Abstract:

In the coming decade new oil discoveries in Africa will leave fragile democracies vulnerable to corruption, patronage and rent seeking behavior. In a piece co-written in Foreign Affairs, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond and Research Associate Jack Mosbacher advocate a new scheme to directly distribute oil revenue to citizens in the form of taxable income. This oil-to-cash system would strengthen accountability and increase citizens ownership of state resources.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond also serves as the Peter E. Haas Faculty Co-Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant (and previously was co-director) at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. During 2002-3, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has also advised and lectured to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development. His latest book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008), explores the sources of global democratic progress and stress and the prospects for future democratic expansion.

At Stanford University, Diamond is also professor by courtesy of political science and sociology. He teaches courses on comparative democratic development and post-conflict democracy building, and advises many Stanford students. In May 2007, he was named "Teacher of the Year" by the Associated Students of Stanford University for teaching that "transcends political and ideological barriers." At the June 2007 Commencement ceremony, Diamond was honored by Stanford University with the Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education. He was cited, inter alia, for fostering dialogue between Jewish and Muslim students; for "his inspired teaching and commitment to undergraduate education; for the example he sets as a scholar and public intellectual, sharing his passion for democratization, peaceful transitions, and the idea that each of us can contribute to making the world a better place; and for helping make Stanford an ideal place for undergraduates."

Jack Mosbacher is a Research Associate at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he works with Larry Diamond on democratization trends in Africa. A 2012 Stanford graduate, Jack participated in the Undergraduate Honors Program with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His thesis, "Bracing for the Boom: Translating Oil into Development in Uganda," won the Departmental Best Thesis Award, and his work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Quarterly.

 Please click on link to read article that appeared in Foreign Affairs: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/136843

Abstract: Dr. Wang will be discussing some of the formal governmental and non-governmental collaborative mechanisms between Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, and other countries (including the US) on survaillance and reporting for flu. He will also discuss lessons learned from SARS, including the development of specific policies, protocols, or procedures, and new technologies deployed for public health preparedness.

C. Jason Wang, M.D., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Center for Policy, Outcomes, and Prevention at Stanford University.  He received his B.S. from MIT, M.D. from Harvard, and Ph.D. in policy analysis from RAND.  After completing his pediatric residency training at UCSF, he worked in Greater China with McKinsey and Company, during which time he performed multiple studies in the Asian healthcare market. In 2000, he was recruited to serve as the project manager for the Taskforce on Reforming Taiwan's National Health Insurance System. His fellowship training in health services research included the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and the National Research Service Award Fellowship at UCLA. Prior to coming to Stanford in 2011, he was an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health (2006-2010) and Associate Professor (2010-2011) at Boston University and Boston Medical Center. 

Among his accomplishments, he was selected as the student speaker for Harvard Medical School Commencement (1996).  He received the Overseas Chinese Outstanding Achievement Medal (1996), the Robert Wood Johnson Physician Faculty Scholars Career Development Award (2007), the CIMIT Young Clinician Research Award for Transformative Innovation in Healthcare Research (2010), and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2011). He was recently named a “Viewpoints” editor and a regular contributor for theJournal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).  He served as an external reviewer for the 2011 IOM Report “Child and Adolescent Health and Health Care Quality: Measuring What Matters” and as a reviewer for AHRQ study sections.

Dr. Wang has written two bestselling Chinese books published in Taiwan and co-authored an English book “Analysis of Healthcare Interventions that Change Patient Trajectories”.  His essay, "Time is Ripe for Increased U.S.-China Cooperation in Health," was selected as the first-place American essay in the 2003 A. Doak Barnett Memorial Essay Contest sponsored by the National Committee on United States-China Relations.

Currently he is the principal investigator on a number of quality improvement and quality assessment projects funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (USA), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the Andrew T. Huang Medical Education Promotion Fund (Taiwan).

Dr. Wang’s research interests include: 1) developing tools for assessing and improving the quality of healthcare; 2) facilitating the use of innovative consumer technology in improving quality of care and health outcomes; 3) studying competency-based medical education curriculum, and 4) improving health systems performance.

2013 Summit Schedule

Monday, April 15

12:00 – 1:00 PM

1:30-3:00 Gunn-SIEPR Building AMENDS Talks: Impact Entrepreneurship
Session I Speakers:
Mohammad Agzar, Agam Rafaeli, Rena Zuabi, Ruchi Dana, Samer Azar, and Yad Faeq
3:00-3:45 Networking Session
3:45-5:15 AMENDS Talks: Impact Entrepreneurship

Session II Speakers:
Sabera Daqiq, Al Nasir Bellah Al-Nasli, Ali Chehade, Frank Fredericks, Ibrahim Mothana, and Sarah Mousa

Tuesday, April 16

1:30-3:00 Gunn-SIEPR Building AMENDS Talks: Education and the Environment
Session I Speakers:
Dari AlHuwail, Ghadeer al-Khenaisi, Yasmeen Makarem, Farshad Ghodoosi, and Majda Rahal
3:00-3:45 Networking Session
3:45-5:15 AMENDS Talks: Education and the Environment

Session I Speakers:
Adi Gilgi, Ala Queslati, Hamza Arsbi, Laura McAdams, Sarafina Midzik, Alia Mahmoud, and Becca Farnum

Wednesday April 17

10:00- 11:30 MacKenzie Room, Huang Engineering Center AMENDS Talks: Activism and the Art of Change
Session I Speakers:
Alana Marie Levinson, Nadia Arouri, Nargiz Azaryun, Que Newbiil, Soumaya Boughanmi, and Abdellah Yassine Boukourizia

11:30- 12:30 Networking Lunch

12:30-2:00 AMENDS Talks: Activism and the Art of Change
Session II Speakers:
Arez Hussein, Ashley Lohman, Todd Ruffner, Salma Hegab, Nicholas Glastonbury, and Nihal Saad Zaghloul

Abstract:

The levels of violence in Mexico have dramatically increased in the last few years due to structural changes in the drug trafficking business. The increase in the number of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) fighting over the control of territory and trafficking routes has resulted in a substantial increase in the rates of homicides and other crimes. This study evaluates the economic costs of drug-related violence. We propose electricity consumption as an indicator of the level of municipal economic activity and use two different empirical strategies to test this. To estimate the marginal effect of violence in the rate of homicides (per 100,000 inhabitants) we use an instrumental variable regression created by Mejía, Castillo and Restrepo (2012). For the average municipality, the marginal negative effect of the increase in homicides rates is substantive for earned income and the proportion of business owners, but not for energy consumption. Although negative and statistically significant, the effects are mild for labor participation. We also employ the methodology of synthetic controls to evaluate the effect that inter-narco wars have on local economies. The analysis indicates that the drug wars in those municipalities that saw dramatic increases in violence between 2006 and 2010 significantly reduced their energy consumption in the years after the change occurred, which is interpreted as a significant reduction in GDP per capita for these municipalities.

Speaker Bio:

Gabriela Calderon holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University. Her research interests include policies that affect gender differences in developing countries, policy evaluation, violence in Latin America and the effect of institutions and governance on the provision of public goods and health/education outcomes. She did her master's degree in economic theory and bachelor's degree in economics at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. Currently, in the Program on Poverty and Governance, her research analyzes the way institutions and democracy affect the provision of public goods, and the impact they have on health outcomes like infant mortality trends. She is also studying the effects of government interventions that combat drug-trafficking organizations over violence in Mexico.

Her research has focused on the topics of development, public finance, and the evaluation of public policy programs in Mexico. For example, during the summers of 2009/2010, she conducted a field experiment in Zacatecas, Mexico with Giacomo de Giorgi, an assistant professor from Stanford University, and Jesse Cuhna, a former Stanford student. The main task was to evaluate the impact of financial literacy classes on underprivileged women entrepreneurs in the region. To successfully complete an evaluation in an untreated region, they proposed collaborating with the Mexican NGO CREA on a joint project. They contacted local interviewers, trained them, and identified all women entrepreneurs in the 17 communities, in which we conducted the experiment. Preliminary results suggest that the female entrepreneurs who were randomly assigned to treatment earned higher profits, had larger revenues, and served a greater number of clients. They also found that they were more likely to implement formal accounting techniques.

She has also studied programs that are not randomly assigned as an experiment. For example, she has analyzed the effects of a national policy in Mexico of child care services, called Estancias Infantiles para apoyar a Madres Trabajadoras (EI), using administrative, census and household data. Her empirical research strategy identifies the effects of the program on both the men and women who were eligible for the program. She used time, location and eligibility variation, and considered a major threat to identification of the actual effects: for example, a manufacturer who moves into a municipality at approximately the same time as the EI program and who happens to disproportionately demand the skills of women who were eligible to the program happened to have. To ensure that such scenarios do not affect her results, she chose not triple difference strategy, in which all ineligible people are treated as “controls” for the EI-eligible families. Instead, she employs Synthetic Control Methods, using the same methodology as Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003) and Abadie, Diamond and Hainmueller (2010) to ensure that her control group has the same mix of skills and preferences as the EI-eligible group. She adapted the Synthetic Control Method to analyze repeated cross-sectional household data, which are data that are typically available in developing countries

Abstract:

How can we encourage illegal actors to seek assistance from the state? Lawbreakers are generally hesitant to engage with the state, out of fear of incurring sanctions for having violated the law. They hesitate to seek law enforcement help if they are victims of crimes. They also shy away from other state institutions that could provide them with assistance such as social and health services, or education. The paper addresses this question by evaluating whether an incentive can increase HIV/AIDS testing amongst lawbreakers, who responds, and why. It presents a randomized field experiment in which sex workers in Beijing, China were assigned an incentive for getting an HIV test.

Speaker Bio:

Margaret Boittin is a fellow at CDDRL. She is completing her PhD in Political Science at UC Berkeley, and her JD at Stanford. Her dissertation examines regulation in China, focused on state intervention in prostitution from the perspectives of health, policing, and business. Her work combines ethnographic methods, as well as field and survey experiments.

Abstract:

It has been said that constitutional court judges around the world increasingly participate in a "global judicial dialogue" that causes judges to make increased use of foreign law.  This is a dialogue, however, from which the members of the Taiwanese Constitutional Court are largely excluded.  Taiwan’s precarious diplomatic situation and intense lobbying by China have effectively prevented the members of Taiwan's Constitutional Court from participating in international judicial gatherings and official visits to foreign courts. Nevertheless, the Taiwanese Constitutional Court routinely engages in extensive consideration of foreign law, either expressly or implicitly, when deciding cases.  This fact casts doubt on the notion that "global judicial dialogue" explains judicial use of foreign law.  Comparison of the Taiwanese Constitutional Court and U.S. Supreme Court demonstrates that “global judicial dialogue” plays a much smaller role in shaping a court’s utilization of foreign law than institutional factors such as (a) the rules and practices governing the composition and staffing of the court and (b) the extent to which the structure of legal education and the legal profession incentivizes judges and academics to possess expertise in foreign law.

Speaker Bio:

David Law is Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis and Visiting Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He works in the areas of law and political science, public law, judicial behavior, comparative constitutional law, and comparative judicial politics. Born and raised in Canada, he holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford, a B.C.L. in European and Comparative Law from the University of Oxford, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He has previously taught at the University of San Diego School of Law and the University of California, San Diego political science department and has been a visiting professor at the National Taiwan University College of Law, Seoul National University School of Law, and Keio University Faculty of Law in Tokyo, and a visiting scholar at the NYU School of Law. His current research focuses on the identification, explanation, and prediction of global patterns in constitutional law, and his recent scholarship on constitutional globalization and the declining influence of the U.S. Constitution has been featured in a variety of domestic and international media.