This event is part of the series Exploring APEC’s Role in Facilitating Regional Cooperation.

Energy is essential for economic development, but energy use is a major contributor to global warming.  Most can agree that transition from fossil fuels to sustainable (green) energy is imperative for long-term sustainability, but how to make that transition while maintaining and increasing growth and prosperity is not self-evident.  This panel will examine energy challenges in general, how they play out and are perceived in the APEC region, and how APEC has attempted to find cooperative solutions.

Panelists:
 

Larry Goulder, Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics, Director of the Stanford Center for Environmental and Energy Policy Analysis, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Precourt Institute for the Environment, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and a University Fellow of Resources of the Future

Lawrence H. Goulder is the Shuzo Nishihara Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Center for Environmental and Energy Policy Analysis. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Precourt Institute for the Environment, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and a University Fellow of Resources for the Future. Goulder's research covers a range of environmental issues, including green tax reform, the design of environmental tax systems and emissions trading policies, climate change policy, and comprehensive wealth measurement ("green" accounting). He has served on several advisory committees to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board and the California Air Resources Board, and as co-editor of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy.

Larry Greenwood, Chairman of the Board of the Japan Society of Northern California, Senior Adviser at BowerGroupAsia, US Ambassador to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group from 2000-2003

Larry Greenwood is Senior Adviser at BowerGroupAsia, a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Asia-Pacific.  He is also Chair of the Japan Society of Northern California after serving as its President from 2016-2020.  From 2011-2015, Larry was Senior Managing Director for Government Relations in Asia for MetLife based in Tokyo responsible for shaping insurance policies and regulations in Asia and from 2006-2011 was Vice President at the Asian Development Bank in Manila, Philippines where he oversaw ADB’s annual loan and grant operations of about $7 billion in East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Island countries. 

Larry was a career diplomat from 1976-2006 where he worked on economic issues in the State Department in Washington, DC and at US Embassies in Manila, Dakar, Singapore and twice in Tokyo.  He served as US Ambassador to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group and retired as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Economic Bureau of the State Department where he was responsible for international financial and development matters. He holds a BA from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida and an MALD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford Massachusetts.  He speaks and reads Japanese and French.

Gita Wirjawan, Former Minister of Trade and former Chairman of the Investment Coordinating Board of the Republic of Indonesia, Founder of Ancora Group and Ancora Foundation, Visiting Scholar at Shorenstein APARC

Gita Wirjawan is a visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University. He is the host of a Southeast Asia educational podcast called Endgame, a member of the Board of Governors of the Asia School of Business (MIT Sloan), a member of the international council of the Yale School of Management, and chairman of the Advisory Board of the School of Government and Public Policy (SGPP) Indonesia. While as chairman of Ancora Group, a business group based in Indonesia, he is also a partner at Ikhlas Capital, a Singapore-based Southeast Asia private equity fund. He is also an adviser to a number of Southeast Asia-based venture capital firms, including Alpha JWC Ventures, Monk's Hill Ventures, Jungle Ventures, and Intudo Ventures. He is also a member of the International Advisory Board of Chubb. Previously, he was trade minister and chairman of the Investment Coordinating Board of the Republic of Indonesia during the years 2009–2014, a banker at JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citibank, and a public accountant. He received his MPA at Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, MBA at Baylor University, and BBA at the University of Texas, Austin.

Moderator:

Thomas Fingar, Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, former U.S. Department of State Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Analysis, Director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific, and Chief of the China Division, former Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council

Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and, concurrently, as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Previous positions include Assistant Secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-2001 and 2004-2005), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (2001-2003), and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Analysis (1994-2000). Dr. Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (A.B. in Government and History, 1968), and Stanford University (M.A., 1969 and Ph.D., 1977 both in Political Science).  Recent books include Reducing Uncertainty:  Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011), Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future (edited with Jean Oi, Stanford, 2020); and From Mandate to Blueprint: Lessons from Intelligence Reform (Stanford University Press, 2021).

For more information about on-campus parking, visit our Contact page.

This event is part of the series Exploring APEC’s Role in Facilitating Regional Cooperation.

Digital health technologies hold great promise to strengthen health systems in the Asia-Pacific region and provide affordable access for remote and vulnerable populations. But what is the evidence about how digital health initiatives work in practice in low resource settings? What incentive structures and provider skillsets are needed to improve health equity, health service quality, and health system resilience at an affordable cost? What is the role of APEC in promoting these innovations while also addressing concerns about data privacy and security? This colloquium explores these questions with case studies from South and Southeast Asia. Our three expert speakers discuss how APEC members are actively experimenting with “innovative digital health solutions to increase access to, and delivery of, health services,” as highlighted in the Chair's Statement of the 13th APEC High-Level Meeting on Health and the Economy. 

Panelists:

CK Cheruvettolil, Senior Strategy Officer, Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

CK Cheruvettolil is a Senior Strategy Officer on the Gates Foundation Artificial Intelligence Taskforce. He leads the deployment of AI solutions in Asia and works closely with governments, public health agencies and health service providers to identify and fund digital technologies that could have impact. CK has been at the Gates Foundation for 12 years in a variety of roles including financing and strategy for global vaccine development and disease surveillance. 
Prior to joining the Gates Foundation, CK spent 8-years as a consultant to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In this capacity, he played a crucial role in designing the technical framework for the Environmental Public Health Tracking Network.

Kiran Gopal Vaska, Director of the National Health Authority of India

Mr. Kiran Gopal Vaska is an officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) currently working at the National Health Authority, New Delhi. In his earlier roles, he worked at various levels of government in the areas of power, rural development, health and family welfare, education, and industrial development, among others. As Managing Director of MP Eastern Zone Power Distribution Company, he led the digitization of the company including GIS mapping of the entire power network, introduction of smart meter technologies, and more. He led the development of an online single window system and was instrumental in Madhya Pradesh state ranking among the top 5 states in Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) in India for 2016. Before joining government service, he worked in the finance industry performing risk analytics for hedge funds and banks.

Moderator:

​​Dr. Siyan Yi, Assistant Professor and Director of Integrated Research Program at National University of Singapore; 2011-12 Developing Asia Health Policy Fellow, Shorenstein APARC

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.

For more information about on-campus parking, visit our Contact page.

*Registration for this event has closed. Secure your spot at the upcoming events in our fall series Exploring APEC’s Role in Facilitating Regional Cooperation.

Ever since its informal beginnings in late 1989, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum has been a central hub for economic engagement and cooperation around the Pacific Rim, both shaping and being shaped by developments in the region over an extraordinary period of trade and economic expansion.  As leaders from 21 APEC member economies prepare to meet in San Francisco in November, we will explore APEC's evolution over its three-decade-plus history to consider both its role and contributions in the Asia-Pacific region to date, as well as explore its challenges and relevance in the region going forward.  Is APEC still hitting its regional economic cooperation target and how might APEC better achieve its goals?

Speakers

Aida Safinaz Allias, Minister for Economic Affairs, Embassy of Malaysia to the United States; Former APEC Senior Official for Malaysia.

Ms. Aida Safinaz Allias currently serves as the Minister (Economic Affairs) at the Embassy of Malaysia in Washington, D.C. This is her second time in D.C., her first being during her intern days at the US-Asia Institute in DC circa the mid-90s.

She has served in the Malaysian Ministry of International Trade & Industry (MITI) for 23 years, since the year 2000, starting at the Industry Wing in various capacities including with the iron & steel, E&E, and investment units, before crossing over to the Trade Wing at the Multilateral Trade Policy and Negotiations Division. Subsequently, she was posted to the Permanent Mission of Malaysia to the WTO, Geneva, Switzerland as the Economic Counsellor in charge of Services trade negotiations from 2005-2007.

Following that, she returned to HQ and was posted at the FTA Coordination Division as the Principal Assistant Director (2007-2009). From 2011-2013, she gained her first experience in APEC work at the APEC Division in MITI as the Malaysian Lead at the Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI), during which she had the opportunity to serve as the Market Access Group (MAG) Convenor.

Pursuant to that she was again posted as Minister Counsellor (Economic Affairs) at the Malaysian High Commission in New Delhi from 2013-2016. Later, she returned to MITI HQ as Director of the Services Sector Development Division before she was tasked to lead the Substantive Unit of the APEC 2020 National Secretariat in 2018 when it was established for the Malaysian hosting of APEC 2020. Ms. Allias was then promoted to Senior Director of APEC Division in 2019 (also overseeing the APEC 2020 National Secretariat, which was incidental to the successful hosting of APEC 2020). From 2019 - 2021, she also served as the Malaysian APEC Senior Official. During the hosting of APEC 2020, she led the Malaysian Delegation to the successful drafting and conclusion of many important consensus documents at APEC, the most notable being the APEC Putrajaya Vision 2040.

She received a Bachelor of Arts (B.A) in International Relations from Syracuse University, New York. She also holds a Diploma in Public Administration from the Malaysian National Public Administration Institute (INTAN).

Amb. Kurt Tong, Managing Partner, The Asia Group; Former U.S. Ambassador for APEC; Former U.S. Consul General and Chief of Mission in Hong Kong and Macau.

Ambassador Kurt Tong is Managing Partner and member of the Executive Committee at The Asia Group, where he leads consulting teams focused on Japan, China, and Hong Kong, and on East Asia regional policy matters. He also leads the firm’s innovative thought leadership programs. A leading expert in diplomacy and economic affairs in East Asia, Ambassador Tong brings thirty years of experience in the Department of State as a career Foreign Service Officer and member of the Senior Foreign Service.

Moderator

Michael Beeman, Former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Japan, Korea and APEC at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative; Visiting Scholar at Shorenstein APARC.

Michael Beeman is a Visiting Scholar during 2023 at Shorenstein APARC. Previously, he served as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Japan, Korea, and APEC at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). In that role, he led the renegotiation of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement and the U.S.-Japan Trade Agreement, among other initiatives. After joining the U.S. government in 1998, he served in various other capacities for the Department of Commerce, for the U.S. Executive Director to the World Bank, and for USTR. He received his D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in Politics from the University of Oxford in 1998 and is the author of Public Policy and Economic Competition in Japan (Routledge, 2002).

For more information about on-campus parking, visit our Contact page.

AHPP 2023-24 Colloquium series, “Technology, Trust, and Healthy Aging”

Patient trust is an important driver of the demand for healthcare. But it may also impact supply: doctors who realize that patients may not trust them may adjust their behavior in response. We assemble a large dataset that assesses clinical performance using standardized-patients (akin to audit studies in economics) in low-income countries to investigate this possibility; most of these data are on healthcare providers who practice in the private sector on a fee-for-service basis. 

We establish that patients receive low quality of care, with a generous definition suggesting that fewer than 50% of cases are correctly managed, and between 70% and 90% of expenditures are medically unnecessary. Strikingly, and in contrast to the literature suggesting that the main problem with fee-for-service provision is over-treatment, the majority of these unnecessary expenditures are incurred because patients are incorrectly rather than over-treated. 

We then rule out two plausible explanations for low quality of care: low levels of medical knowledge and low market incentives to invest effort. In our data, there are many healthcare providers who know how to correctly treat the patient and could substantially increase their revenue by doing so given the price-quality gradients we estimate, but still treat the patient incorrectly. 

A model of the patient-provider relationship in which patients have incomplete information about the quality of providers generates predictions consistent with our findings. The theory additionally suggests that issuing a credible signal of quality should raise the average quality of care among providers, even if their underlying ability remains unchanged. 

We assess this prediction through an evaluation of a highly publicized training program with informal healthcare providers in West Bengal, India. The program has no impact on knowledge, yet substantially raises the quality of care, leading to an increase in the likelihood of correct treatment, a 19% decline in unnecessary expenditures for patients and a 9% increase in revenues for providers. We conclude that low trust undermines clinical performance in an economically and medically significant manner.

Image

Reshmaan Hussam is an assistant professor of business administration in the Business, Government and International Economy Unit at Harvard University's Business School, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a faculty affiliate at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).

Her research explores questions at the intersection of development and behavioral economics, with research in three areas: migration, health, and finance.  Her most recent work engages refugee populations including the Rohingya in Bangladesh, examining the psychosocial value of employment in contexts of mass unemployment, the role of home in migration decision-making, and refugee preferences for repatriation, integration, and resettlement. In her work in health, which involves field experiments across South Asia, she considers the puzzle of the ubiquitously low adoption of low-cost, high-return goods, behaviors, and technologies in the developing world, exploring the role of learning and habit formation in behavior change. Her work in finance explores how to identify high-return microentrepreneurs using local community knowledge in India and how to increase credit access and returns to capital among refugee communities in Uganda.

Prior to joining HBS, Professor Hussam was a postdoctoral fellow at the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. She received her SB and PhD in economics from MIT.