In 1985, James A. Baker III's “Program for Sustained Growth” proposed a set of economic policy reforms, including inflation stabilization, trade liberalization, greater openness to foreign investment, and privatization, that he believed would lead to faster growth in countries then known as the Third World, but now categorized as emerging and developing economies (EMDEs).

A country-specific, time-series assessment of the reform process reveals three clear facts. First, in the 10-year-period after stabilizing high inflation, the average growth rate of real GDP in EMDEs is 2.6 percentage points higher than in the prior ten-year period. Second, the corresponding growth increase for trade liberalization episodes is 2.66 percentage points. Third, in the decade after opening their capital markets to foreign equity investment, the spread between EMDEs average cost of equity capital and that of the US declines by 240 basis points. The three central facts of reform provide empirical support for the Baker Hypothesis.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Peter Blair Henry is the Class of 1984 Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and dean emeritus of New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. The youngest person ever named to the Stern Deanship, Henry has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles in the flagship journals of economics and finance, as well as a book on global economic policy, Turnaround: Third World Lessons for First World Growth (Basic Books).

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

The third installment in a special event series on the occasion of Shorenstein APARC's 40th Anniversary, "Asia in 2030, APARC@40"

Hosted by APARC's Asia Health Policy Program

The Asia Health Policy Program (AHPP) aims to help empower health systems and policymakers in the Asia-Pacific region to improve their proactive, evidence-based responses to population health problems. This webinar brings together former postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars from the program to explore their contributions to guiding healthcare providers and policy audiences toward a better understanding of health and demographic issues and the delivery of disease management and other health services. In celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, these scholars and practitioners will also share their reflections on how the center and the program have shaped their research and professional careers.

Speakers

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Brian Chen, JD, PhD. Dr. Chen is an associate professor at the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina. He brings with him a global perspective on health and well-being, having lived and worked in health-related industries in Taiwan, Japan, and France. Using the tools of economic analysis, his research focuses on the organization and delivery of health care as well as the social determinants of health in Asia and the United States. A particular focus of his work is on the impact of laws and economic incentives on healthcare treatment decisions. His doctoral dissertation, published in the Journal of Public Economics, explored how Taiwan’s separating policy that mandated the separation of diagnosing from drug dispending affected physician prescribing behavior, and whether such changes had an impact on observable health outcomes.

Dr. Chen continues to work on economics- and health law-related research, investigating the impact of opioid regulations on prescribing behavior and subsequent health consequences. His new project aims to understand how the introduction of a novel class of therapeutics may have affected the undertreatment of osteoporosis, an important question in aging societies in Asia, the United States, and around the world.

Dr. Chen received his BA summa cum laude in Linguistics with Computer Science from Harvard College (1992), JD from Stanford Law School (1997), and his PhD in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley (2009). He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford from 2009 to 2011.

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Wasin Laohavinij, MD. Wasin Laohavinij is a medical doctor with an interest in quality improvement and program evaluation. He was a visiting scholar at the Asia Health Policy Program, Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, Stanford University in the United States in the Autumn of 2019.

Currently, He is a preventive medicine physician concentrating on non-communicable diseases and serves as a Chief of Data Management and Cost Evaluating Center, at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, Thailand. His work focuses on reducing healthcare costs while maintaining the quality-of-care patients receive. Furthermore, he is also interested in evaluating the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of health interventions.

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Phyu Phyu Thin Zaw, MBBS, MPP, PhD. Phyu Phyu Thin Zaw, who is a Burmese national, is a medical doctor, epidemiologist, and health systems researcher currently working as a Lecturer in the School of Public Health at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Science in Exile initiative, which brings together at-risk, displaced, and refugee scientists along with like-minded organizations who work together to strengthen systems that support, protect and integrate such affected scientists.

Phyu Phyu’s research interests are equity, health and education policies, Southeast Asia health systems and policies, sexual and reproductive health, gender equality, poverty eradication, and human rights issues. Thin Zaw is also a public health and policy consultant giving technical advice to think tanks and non-governmental organizations.

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Margaret Triyana, PhD. Dr Triyana is a Senior Economist at the World Bank's Office of the Chief Economist, South Asia Region. Her main research area examines human capital formation over the life cycle, with an emphasis on how policies and environmental factors affect different dimensions of human capital in low and middle-income countries. She also examines the distributional impacts of both environmental risks and policies.

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Siyan Yi, MD, MHSc, PhD. Dr. Yi is a medical doctor and an infectious disease epidemiologist by training. He received his PhD from the School of International Health of the University of Tokyo in Japan in 2010. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Health Policy Program, Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, Stanford University from 2011-2012. He is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Integrated Research Program at Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore. He also serves as Director of KHANA Center for Population Health Research in Cambodia and Adjunct Associate Professor at Touro University California, the United States. His implementation research program focuses on developing and evaluating community-based innovative interventions for improving access to prevention, treatment, and care services for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, sexual and reproductive health, and maternal and child health among vulnerable and marginalized populations in Southeast Asia.

This webinar will address the complexities and the unexpected outcomes of enforcing Sharia—Islamic law—through the machinery of inefficient statecraft in the Indonesian province of Aceh, which is located on the periphery of the world’s largest archipelagic nation. Of Indonesia’s 38 provinces, Aceh is the only one that has been granted the official right to implement Islamic law. Sharia promises to provide comprehensive guidance in all aspects of life.  Local authorities in Aceh have used the scope and force of the law to prohibit expression and criminalize conduct deemed to deviate from “Islamic ideals.” Movies, concerts, New Year’s Eve celebrations, punk and other “alternative” lifestyles were outlawed and seen as signs of calamity, moral disorder, and social disease. Yet the Sharia state’s efforts to limit the “acceptable” range of ways of being Muslim in Aceh are not impervious to opposition. Various forms of resistance to the everyday workings of state Sharia institutions have occurred. In the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, for example, several youth groups have creatively confronted government efforts to discipline them and control their space despite facing continuous harassment from Muslim hardliners and the Sharia Police. Beyond reviewing these conditions, Professor Idria’s analysis of the state enforcement of Islamic law on the periphery of a large country’s rapidly changing society will explore and explain how the implementation of Sharia in Aceh has both influenced and been shaped by broader contexts, political, economic, social, and cultural in character.

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Reza Idria is an Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology in the Ar-Raniry State Islamic University in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where he chairs the Aceh Association of Oral Tradition.  He also serves in various scholarly and journalistic capacities and as a researcher in the International Center for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies. His writings have appeared in journals and books and he has given talks and presented papers in Asia, Europe, and the United States.  His post-graduate degrees are from Leiden University (Islamic Studies, MA 2010) and Harvard (Social Anthropology, MA 2016 and PhD 2020)

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) deserves credit for sustaining peaceful and consensual multilateral cooperation in a diverse and historically divided region.  Accordingly, in principle if not always in practice, outside powers have supported the regional centrality of ASEAN.  But what does that centrality mean and can it survive current challenges?  While still recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Southeast Asia faces the destabilizing consequences of intense US-China tensions, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and global economic uncertainty.  Nor has ASEAN responded effectively to the ongoing domestic repression by the junta in Myanmar, one of the grouping’s own member countries.  Are there steps that ASEAN’s 2023 chair, Indonesia, could take to help meet these challenges?  Should minilateral options be considered?  In the context of addressing these and related topics, Sharon Seah will share pertinent findings from a just-published regional survey of Southeast Asian opinion influencers, The State of Southeast Asia 2023.

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Sharon Seah, in addition to her work for ISEAS-Yusof Ishak’s ASEAN Studies Centre, coordinates the Institute’s Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme.  Her earlier service has included 15 years in Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its National Environment Agency.  Among her research interests are ASEAN, multilateralism, climate change, and the rule of law.  Her publications include, as co-editor, Building a New Legal Order for the Oceans (2019) and 50 Years of ASEAN and Singapore (2017). She has also served as the lead author of ISEAS-Yusof Ishak’s survey reports, The State of Southeast Asia and The Southeast Asia Climate Outlook.  She holds a Master in Public and International Law from the University of Melbourne (2018

The intensifying strategic competition between the United States and China has put substantial pressure on South Korea concerning several strategic issues. The U.S.-China rivalry is only likely to continue with the upcoming American presidential election in 2024.

As the South Korean government has recently tilted toward the United States, China wants South Korea to take a more balanced approach in its policies between the two countries. China is also expressing concern on matters of interest to it, such as the THAAD deployment, supply chain reset, and issues of the Taiwan Strait and the regional status of Xinjiang.

As Ambassador Jung-Seung Shin will argue, South Korean foreign policies should be based on its national interests and reflect its identity and the values its people share. Therefore, according to Shin, South Korea should not only make efforts to further strengthen the KORUS alliance for the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and the region, but to properly manage its relations with China.

Featured Speaker

Ambassador Jung-Seung Shin joins the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as Visiting Scholar and Payne Distinguished Fellow for the 2023 winter quarter. He previously served as Ambassador for the Republic of Korea to the People's Republic of China from 2008 to 2010, and currently serves as Chair Professor at the East Asia Institute at Dongseo University. While at Stanford, he will be conducting research on the strategic relationships between Korea, China, and the United States.

Discussant

Oriana Skylar Mastro is a Center Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, nuclear dynamics, and coercive diplomacy. She is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and continues to serve in the United States Air Force Reserve, for which she works as a strategic planner at INDOPACOM.

She has published widely, including in International Security, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, International Studies Review, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly, Survival, and Asian Security. Her book, The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime, (Cornell University Press, 2019), won the 2020 American Political Science Association International Security Section Best Book by an Untenured Faculty Member.

Moderator

Gi-Wook Shin is the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea; the founding director of the Korea Program; a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and a professor of sociology, all at Stanford University. As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, and international relations. 

Shin is the author/editor of more than twenty books and numerous articles. His recent books include South Korea's Democracy in Crisis (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Demographics and Innovation in the Asia-Pacific (2021); and Shifting Gears in Innovation Policy from Asia (2020). His new research initiative examines potential benefits of talent flows in the Asia-Pacific region, where countries, cities, and corporations have competed with one another to enhance their stock of "brain power" by drawing on the skills of both their own citizens and those of foreigners.

This event is part of the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series. 

The Payne Lectureship is named for Frank E. Payne and Arthur W. Payne, brothers who gained an appreciation for global problems through their international business operations. Their descendants endowed the annual lecture series at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies to raise public understanding of the complex policy issues facing the global community today and to increase support for informed international cooperation.

The Payne Distinguished Lecturer is chosen for his or her international reputation as a leader, with an emphasis on visionary thinking, a broad, practical grasp of a given field, and the capacity to clearly articulate an important perspective on the global community and its challenges.

Co-sponsored by Peking University Institute for Global Health and Development, and the Asia Health Policy Program

Digitization in healthcare coupled with advances in artificial intelligence and other so-called "4th Industrial Revolution" technologies are enabling a radical shift in how healthcare is delivered. Few places are attempting to integrate these into healthcare as rapidly as China. This talk will discuss China's comparative advantage in healthcare digitization and lay out a research agenda for the economics of digital health. While these technologies bring potential to improve access to high- quality care and lower costs, unintended consequences and effects on healthcare markets are underexplored. Evidence on these issues is needed to inform policy and better harness these technologies for population health. Specific applications will be drawn from ongoing research in China and elsewhere.

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Sean Sylvia is an Assistant Professor of health economics at UNC. His primary research interest is in the delivery of healthcare in China and other middle-income countries. Working with multidisciplinary teams of collaborators, he conducts large-scale population-based surveys and randomized trials to develop and test new approaches to provide healthcare to the poor and marginalized. His recent work focuses on the use of information technology to expand access to quality healthcare.

In November-December 2022 Indonesia hosted two international events, the Group of Twenty Summit (G20) and the Bali Democracy Forum (BDF).  Being in the country then, Gita Wirjawan gained impressions of the G20 and attended the BDF.  At both gatherings, he noted, concerns were expressed over the rise of autocracy, the growth of populism, and their effects on state integrity and performance, including an inability to recruit and select national leaders based on their actual talent—proven merit—above other considerations.  This tendency is increasingly common, Wirjawan will argue, in developed as well as developing countries.

A vital requisite for the economic and democratic success of open economies, in Southeast Asia as elsewhere, is trust.  International transfers of capital are like flows of water driven by gravity.  The power of that attraction depends on the extent to which the receiving country is perceived as trustworthy.  For liberal democracy to thrive in Southeast Asia, the region needs good governance by talented and trusted leaders who can ensure that appropriate rules are enforced and that the benefits of economic growth accrue to all layers of society.  Wirjawan’s recommendations in that context will include a priority on widely available quality education.

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Gita Wirjawan is an Indonesian entrepreneur and educator.  Having established a successful investment business in Indonesia, the Ancora Group, he created the Ancora Foundation.  The foundation has endowed scholarships for Indonesians to attend Stanford and other high-ranked universities around the world and has funded the training of teachers at hundreds of Indonesian kindergartens serving underprivileged children.  Wirjawan’s public service has included positions as Indonesia’s minister of trade, chairman of its Investment Coordinating Board, and chair of a 159-nation WTO ministerial conference in 2012 that focused on easing global trade barriers.  He led his country’s national badminton association in 2012-16 when Indonesia won four gold medals in the sport at world championships including the Olympics.  As an educator, he advises Indonesia’s School of Government and Public Policy (SGPP) and Yale’s School of Management, among other institutions.  At SGPP he hosts a public-policy podcast called endgame, to which an estimated 471,000 people subscribe and which has recently carried several interviews with Stanford faculty.  His degrees are from the Harvard Kennedy School (MPA), Baylor University (MBA), and the University of Texas at Austin (BSc).