About the seminar

Dan Wang's talk will examine the economic impact of skilled return migrants on their home countries. While much scholarship contends that members of skilled diasporas are ideally positioned to transfer knowledge and resources back to their home countries, Wang's research
suggests that many returnees are often unable and/or unwilling to do so. He will present findings from a novel 1997–2011 survey of over 4,250 former J1 Visa holders from over 80 countries. The principal outcome under study concerns how skilled returnees reapply and make use of the knowledge they gain abroad (in this case, the United States) upon reentry to their home countries. Specifically, he compares the knowledge transfer outcomes of returnees to those who stayed abroad, and contrasts returnees from different countries and industry contexts, including returnee entrepreneurs. Finally, Germany and China are used as comparative case studies of returnee skill transfer.

About the speaker

Dan Wang is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University. His principal research interests include economic sociology, organizations, globalization, technology, and social network analysis. His past research has examined the relationship between China's changing domestic patent laws and the country's R&D collaboration patterns, tactical diffusion through American social movement organization collaboration networks, knowledge transfer in academic co-authorship networks, and statistical methods for addressing measurement error in network analysis. He received is BA in sociology and comparative literature from Columbia University in 2007.

SPEAKERS
V. Bruce J. Tolentino - Chief Economist/ Director of Economic Reform and Development Programs at The Asia Foundation
Véronique Salze-Lozac'h - Regional Director of Economic Reform and Development Programs at The Asia Foundation
Nina V. Merchant - Assistant Director of Economic Reform and Development Programs at The Asia Foundation

Meet Asia Foundation economics experts as they share their experiences working with on-the-ground partners to enhance economic growth throughout Asia. The Foundation is recognized internationally for its innovative work on economic governance and a political economy approach to reform, including programs in regulatory reform, strengthening local economic governance, private sector development, anticorruption, trade liberalization, and promotion of private investment. The Foundation has developed one-of-a-kind economic reform and development strategies, projects, interventions, and activities designed to enhance and sustain economic growth, with particular attention to effective local economic governance.

Complimentary copies of Innovations in Strengthening Local Economic Governance in Asia will be available during the presentation. We hope you can join us for what promises to be a lively conversation about the future of Asia’s economy.

Co-sponsored by the Asia Foundation

About the seminar

Dr. Kneller's talk examines how national systems of industry-university cooperation impact innovation by comparing the Japanese system with that of the United States. Dr. Kneller has spent 13 years with a major science and engineering research center at the University of Tokyo. His talk shows how the Japanese system favors exclusive transfer of academic discoveries to established companies. It also examines other factors affecting science and engineering entrepreneurship in Japan. The talk references recent research showing that, at least in pharmaceuticals, new companies are more likely than old to pioneer the early development of novel technologies, especially those arising in universities. Japan's experience is relevant to current debates in America related to university management of intellectual property, entrepreneurship by faculty and students, appropriate ways to encourage industry-university collaboration, and the importance of peer review in allocating government university research funding.

About the speaker

Robert Kneller is a visiting professor at the Stanford Medical School and a professor at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo.

He worked at Tianjin Children's Hospital and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine from 1986 to 1987 before joining the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1988. At NIH, he was a cancer epidemiologist and was also responsible for negotiating collaborative agreements with industry to develop NIH anti-cancer therapies. In 1997, an Abe Fellowship enabled him to study the Japanese system of university-industry cooperation at the University of Tokyo. Since 1998, he has been a professor with that university's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology. His research focuses on university-industry cooperation, the role of start-ups in innovation, the discovery and commercialization of biomedical technologies, and conflicts of interests associated with academic entrepreneurship. More information about Dr. Kneller is available at his website. 

Climate change policy is intended in part to prevent or reduce climate change-induced disasters, events that may occur far in the future. Evaluating the validity of climate change policy thus requires a process to discount the future benefits and costs into present value. Some argue that the capital rate of return observed in the market should be used, while others advocate the use of a much lower rate to maintain intergenerational neutrality. In his talk, Professor Seong Wook Heo will discuss this debate and several related issues.

Seong Wook Heo is an associate professor in the School of Law at Seoul National University (SNU), where he teaches administrative and environmental law, and courses on law and economics. He received a PhD in law from Seoul National University. Before joining the faculty of SNU, he served as a judge of the Seoul Central District Court.