A year has passed since the Japanese government embarked on the new economic policy package called “Abenomics” with three “arrows”: aggressive monetary easing, flexible fiscal policy, and a growth strategy. The package is designed to bring the Japanese economy out of 20 years of stagnation and 15 years of deflation, and put it on a sustainable growth path. How effective has the policy package been during the first year of the Abe administration?  Will it succeed in bringing sustainable growth to Japan?  Professor Takatoshi Ito, a prominent expert on the Japanese economy, tackles these questions.

Takatoshi Ito, Professor at Faculty of Economics and Dean of Graduate School of Public
Policy, University of Tokyo, has taught extensively both in the United States and Japan,
including at University of Minnesota, Hitotsubashi University, and Harvard University.
He held visiting professor positions at Harvard University (1986-87 and 1992-94), Stanford
University (as National Fellow; 1984-85); Columbia Business School (fall semester, 2009),
and Tun Ismail Ali Chair Professor at University of Malaya (summer semester, 2008). His
public sector experiences include Senior Advisor in the Research Department, IMF
(1994-97); Deputy Vice Minister for International Affaires at Ministry of Finance
(1999-2001); and a member of the Prime Minister’s Council of Economic and Fiscal
Policy (2006-08). He is an author of many books including The Japanese Economy (MIT
Press), The Political Economy of the Japanese Monetary Policy (MIT Press), and
Financial Policy and Central Banking in Japan (MIT Press), and more than 50
refereed academic journal articles on international finance and the Japanese economy,
including ones in American Economic Review and Econometrica. He has distinguished
academic and research appointments such as President of the Japanese Economic
Association in 2004; Fellow of Econometric Society, since 1992; Research Associate at
National Bureau of Economic Research since 1985; and Faculty Fellow, Centre for
Economic Policy Research, since 2006. His research interest includes capital flows and
currency crises, microstructures of the foreign exchange rates, and inflation targeting. He
contributes frequently op-ed columns and articles to Financial Times, Nihon Keizai Shinbun,
Mainichi Shinbun, and Toyo Keizai Weekly.

This talk explores the work of Swiss diplomats and Red Cross delegates to explain the experience of Allied POWs and civilian internees in the Pacific War. As the only foreigners allowed into both POW and internee camps, and the only ones to work in Japan as well as Allied countries, they were uniquely positioned to record the flow of information between the two sides, the attempts to deliver material and financial aid, and the intensifying exchange of recrimination and threats. Washington and Tokyo made claims and counter-claims about the observance or non-observance of the Geneva Conventions. Both sides threatened and carried out reprisals and made their observance of international law conditional on the conduct of the enemy. While life was far worse for Allied captives than for their Japanese counterparts, it was not because of a deliberate policy of cruelty. Instead, senior Japanese officials never developed clear policy guidance for POWs and failed to provide adequate logistical and administrative support. The few Japanese officials who oversaw the camp system lacked any authority over individual commanders. Even so, the Swiss may well have helped prevent a bad situation from becoming even worse.

Sarah Kovner is a graduate of Princeton University (A.B.) and Columbia University (Ph.D), associate professor of history at the University of Florida, and is currently a Chauncey Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale. She works on modern Japanese history, international history, and the history of war and society. Kovner's first book, Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan, won the Southeast Conference Association for Asian Studies book prize. It is available in paperback from Stanford University Press. She is now writing a history of Allied prisoners in the Pacific War.

 

By any measure, China’s economy and defense budget are second only to those of the United States. Yet tremendous uncertainties persist concerning China’s military development and national trajectory, and areas with greater information available often conflated misleadingly. Fortunately, larger dynamics elucidate both areas. Particularly since the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, China has made rapid progress in aerospace and maritime development, greatly facilitating its military modernization. The weapons and systems that China is developing and deploying fit well with Beijing’s geostrategic priorities. Here, distance matters greatly: after domestic stability and border control, Beijing worries most about its immediate periphery, where its unresolved disputes with neighbors and outstanding claims lie primarily in the maritime direction. Accordingly, while it would vastly prefer pressuring concessions to waging war, China is already capable of threatening potential opponents’ military forces should they intervene in crises over islands and maritime claims in the Yellow, East, and South China Seas and the waterspace and airspace around them. Far from mainland China, by contrast, it remains ill-prepared to protect its own forces from robust attack. Fortunately for Beijing, the non-traditional security focus of its distant operations makes conflict unlikely; remedying their vulnerabilities would be difficult and expensive. Despite these larger patterns, critical unknowns remain concerning China’s economic development, societal priorities, industrial efficiency, and innovation capability. Dr. Erickson will examine these and related issues to probe China’s development trajectory and future place in the international system. 

The views expressed by Dr. Erickson are his alone, and do not represent the policies or estimates of any organization with which he is affiliated.

Dr. Andrew S. Erickson is an Associate Professor in the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College and a core founding member of the department’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI). He is an Associate in Research at Harvard University’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies (2008-). Erickson also serves as an expert contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report (中国实时报), for which he has authored or coauthored 25 articles. In spring 2013, he deployed in the Pacific as a Regional Security Education Program scholar aboard USS Nimitz (CVN68), Carrier Strike Group 11.

Erickson received his Ph.D. and M.A. in international relations and comparative politics from Princeton University and graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College with a B.A. in history and political science. He has studied Mandarin in the Princeton in Beijing program at Beijing Normal University’s College of Chinese Language and Culture and Japanese language, politics, and economics in the year-long Associated Kyoto Program at Doshisha University.

Erickson’s research, which focuses on Asia-Pacific defense, international relations, technology, and resource issues, has been published widely in English- and Chinese-language edited volumes and in such peer-reviewed journals as China Quarterly, Asian Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, Asia Policy (forthcoming January 2014), and China Security; as well as in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, The American Interest, Foreign Policy, Joint Force Quarterly, China International Strategy Review (published in Chinese-language edition, forthcoming in English-language edition January 2014), and International and Strategic Studies Report (Center for International and Strategic Studies, Peking University). Erickson has also published annotated translations of several Chinese articles on maritime strategy. His publications are available at <www.andrewerickson.com> and <www.chinasignpost.com>.

This event is co-sponsored with CEAS and is part of the China under Xi Jinping series.

Abstract: I examine how the shift from an exam to a district based high school assignment rule impacts intergenerational mobility and residential inequality. A stylized model predicts that under district assignment, household income relative to one’s ability becomes a stronger predictor of achievement, and higher income households sort towards and increase housing prices in the better school districts. I test predictions utilizing a unique policy change from South Korea in the 1970s. High school admission had traditionally been exam based in South Korea. However, between 1974 and 1980 the central government shifted several cities to a school district based system. I find that the reform increased intergenerational income elasticity from 0.15 to 0.31, and that higher income households migrated to the reform cities. I next examine whether school districting altered residential land prices within a city using a first differenced boundary discontinuity design. By focusing on the immediate years before and after the creation of school districts in Seoul, I find that residential land prices increased by about 13% point more on average and by about 26% point across boundaries in the better school district. In sum, I find that the shift from a merit to a location based student assignment rule decreases intergenerational mobility and increases residential inequality.

Professor Lee's research intersects the fields of economic development, political economy, urban economics and public economics, and regionally focuses on Korea and East Asia. Some of his recent research on Korea examines the impact of economic sanctions on the urban elites in North Korea and the impact of education policy on intergenerational mobility in South Korea. His research also examines entrepreneurship and urban growth, the efficacy of disaster aid delivery, and the relationship between aid and trade. Professor Lee is a member of the US-Korea Scholar-Policymaker Nexus Program organized by the Mansfield Foundation and the Korea Foundation. He received his PhD in economics from Brown University, master of public policy from Duke University, and bachelor degree in architecture from Seoul National University. As he made the transition from architecture to economics, he worked as an architecture designer and real estate development consultant.

Over the past 35 years of the reform period Beijing has tried to make its state-owned enterprises more efficient and competitive. In the early 1990s it adopted a strategy modeled closely on the Western corporation and the equity and debt capital markets that support its operations. But China's big SOEs have demonstrated more and more independence despite outright economic and ownership control by the government and the Communist Party. And this independence has not led to greater efficiencies or, arguably, even competitiveness. Instead the National Champions represent monopolistic economic and political power. Today China's new leadership confronts the National Champions seeking to regain control over the state's principal assets. How did this happen and what can be done to reassert Beijing's rights?  

Carl E. Walter worked in China and its financial sector for over 20 years and actively participated in many of the country’s financial reform efforts. While at Credit Suisse First Boston he played a major role in China’s groundbreaking first overseas IPO in 1992. Later at Morgan Stanley he was a member of senior management at China International Capital Corporation, China’s first and most successful investment bank. While there he supported a number of groundbreaking domestic and international stock and bond underwritings for major Chinese corporations. More recently at JPMorgan he was China Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer of its China banking subsidiary. During this time Carl helped build a pioneering domestic security, risk and currency trading operation. In his spare time he enjoyed driving his Jeep to distant provinces.

A long time resident of Beijing before his recent return to the United States, Carl is fluent in Mandarin and holds a PhD from Stanford University and a graduate certificate from Peking University. In Spring 2013, Carl returned to Stanford as a visiting scholar at the Shorenstein-Asia Pacific Research Center, FSI. He is the co-author of Red Capitalism: the fragile financial foundations of China’s extraordinary rise, which has been published in Chinese in China. His earlier book, Privatizing China: inside China’s stock markets, was also published in China and, like Red Capitalism, contributed to the government’s policy debate.

This event is co-sponsored with CEAS and is part of the China under Xi Jinping series.

Stanford-Sasakawa Peace Foundation New Channels Dialogue 2014

Energy Challenge and Opportunities for the United States and Japan

February 13, 2014

Bechtel Conference Center, Encina Hall, Stanford University

Sponsored and Organized by Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) and Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (S-APARC) in Association with U.S.-Japan Council

Japan Studies Program at Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University has launched a three-year project from 2013 to create new channels of dialogue between experts and leaders of younger generations from the United States, mostly from the West Coast, and Japan under a name of "New Channels: Reinvigorating U.S.-Japan Relations," with the goal of reinvigorating the bilateral relationship through the dialogue on 21st century challenges faced by both nations, with a grant received from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.

The dialogue would be structured to examine the new challenges of the 21st century, in particular, economic growth and employment creation; innovation and entrepreneurship; energy; and East Asian regionalism, including regional security issues, with the aim of developing mutual understanding and constructing a new relationship for cooperation in dealing with 21st century challenges through the dialogue between scholars, entrepreneurs, and policy makers from the two countries. We are hoping that this multi-year initiative will generate a network of trans-Pacific expertise as a vital supplement to existing avenue of communications.

Given the recent dramatic changes in energy environments in both countries, such as shale gas developments in the U.S, and after Fukushima challenges in Japan, this year, as an inaugural year, we will be examining energy issues. Panel discussions open to the public, with the title of "Energy Challenges and Opportunities for the U.S. and Japan," will be held on February 13^th, followed by a dialogue among invited participants on 14^th, at Stanford University with the participation of policy makers, business leaders, scholars, and experts from both countries.

In the panel discussions we will examine following issues:

1. Discovery of shale gas deposits in various parts of the world has drastically changed the geopolitics of energy.
2. New technologies for energy production have been creating various challenges to the existing system of energy supply.
3. As emerging economies grow rapidly, they will demand increasing amount of energy. They face a challenge of creating a sustainable and secure energy supply system.
4. After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the call for enhancing safety of nuclear power plants has intensified. While public’s trust in nuclear technology wanes, increasing number of nuclear power plants are built in emerging countries. Nuclear energy policy has become politically contentious.
5. Use of information technology, such as smart grid, is likely to change the ways energy is supplied and distributed.
6. The world has not found an effective international framework for slowing the global warming and securing reliable energy supply to support economic growth.

We are very pleased that we were able to invite quite impressive participants, policy makers, business leaders, scholars and experts from the two countries, who would appear as panelists in the panel discussions on February 13^th.

We expect that through this panel discussion we would be able to define the challenges we are facing, indicate the pathways we should proceed to, and identify the areas for cooperation.

On the following day, February 14^th, we will have the dialogue closed to the public discussing issues and possible cooperation between the U.S. and Japan on energy among invited participants.

We hope to publish a summary of conference presentations and the dialogue discussion after the conference.