About the talk:

Are property rights obtained through dubious means forever tainted with original sin or can rightholders make their ill-gotten gains legitimate by doing good works? Using an experiment embedded in a survey of 1600 residents of conducted in Russia in October 2006, I find that the original sin of an illegal privatization is difficult to expunge, but that businesspeople can improve the legitimacy of property rights by doing good works, such as providing public goods.

About the speaker:

Timothy Frye is a Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. His research and teaching interests are in comparative politics and political economy with a focus on the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He is the author of Brokers and Bureaucrats: Building Markets in Russia, (Michigan Press 2000), which won the 2001 Hewett Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. He has published articles on property rights, the rule of law, protection rackets, economic reform, presidential power, and trade liberalization. Current projects include a book manuscript on the politics of economic reform in 25 postcommunist countries from 1990-2002 and articles on property rights and the rule of law drawing on surveys of business elites and the mass public in Russia.

Timothy Frye received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1997. He has an MIA degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and a BA in Russian language and literature from Middlebury College.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREES), under Title VI of the Department of Education.

Santiago Levy is a Mexican economist and former General Director of the Mexican Social Security Institute. As director of the Institute, he championed pension reform and extended social security coverage to rural workers. Prior to that, Levy was Chief economist and head of the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (2001 - 2002). From 1994 to 2000, he was Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Finance in Mexico, where he was the force behind Progresa-Oportunidades, Mexico's widely acclaimed incentive-based health, nutrition and education program for the poor.

Levy has taught at Boston University, where he was the Chair of the Economics Department. He has published a number of books and numerous academic and newspaper articles on economic development, budgetary and tax policy, trade policy reform, social policy, rural and regional development.

Santiago Levy obtained his, B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Boston University.

This is a Special Seminar within the CDDRL Taiwan Democracy Program (co-sponsored with Shorenstein APARC).

Richard Bush is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. The Center serves as a locus for research, analysis, and debate to enhance policy development on the pressing political, economic, and security issues facing Northeast Asia and U.S. interests in the region.

Bush came to Brookings in July 2002, after serving almost five years as the Chairman and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the mechanism through which the United States Government conducts substantive relations with Taiwan in the absence of diplomatic relations.

Dr. Bush began his professional career in 1977 with the China Council of The Asia Society. In July 1983 he became a staff consultant on the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. In January 1993 he moved up to the full committee, where he worked on Asia issues and served as liaison with Democratic Members. In July 1995, he became National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and a member of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which coordinates the analytic work of the intelligence committee. He left the NIC in September 1997 to become head of AIT.

Richard Bush received his undergraduate education at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He did his graduate work in political science at Columbia University, getting an M.A. in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1978. He is the author of a number of articles on U.S. relations with China and Taiwan, and of At Cross Purposes, a book of essays on the history of America's relations with Taiwan.