and diplomatic ties to the US and key European states at the expense of other members.
This unbalanced representation had real consequences during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, when the IMF, as part of its rescue operation, implemented policies widely viewed as contrary to Asian interests. During the crisis, Japanese financial authorities proposed an Asian Monetary Fund as a potential alternative source of liquidity. This proposal was rejected by US officials, who feared dilution of IMF authority. However, over the past decade, East Asian states have stockpiled foreign currency reserves and developed regional cooperation that may eventually develop into a credible alternative to the IMF.
The IMF and World Bank should be reformed to better reflect the interests and concerns of rising economic powers. Voting shares need to be further redistributed to reflect underlying economic realities. Decisionmaking rules should be modified to give greater weight or agenda-setting authority to regional actors—the US may have a strong interest in loans to Mexico, but Japan may have a greater stake in Indonesia. Assignment of the top positions should be made truly competitive. Core functions should be decentralized—both institutions are headquartered in Washington, impeding employment of top talent from Asia and limiting intellectual exchange.
An international financial architecture that fragments or remains centered on the West as Asia rises will probably prove grossly ineffective. Europe attempted much the same during the turbulent period between the two World Wars, resurrecting a system based on British hegemony even as Britain was in relative decline. Those were scary times, with free riding and beggar-thy-neighbor policies feeding mutual distrust and economic catastrophe.
This will not be the last financial crisis we face. Next time, ad hoc cooperation by the US and Europe may prove insufficient. Franklin Roosevelt had the foresight to include China on the United Nations Security Council long before that nation became a geopolitical heavyweight. Similar foresight should be brought to bear as world leaders debate the future of the international financial architecture.
Indonesian economist named Shorenstein APARC/Asia Foundation Visiting Fellow for 2009-2010
In 2008 an Indonesian economist, Sudarno Sumarto, was chosen to become the second Shorenstein APARC/Asia Foundation Visiting Fellow. He will be in residence at Stanford during the 2009-2010 academic year.
An edited summary of Dr. Sumarto's proposed research and writing at Stanford follows:
Facing the major damage wreaked by the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 on already poor and/or vulnerable Indonesians, the government in Jakarta was forced to launch a series of emergency social safety nets. These programs targeted multiple sectors: employment, education, health, food security, and community empowerment.
Now that a decade has gone by since these measures were undertaken, it is time to draw policy lessons from the experience. Special attention will be paid in this project to the dynamics of the process of deciding and delivering social protection, the difficulty of enlisting or creating appropriate targeting and implementation mechanisms, institutional enablers and impediments, the role of civil society, the impact of commodity subsidy reforms, and the relevance of good (and bad) governance.
The study will also draw comparisons between Indonesia's record of targeted social protection and the experiences of other developing countries.
Dr. Sumarto heads the SMERU Research Institute (Jakarta). He also lectures at the Bandung Institute of Technology, Universitas Nusa Bangsa (Bogor), and the University of Indonesia (Jakarta).
Dr. Sumarto has contributed to more than sixty co-authored articles, chapters, reports, and working papers, including "Agricultural Growth and Poverty Reduction in Indonesia," in Beyond Food Production (2007); "Reducing Unemployment in Indonesia," SMERU Working Paper, 2007; and "Improving Student Performance in Public Primary Schools in Developing Countries: Evidence from Indonesia," Education Economics, December 2006.
Dr. Sumarto has spoken on poverty and development issues in Australia, Chile, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Japan, Morocco, Thailand, and the United Kingdom, among other countries. He has a PhD and an MA from Vanderbilt University and a BSc Cum Laude from Satya Wacana Christian University (Salatiga), all in economics. He and his wife Wiwik Widowati have three children.
POSCO NGO Fellowship Committee admitted 10 applicants for 2008 Fellowship Program
Ten 2008 POSCO NGO Fellows were selected by the Fellowship admission committee during the second POSCO NGO Fellowship Conference held on May 1 and 2 at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
George Washington University:
Ms. Gyung Lan Jung, Center for Peaceful Future of Korea
Mr. Hyun-Mo Choi, Korea Migrant Workers' Human Rights
Indiana University:
Mr. Seoung-Hwan Jeon, National Council of YMCAs of Korea
Mr. Jae-Seok Kim, Gwangju Citizen's Coalition for Economic Justice
Columbia University:
Mr. Tae Ho Lee, People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy
Mr. Boyoun Joung, Korea Youth Corps
University of British Columbia:
Ms. Jeong Sook Park, Korean Women Link
Ms. Hee-Seon Jeong, Seocho Volunteer Center
Stanford University:
Ms. Hye-Jeong Kim, Korea Federation for Environmental Movement
Mr. Hyun Gon Jung, Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation