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In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Yasuaki Hanai, "Are Japanese Electric Companies Becoming Obsolete? –  Rethinking Strong Points for Japanese Electric Companies

In recent years, it has become very common to take pictures using a smart phone or tablet, such as an iPad, and to share this information via social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  Japanese electric companies and products have been noticeably absent from this area, except for the single-lens reflex camera.  How has this happened?  Why have Japanese electric companies suffered a decline?  In his research, Hanai tries to answer these questions by analyzing the financial reports of various Japanese companies after the bubble economy collapse.  Hanai also considers strong points for Japanese electric companies and what the next actions should be to reverse the decline.

Saiko Nakagawa,  "Systemic Risks in the Japanese Banking Sector"

“Systemic risk” has become a buzzword after the global financial crisis in 2007-08.  Due to its elusive nature, there have been active discussions among scholars, international organizations and national regulators on how to measure and address the risk in order to prevent the next crisis.  In her presentation, Nakagawa will introduce these recent discussions and argue the implications to Japan’s financial sector.

Masashi Suzuki, "Dismal Software Industry in Japan – Will It Be Disrupted or Will It Discover Its Own Way like U.S. Players?"

In his research, Suzuki provides an historical analysis of the software market in Japan and the United States as well as a comprehensive analysis of the status quo of these two countries. Are there ways to improve the unfavorable situation in Japan?  Suzuki attempts to provide an answer to this question in his research presentation. 

Bin Wang, "Innovation and New Venture Strategies in China"

In recent years, entrepreneurship has played an increasing role in promoting economic growth in China.  The Chinese government began to pay more attention to encourage entrepreneurship in order to reform the economic structure.  Wang’s research examines the characteristics of the emerging industry and reveals a positive relationship between innovation capabilities and growth of new venture.  He developed a framework to classify new venture strategies based on market characteristics and innovation capabilities, identified ten strategic types, and reviewed their impact on performance in new ventures in China.  Wang’s research attempts to provide important guidelines for venture capital to identify potential investment opportunities.  These guidelines will also help entrepreneurs to identify an appropriate strategy to pursue business opportunities in given situations. 

Officials, scholars, and activists have long believed in improving environmental policy in developing countries by fostering desirable values and practices through networks of experts. Tim Forsyth will question this faith by arguing that all too often such networks ignore the limitations of global environmental assessments and the politics involved in producing and using expert opinion. Using preliminary evidence from Indonesia and Thailand, he will show how Procrustean advice and local agendas affect efforts to mitigate climate change, and what that can mean for the generation of greenhouse gas (through energy use) and its absorption in sinks (through forest conservation). Forsyth argues that more deliberative institutions of environmental information, judgment, and decision can better accommodate local knowledge and vulnerabilities, strike productive balances between mitigation and adaptation, and thereby address climate change in Southeast Asia in more timely and effective ways.

Tim Forsyth is Reader in Environment and Development in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published widely on matters of politics of environmental science and policy in Southeast Asia including Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science (Routledge, 2003); Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand (with A. Walker, Washington University Press, 2008); and International Investment and Climate Change: Energy Technologies for Developing Countries (Earthscan, 1999). He was a co-author of the chapter on climate change in the international Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005).

In Singapore the People’s Action Party has held power continuously since 1959, having won 13 more or less constrained legislative elections in a row over more than half a century. In Malaysia the Alliance Party and its heir, the National Front, have done nearly as well, racking up a dozen such victories over the same 54-year stretch. These records of unbroken incumbency were built by combining rapid economic growth with varying degrees and types of political manipulation, cooptation, and control. 

In both countries, as living standards improved, most people were content to live their lives quietly and to leave politics to the ruling elite. In the last decade, however, quiescence has given way to questioning, apathy to activism, due to policy missteps by the ruling parties, the rise of credible opposition candidates, increasing economic inequality, and the internet-driven expansion of venues for dissent. 

As the ground appears to shift beneath them, how are the rulers responding? Will their top-down politics survive? How (un)persuasive have official warnings against chaotically liberal democracy become? Are ethno-religious and even national identities at stake? Are comforting but slanted historical narratives being rethought? And how principled or opportunistic are the agents of would-be bottom-up change? 

Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh is the author most recently of Floating on a Malayan Breeze:  Travels in Malaysia and Singapore (2012) and The End of Identity? (2012). Before joining The Economist Group in Singapore in 2006 he was a policy analyst on foreign investment for the government of Dubai. He has written for many publications, including The Economist, ViewsWire, and The Straits Times, and been widely interviewed by the BBC and other media. He earned a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School (Harvard, 2005) after receiving bachelor degrees in Southeast Asian studies and business administration (UC-Berkeley, 2002). His service in the Singapore Armed Forces in the late 1990s took him to Thailand, Taiwan, and Australia.