Global Policy Workshops

November 22 , 2011, Joel Waldfogel, Carlson School of Management, on "Pop Internationalism: Has a Half Century of World Music Trade Displaced Local Culture?" Advances in communication technologies over the past half century have made the cultural goods of one country more readily available to consumers in another, raising concerns that cultural products from large economies – in particular the US – will displace the indigenous cultural products of smaller economies. In this talk Professor Waldfogel presents research conducted with his Wharton colleague, Fernando Ferreira, that presents stylized facts about global music consumption and trade since 1960, using unique data on popular music charts from 22 countries, corresponding to over 98% of the global music market. Contrary to growing fears about large country dominance, trade shares are roughly proportional to country GDP shares; and relative to GDP, the US music share is substantially below the shares of smaller countries. They find a substantial bias toward domestic music which has, perhaps surprisingly, increased sharply in the past decade. National policies, such as radio airplay quotas, may explain part of the increasing consumption of local music.

November 1, 2011, Rashmi Singh on "The National Mission for the Empowerment of Women." Rashmi Singh was one of Delhi’s first administrative officers selected to study in Minnesota through the Government of India’s Ministry of Personnel and Training.   She is back in  Minnesota this fall to receive the University of Minnesota’s prestigious International Leadership Award for her work in the poorest neighborhoods of New Delhi.  Her latest effort, the National Mission for the Empowerment of Women, builds on the game changing initiative she founded, Mission Convergence, to substantially e-engineered the delivery of human services in New Delhi. Presentation co-sponsored by The Center on Women and Public Policy and the Freeman Center for International Economic Policy. Other resources here: Singh_Nov3_2011

October 25, 2011, Edward Goetz, Humphrey School of Public Affairs and Director, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, on "Urban Planning Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Dar es Salaam." Many urban areas in sub Saharan Africa are growing rapidly and straining the public sector's s ability to provide sufficient housing, transportation, and otherinfrastructure. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania is typical in this respect. Professor Goetz will consider how well infrastructure needs are being met and the challenges that remain.

 

 

 

October 11, 2011, Paul Vaaler, Carlson School of Management, “Saving Politicians from Themselves? How Credit Rating Agencies Constrain Political Budget Cycles in Developing Democracies.” Private credit rating agencies and their assessments of sovereign creditworthiness have a substantial impact on the cost and availability of borrowing by governments to fund projects promoting long-term economic development as well as projects that serve the more narrow short-term interests of incumbent politicians.  Do agencies and politicians know the difference between those two project types?  In this presentation, Professor Vaaler presents work done with his Oxford and World Bank colleague, Marek Hanusch, in which they develop and test a theoretical framework grounded in assumptions based on political business cycle theory and regime theory.  The assumptions imply that:  1) countries with higher sovereign credit ratings borrow more and run more negative budget balances generally; 2) countries will also borrow more and run more negative budget balances in election years; but 3) negative budget balances will be diminished during election years in countries with higher sovereign credit ratings.  Support for these three framework predictions for 18 developing democracies holding 41 presidential elections from 1987-2004.  Private agencies and their sovereign credit ratings constrain national politicians who might otherwise engage in excessive borrowing during election years for narrow self-preservation.  Implications for both  developing and developed countries will be discussed. Vaaler Freeman Center Seminar Presentation

September 27, 2011, Greta Friedemann-Sánchez, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, "Unpaid Caregiving in the Development Process." Taking care of the family and raising children is the most tangible “output” of unpaid labor and care work by preparing present and future workers needed for economic growth and human development. Yet, traditional measures of development render invisible the production of services and goods that occurs within the context of unpaid labor and caregiving in large part because it is not monetized.Demographic and economic changes in developing nations have had an effect on the distribution of housework versus care work, with the former diminishing and the later increasing. As a result, more attention is being paid to caregiving. The two concepts however, continue to be treated in the development literature as if they were interchangeable.While the contributions that unpaid caregivers provide are beneficial to society, they can have negative consequences on the caregiver: they erode physical and mental health, inhibit educational and training opportunities, and contribute to gender inequality. Drawing on the existing evidence from developed and developing nations, the seminar will define caregiving more narrowly, present a framework for understanding its effects on caregivers, highlight gaps in knowledge for developing nations, and present outstanding research questions and policy implications.

September 13, 2011: Scott Gates, Director of the Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW), International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and Professor at the Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU) on "The Development Consequences of Civil War." This paper conducts the first analysis of the effect of armed conflict on progress in meeting the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals, as well as the effect of conflict on economic growth. We find clear detrimental effects of conflict on the reduction of poverty and hunger, on primary education, on the reduction of child mortality, and on access to potable water. More concretely, a medium-sized conflict with 2,500 battle deaths is estimated to increase undernourishment by 3.3 percentage points, reduce life expectancy by about one year, increase infant mortality rates by 10%, and deprive an additional 1.8% of the population from access to potable water.This event co-sponsored with the Minnesota International Relations Colloquium (MIRC, in the Universitiy of Minnesota Department of Political Science).

April 26, 2011: Mani Subramani, Carlson School of Management, " Changing Motives for Global Sourcing: From Labor Arbitrage to Innovation" One of the key drivers for global sourcing has been the ability to leverage the lower costs - typically lower labor costs - overseas. While increased competitiveness through the lowering of costs continues to be an important goal, it is increasingly becoming evident that overseas suppliers and a firm's overseas operations can also contribute to firm competitiveness by enhancing the level of innovation in new product development and in business process execution. There are a number of firms on the leading edge of this movement such as GE, Boeing, and PepsiCo and their initial successes offer a variety of lessons for both large and medium sized firms to take advantage of these  new opportunities created by the global diffusion of capabilities. Professor Subramani is a faculty member in the Carlson School and teaches an MBA course titled "Managing Globally" that incorporates a field trip to India with the students. He will draw on his experience of the changes he and the students have witnessed in over the past seven years to share his views on how global sourcing can be an important driver of a firm's innovation.

April 12, 2011: Neerada Jacob, Belfer Center, Kennedy School, Harvard University (Ph.D. candidate), " Can Sanctions Prevent the Spread of Nuclear Weapons?" Economic sanctions have long been derided as ineffective instruments of foreign policy. At the same time, however, they continue to remain a principal tool for preventing the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations. Drawing on the cases of Iraq and Libya, Ms. Jacob will show that sanctions tend to be more successful when they are one component of an overall coercive strategy. The talk will address factors affecting the impact of sanctions on nuclear programs. Research from the case studies of Taiwan and Iran will also be briefly discussed, ultimately laying out the complexities involved.

 

 

March 1, 2011: Deborah Levison, Humphrey School, "The Rights and Wrongs of Children’s Work" Professor Levison talks about her recently released book, Rights and Wrongs of Children's Work (Rutgers University Press). In it, Professor Levison and her co-authors argue there is substantial evidence showing that not all work done by children is harmful, and that many aspects of work are beneficial for children's development. The authors believe that current policies often do not serve the best interests of children and propose criteria for doing this better.

 

 

 

February 15, 2011: Binnur Ozkececi-Taner, Hamline University, " A New “Global” Actor or Just a Regional Power? Perspectives on Turkey and its Foreign Policy" Turkey is now being considered a regional power with a potential to influence global politics in the 21st century along with Brazil, China, Russia, and India. The country’s strategic location and proximity to the world’s most troubled regions: the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, have indeed made Turkey an important player in international political, economic and security realms. Nevertheless, views on what Turkey’s role should or will be differ considerably. Is Turkey to be a “bridge” between the West and the Muslim countries, a “buffer” to prevent the spillover of problems from the surrounding volatile regions to Europe, a “barrier” that could problematize the influence of the West on the Middle East, or a “leader” in its surrounding regions?  This presentation briefly charts the evolution of Turkey’s foreign policy since the foundation of the Republic in 1923, discuss the major developments and internal and external factors that have influenced the country’s recent foreign policy, and speculate about the future of Turkey’s foreign policy

February 1, 2011: Fan Yingling, Humphrey School, “Can the Urban Poor in China Escape Spatial Mismatch? Employment Distribution and Job Access in Beijing”  In many Chinese cities rapid economic growth is associated with job decentralization and an affordable housing shortage, creating a jobs/housing spatial mismatch. Such a mismatch, along with increasing traffic congestion, is likely to reduce employment access and economic opportunity for the low-income population.This research explores how employment decentralization may influence job accessibility of the urban poor in China, with Beijing as the study area. The research also explores how transit improvements may increase equity by mitigating the negative consequences of the spatial mismatch. Freeman%20Center%20Talk_Final

 

 

December 7, 2010, Dara K. Cohen, Humphrey School "Explaining Sexual Violence During Civil War" Why do some armed groups commit wartime rape on a large scale, while others never turn to sexual violence? Although scholars and policymakers have made many claims about the rates, severity, and locations of wartime sexual violence, there have been few systematic efforts to gather data on sexual violence during conflict. Using an original dataset, Professor Cohen examines the incidence of sexual violence by both insurgent groups and state actors during civil wars between 1980 and 1999 and uses the data in a statistical analysis to test a series of competing hypotheses about wartime sexual violence. She finds strong evidence that forcible recruitment predicts sexual violence and that rape is used as a method of combatant socialization.She finds limited or no support for several common explanations for wartime rape including ethnic conflict, genocide and gender inequality.

November 23, 2010, Guillermo Narvàez, Humphrey School " Taste for Sustainability: Specialty Coffee and its Claims to Taste and Environmental Quality" The past three decades has seen the proliferation of sustainability labels in the coffee industry. These have emerged along with the specialty coffee industry, which has used the connections between environmental sustainability and quality to distinguish itself from the mainstream coffee industry. Dr Narvaez’s research explores the proliferation of quality and sustainability initiatives as part of new forms of neoliberal governance, where responsibilities and risks weigh unfavorably on farmers who have little support from national institutions, yet increasingly they find themselves performing to new forms of entrepreneurship, rife with standards, protocols and audits in order to satisfy the requirements andexpectations of the global market system.

 

November 9, 2010, Professor Roger Schroeder, Carlson School of Management "Manufacturing in America Again?" Over the past thirty years the trade deficit in manufactured goods has skyrocketed and thousands of jobs have been moved offshore. Will this trend continue, and are we inevitably living in a "post-industrial" society? If the trend is be stopped or reversed, what can government, labor and management do? Results from the High Performance Manufacturing research project are discussed. HHH manufacturing

 

 

 

October 26, 2010 Professor Alfred Marcus, Carlson School of Management " Path Dependence and Learning in the Global Clean Tech Industry" Clean tech – the production of electricity and fuels with a smaller environmental impact –saw a mini-investment boom occurred in the first decade of the 21st century. This study investigates the degree to which the strategies of clean tech investors varied over time in response tolearning from investment successes and failures and from changes in public policy. The literature on path dependence predicts, all else equal, that initial patterns persist into the future. The past character of the investments will continue into the future without much alteration. Professor Marcus’s model suggests that this pattern can be broken based on the feedback that investors receive from successful or unsuccessful rounds of venture capital funding and from the changes in the clean tech polices of global governments. Thus, there is another theoretical perspective that should be applied to the strategic choices that investors in this domain make, that is learning theory. Its predictions would be that adjustments in strategic choices will take place based on factors included in the model. PATH CREATION AND PATH DEDENDENCE IN CLEAN TECH Z

October 12, 2010 Prof. Raymond Robertson, Macalester College "Better Apparel Factories in Developing Countries" The Better Factories Cambodia program has been hailed as an innovative approach to improving working conditions in apparel factories in developing countries. This presentation describes the Better Factories Cambodia program and its successor, Better Work, and presents new evidence about the effect of this program on wages and working conditions using factory-level data. The evaluation specifically examines changes in working conditions and, importantly, the factory-characteristics associated with decisions to improve working conditions and how these decisions might affect factory profitability. Robertson_BFC_Humphrey_Institute_01

 

 

September 28, 2010 Prof. Ian Maitland, Carlson School "Let Them Eat Rights?" A growing number of human rights scholars and business ethicists argue that corporations have duties to help secure the human rights of the world’s poor and powerless. These duties are owed as a matter of justice and not benevolence. Professor Maitland will argue that this human rights agenda may harm its intended beneficiaries by weakening their capacity for self-sufficiency and by encumbering their benefactors with burdens they are poorly designed to bear. Maitland paper Let Them Eat Rights

 

 

 

September 14, 2010 Dean J. Brian Atwood, Humphrey School. The "Changing Global Aid Architecture and the Effectiveness Challenge" Dean Atwood, a former Administrator of United States Agency for International Development, discusses the proliferation of private and public aid programs, the need for more consistent standards, results criteria, reliable data,and the absence of mutual accountability between donors and recipients. The Global Development Agenda atwood

 

 

 

 

April 27, 2010 Morris Kleiner, Humphrey School of Public Affairs "How Does Government Regulate Occupations in the UK and US? Issues and Policy Implications" Occupational regulation involves the role of government in reconciling the special interests of the members with the general concerns of the public. In the United States, occupational licensing has grown from approximately 4 percent of the workforce in the early 1950s to about 29 percent in 2006 – and as high as 38 percent when some kind of certification or eventual licensing is added.  In the United Kingdom, the percentage of the workforce that requires a government license in order to work has doubled in the past twelve years to more than 13 percent. Professor Kleiner’s joint research with Amy Humphries and Maria Koumenta shows that in both the U.S. and the U.K. occupational licensing has a large impact on wage determination. The wage premium associated with licensing stands at approximately 18 per cent in the US and 13 per cent in the UK.  For both countries, this is higher than the estimated effect of union membership, and, unlike unionization, in both countries licensing raises the wages of high skilled and high paid individuals thus exacerbating the existing disparity in the distribution of earnings.  In view of the minimal evidence of the quality effects of occupational licensing, policy makers may want to rethink their growing support for this form of regulation. Kleiner paper Regulating Occupations in US and UK_v4

 

 

March 30, 2010 Gary Krueger, Macalester College "Why Russia is not China: An Economist's View of Thirty Years of Reform and Transition" Discussions of Russia's economic transition and reforms typically overlook the period prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The relative lack of success in the 1990s is usually blamed on ill-conceived IMF/World Bank liberalization policies. Professor Krueger argues that a more complete understanding of Russia's transition can be obtained by a nuanced understanding of the legacies of Russia's Soviet economy and the reform efforts of the late Soviet period, aka: perestroika.  This situation contrasts markedly with the situation in China in the 1980s under Deng.  The implications of Russia’s legacy for the current economic situation and future prospects are discussed.

 

 

March 2, 2010 Thaddee Badibanga and Terry Roe, UMN Department of Applied Economics"Structural Change in China, Malaysia and Ghana" Structural transformation features the production of new varieties of goods of higher unit value. When goods are classified by "cluster," Badibanga and Roe will show that the rapid transformation of the Chinese economy is the result of increasing proximity of the country’s production/export basket to the capital goods and consumer durables clusters and the increasing value of products in these two clusters. The substantial increases in the value of goods in these clusters helped Malaysia reduce the country's gap with China. The structure of the Ghanaian economy, however, is stagnant over time, and the country’s production profile is dominated by primary goods with relatively stagnant changes in unit value. These results suggest that technological spillovers spur economic growth far more easily among some clusters of goods than others. A country centering on the production of primary goods forgoes opportunities to capture the spillovers obtainable from industrial good clusters. This phenomenon can be interpreted as yet another version of the natural resource curse.

December 8, 2009, John Freeman, UMN Political Science "Do Americans Believe their Government still has Room to Maneuver in the Global Economy?" Despite the increasing integration of global markets, many scholars contend governments retain policy "room to maneuver." Moreover, citizens presumably support further economic integration because they believe their governments can cushion the impacts of market forces. In this sense, economic liberalization is compatible with popular preferences. Professor Freeman reports and explains the results of an original experiment designed gauge Americans' belief in their government's room to maneuver.

 

 

 

November 27, 2009, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, UMN Law School "Gender, Transition and Conflict" Professor Ní Aoláin draws on a book in progress to discuss the ways in which women experiencetransitions from conflicted and violent societies. The book and the talk examine the multiple forms of violence that pervade conflicted societies and how legalsanction often fails to fully captureits effects for women.The discussion focus is on a number of the dimensions that are engaged in transitional societies including amnesty, security sector reform, reparations, and rule of law transformations.

 

 

 

October 27, 2009 Kaye Husbands Fealing, Humphrey School of Public Affairs "Incoming Foreign Investment and Race" The huge influx of capital-intensive foreign investment coming into the U.S. in recent years holds the potential to influence significantly domestic occupational employment patterns.  While previous studies investigated whether inward FDI in developed countries targeted industries with workforces comprising a large share of skilled workers, there is a dearth of research on whether racial minorities benefited from foreign owners’ demand for high-skilled jobs.  Do foreign owners have an incentive to engage in non-discriminatory employment practices?  Does increased labor market competition from these owners influence the employment decisions of their domestic rivals?  This study finds that FDI is associated with an improved probability of black employment in high-wage and mid-level-wage jobs versus low-wage jobs. These findings are interpreted to suggest that enhanced competition for US workers creates a business environment that can provide greater job opportunities for individuals from groups traditionally underrepresented in high-paying occupations.  What do such findings imply for public policy?

October 13, 2009 Martin Loken, Consul General of Canada, Minneapolis, Minnesota"Canada and the U.S.: Partners in Recovery" The ties between the U.S. and Canada are truly unique. The two countries are the closest of neighbors, friends, and allies. They share a strong, mutually beneficial partnership marked by huge commercial exchanges, deep linkages on energy and environmental matters, and shared perspectives on a range of international issues. Consul General Loken argues that the two countries should work together to build on the strengths of the integrated North American economy as they deal with the challenges facing the global economy.He will discuss 1) how NAFTA has created one of the world`s largest economic regions and how that benefits both Canada and the U.S.; 2) how the competitive position of Canada and the United States relies on the strength and efficiency of our cross-border supply chains, and 3) the challenges presented by protectionism and how those challenges could affect cooperative efforts to get out of the global recession. He examines the key features of the Canada-U.S. relationship and how Minnesota and the Upper Midwest fit into that partnership.

September 29, 2009 Paul M. Vaaler, UMN Carlson School of Management “Immigrant Remittances and the Venture Investment Environment in Developing Countries” Immigrants from developing countries number in the tens of millions, remit hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and usually include with those remittances guidance about their use.  What happens to these financial (money) and social (ideas) remittances?  Researchers and policy-makers in development, public policy and law often hold that remittances to developing countries are used for basic subsistence purposes such as food, shelter, education and healthcare needs of family and friends back home.  Their possible impact on new business funding, start-ups and growth has been overlooked. In response, he develops a framework grounded in social knowledge and transaction cost theories to investigate the relationship between immigrant remittances and home country:  (1) capital availability; (2) new business creation; and (3) international trade openness. Studying 65 developing countries from 2001 to 2007, he shows that immigrant remittances have positive effects on these entrepreneurial outcomes, suggesting the important role of immigrants abroad in providing venture capital and ideas for developing country growth and integration into the world economy.

September 15, 2009 Gregory Shaffer, UMN Law School "The International Law and Politics of Genetically Modified Foods" The transatlantic dispute over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has brought the United States and the European Union into conflict. Professor Shaffer presented the core arguments in his book on this subject, which was published by Oxford University Press this summer.  The book investigates the obstacles to reconciling regulatory differences among nations through international cooperation, through the lens of the GMO dispute. It addresses the dynamic interactions of domestic law and politics, transnational networks, international regimes, and global markets, through a theoretical and empirical analysis of the governance of GM foods and crops. The book assesses the impacts, and the limits, of international pressures on domestic US and European law, politics, and business practice, which have remained strikingly resistant to change. A further description and reviews can be found here. Talk Notes

April 21, 2009 Steven Block, The Fletcher School, Tufts University"The Political Economy of Agricultural Trade Intervention in Africa"
How are demography, democracy and agricultural policies related in Africa?  Tufts University Professor Steve Block presents initial answers related to this question based on his current research with Robert Bates of Harvard University.  Rural populations in Africa are often targeted for higher taxation and price controls on their agricultural output in order to keep foodstuffs cheap and certain non-agricultural groups better off.  Opening up the political process and promoting more competitive elections reduces such distortions significantly and substantially.  Listen to learn more about how more open and competitive electoral politics apparently change agricultural policies and privileges in Africa.

April 7, 2009 Myles Shaver, UMN Carlson School of Management"How Exporting Facilitates Capital Investment"
Research findings across many countries indicate that exporters are ‘stronger’ firms (e.g., more productive) than non-exporters. For strategy scholars and policymakers, this begs the question of whether stronger firms become exporters (i.e., exporting is an outcome), or if exporting strengthens firms. Most firm level research shows that exporting is only an outcome. In this work Professor Shaver adds to a nascent stream of research that shows how exporting affects firms. He provides evidence that exporting can foster capital investments by enabling greater firm self-finance.

 

 

March 24, 2009 Teri Caraway, Department of Political Science"Labor Rights in East Asia: Progress or Regress?"
Professor Caraway reports on research that examines the current state of de jure and de facto individual and collective labor rights in East Asia (Burma, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam). De jure collective and individual labor rights have improved in the region. Democracy offers a partial explanation for these improvements--labor laws in democracies provide for stronger individual labor rights than in non-democracies, and countries that have democratized have enacted significant labor law reforms that have enhanced collective labor rights. Nevertheless, the laws in almost every country—democracies included—still violate international labor standards, and poor enforcement erodes these legal gains. Moreover, countries with stronger collective labor rights do not have higher unionization rates, collective bargaining remains rare in most countries, and the right to strike is poorly protected—even in democracies. Unions in East Asia may be freer, but they remain feeble. Powerpoint presentation: Labor Rights in East Asia: Progress or Regress?

March 10, 2009 Arun Saldanha, UMN Geography Department"Tourism and Moralism: The Lessons of Battles over Identity in Goa, India"
Professor Saldanha builds on ethnographic findings that go beyond those underlying his Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race(Minnesota 2007) to inquire into the rationale of Goan activists trying to mitigate the detrimental effects of global tourism. Goa's tourism sector is strongly promoted by official policy and business on a number of scales, but is very complex on the ground. As in most tourist destinations, concerns have been raised about the environmentaland social impacts of tourism on the small coastal state. Professor Saldanha argues that, though these concerns are often legitimate, the moralistic framework in which they are couched prevents a sustainable policy agenda on tourism. In particular, many activist groups'protective stance on cultural identity shows a number of contradictions. Possible policy lessons for other tourist destinations are explored. Powerpoint presentation: Tourism and Moralism: Battles Over Identity in Goa, India

February 10, 2009 Jeffrey Broadbent, UMN Sociology Department "Global Climate Change: Explaining Variation in National Responses"
Nations vary greatly in the degree that they take the threat of climate change seriously and try to reduces its causes (principally, take measures to reduce their output of greenhouse gasses). Understanding the sources of this variation is crucial to crafting a workable global agreement on sharing the burdens of the needed GHG reductions. The COMPON project (COMparing climate change POlicy Networks) addresses this question through cross-national comparative research designed to test central hypotheses. Professor Broadbent will discusses the project and its hypotheses, as well as some tentative answers.

January 27, 2009 Barbara Frey, UMN "Reassessing the Rule of Law: Will the Obama Administration Change the Course of US Exceptionalism"
Exceptionalism has long characterized the US government's attitude with regard to international human rights and humanitarian standards:The US will only be held to international standards to the extent that those standards are contiguous with existing US law.The Bush administration staked out an extreme position with regard to international law, pushing back against even the most well-established human rights standards such as the prohibitions against torture and rendition.It is easy to forget that previous administrations, including the Clinton administration, had been cautious, at best, in embracing international human rights and humanitarian norms. What changes to this exceptionalist course regarding international law will we see in the Obama administration? What changes should be made?

 

December 2, 2008 J. Brian Atwood, UMN Humphrey School of Public Affairs "Reforming U.S. Foreign Assistance"
US foreign assistance programs are now spread over 23 government agencies and have been described as in disarray and out of step with other policies that impact on the developing world. In the November/December 2008 edition of Foreign Affairs J. Brian Atwood writing with two other former USAID Administrators, Peter McPherson and Andrew Natsios, offers a path to reform.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 18, 2008 Gurneeta Singh, UMN CarlsonSchool of Management "National Industrial Policy and Fuel Cell Development"
First 30 minutes of presentation. Dr. Singh develops a theoretical framework to explain variations in national innovation systems and firms’ knowledge strategies across industrialized countries. Using an inductive approach, a study of fuel cell innovation demonstrates how a country’s sociopolitical institutional arrangements, characterized by the levels of statism and corporatism, shape the competitive allocation of public resources, engagement with foreign actors, partnerships involving public and private actors, and technological diversity. These technology policies are sources of advantages (and disadvantages) for firms with implications for their knowledge creation and knowledge diffusion strategies. The framework is especially relevant in the context of industry emergence and R&D internationalization. PowerPoint presentation: National Fuel Cell Technology Policies: Implications for Firms' Knowledge Strategies

November 4, 2008 Robbin Johnson, UMN Humphrey School of Public Affairs "Food Security and BioFuels"
Food security has a number of different dimensions: access to food at affordable prices; reliable supplies at all times; adequate nutritional content; safety; sustainability of production processes; and healthfulness. Biofuels has come to represent both a rapidly growing market and an emerging threat to global food security. (Robbin Johnson is Advisor to the Global Policy Area, Humphrey School)

Robbin Johnson video part 2: Final moments and questions from Robbin Johnson talk on Food Security,

Robbin Johnson video part 1: November 4, 2008.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Papers

"Residual State Ownership, Policy Stability and Financial Performance Following Strategic Decisions by Privatizing Telecoms". (PDF Document)September 10, 2008. Paul M. Vaaler, Department of Strategic Management & Organization, Carlson School of Management; Burkhard N. Schrage, Singapore Management University. Forthcoming in the Journal of International Business Studies.

"What's So Bad About (A Little) State Ownership? Residual State Ownership, Policy Stability and Financial
Performance Following Strategic Decisions by Privatizing Telecoms" (Powerpoint presentation). September 23, 2008. Paul M. Vaaler, Department of Strategic Management & Organization, Carlson School of Management; Burkhard N. Schrage, Singapore Management University. Humphrey School Global Policy Workshop.