Mr. Ma and Mr. Downer on the Twelfth Floor of Ma's Campaign HQ (photo from IDU's news article)

An excerpt from the Latest IDU News:

The IDU representatives, together with a delegation from the International Young Democrat Union (IYDU), were the first international representatives to meet president-elect Ma Ying-jeou after his election victory was known. The IDU/IYDU delegation met Mr Ma immediately before he made his acceptance speech to a cheering crowd of jubilant Taipei citizens outside the KMT headquarters.

Well, for now, all you guys have to know is that IDU is the group we were accompanying during the whole elections. So this means--yes, you are right--we were there when it all occurred. And definitely, there's one heck of a story to it! But, I still have to wait until I receive all of the exclusive pictures, finish the report for National Policy Foundation, check on accounting numbers, to finally get to the story telling part.

Stay tuned. I promise it will be exciting!

My friend Kimi--my roommate, a friend since elementary school, and also a member of the "Tainan Gang"--went traveling by himself during the elections and took these pictures.

You can see the rest at this site.

btw, after I finish a brief report for the National Policy Foundation (our sponser), I'll be able to start sorting out all the photos we have and post some article about this election.

First of all, as the 2008 Presidential Election Observation trip comes to an end, I would like to thank all the guests I met during the past few days: Alexander Downer, Eirik Moen, David Amess, Ramon Barros, Randy Bumps from the IDU; Jens Damm from Germany; David Hayes from the UK; Dick Gupwell from Belgium; Kerry Dumbaugh from the US; Chih-Chieh Chou from NCKU, Taiwan. You all gave us a wonderful experience--and certainly tons of good stories to tell! (which is what I'll doing in the following blogs )

I would also like to thank all the partners who helped out--I couldn't have accomplished any task without them: Wei-Chia Lee, Su, Andy, Sarah and her boyfriend. You all were great! I guess we can really call ourselves the "Tainan Gang" now!

Last but not least, I would like to thank Vicky and Chia-An for their support from the Central Command, which is located somewhere mobile in Taipei. They gave us everything--money, support, jokes, etc (anything you can think of).

I'll be uploading some of the photos I got (and some from other cameras ) at this site.

The clock is ticking: 24 hour countdown to the Presidential Election.

Tomorrow is also the day we put our plans into execution. Starting from 8:00, I'll be accommodating guests--most of them are from IDU--from all over the world . At 14:00 our group will leaving for Tainan; thus, starting our election observations. In addition, I'm looking forward to meeting the guest assigned to me: Mr. Alexander Downer. I hope he enjoys the trip!

Recently, I have seen a few articles discussing the economic adviser of McCain (Douglas Holtz-Eakin), Obama (Austan Goolsbee), and Clinton (Gene Sperling). What does an economic adviser do? Freakonomics has some answers (Besides Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the article also contains the responses of Austan Goolsbee, James Bognet, and Leo Hindery):

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and economic adviser to John McCain:

Joking aside, an economic adviser has three major roles. The first is to recruit a network of policy experts in the various areas of public policy –- tax, financial regulation, health, Social Security, and so forth. These researchers and practitioners allow rapid access to facts, the history of policy efforts, and the development of policy proposals that the candidate might consider. The second major role is education –- i.e., explaining policies to various constituencies. Perhaps surprisingly, a large part of this is explaining issues to reporters, but it also includes volunteers on the campaign, political organizers, and sometimes the candidate himself. The third job is the hardest: fighting bad ideas. I believe that bad policy will, in the end, be bad politics. However, there are many well-intentioned (and perhaps some less well-intentioned) who would like to see the campaign adopt positions that are not in the national interest.

Here is another article on the economic advisers.

From these advisers (and the debates between their candidates), we can have a better view of where economic policies might be heading once their candidates are elected. However, I'm not sure whether it is my negligence or simply the negligence of the media, nobody seems to be discussing this issue in the 2008 Taiwan Presidential Elections. It could be because real issues aren't as dramatic and intriguing as issues such as the infamous "intruding of Hsieh's HQ."

Vicint Siew, Ma's vice presidential running mate specializes in Economics (Ma once said Siew is his Chief Economic Adviser), but I doubt he has the time and effort to devise their economic policies once he is elected. Besides that, all I can find on google are rumors that Mundell may considering being their economic adviser (the article is in simplified Chinese. Here are some additional information on Mundell).

Hsiang-Kai Lin (林向愷), a NTU Professor of Economics and former director of the Kaohsiung Bureau of Finance (when Hsieh was Mayor), is Hsieh's campaign Chief Policy Director and is named Hsieh's Chief Economic Adviser by some media.

Well, as you can see, with all the information I can come up with, this must be an inconspicuous issue. If you happen to know anything about Ma or Hsieh's economic adviser, please help us out here--your sharing might have a dramatic impact on our future!

Actually, it's a song.
To those who want a better knowledge of the crisis--in a fun way too!

Freakonomics has a report on Taiwan's innovation: traffic light countdown timers.

About a year ago in Taiwan, they started installing countdown timers at traffic lights at a number of intersections. Some counted down the amount of time remaining till a green light turned yellow and then red, while others counted down the amount of time remaining before a red light turned green. Some intersections had both.

It's a fact that a certain number of accidents are caused both by people who jump the gun on the red light, and those who try to make it through the intersection after the light has already turned red. Ostensibly, the reason for the timers was to give people more precise information about exactly how much time they had remaining before the light changed, in the hope of reducing accidents.

The results are quite interesting. A research institute within Taiwan's Ministry of Transportation released a report showing that at 187 intersections which had the timers installed, those that counted down the remaining time on green lights saw a doubling in the number of reported accidents, with a 33 percent increase in the number of injuries, while those that counted down until a red light turned green saw a halving in both the number of reported accidents and injuries. Intersection that had both red and green light timers saw a 19 percent increase in reported accidents and a 23 percent increase in injuries.

Here is a link that includes a clip of a Chinese Olympic sponsor's ad--beware, it may be very annoying.

I caught wind of this story elsewhere earlier, but now the Wall Street Journal has provided more color to it. The clip above is of a low-budget advertisement that seems to have annoyed an awful lot of Chinese. What it does is repeat the name of each animal in the Chinese zodiac thrice followed by the name of the wool-selling Olympic sponsor until all twelve animals are mentioned. Before its further opening up to the world, a lot of advertising in the PRC was of this ilk. As you will read below, it's the "caveman" approach: the objective is to club your brand into the consumers' consciousness. However, modern Chinese consumers have found this particular throwback nauseating given the proliferation of Westernized ads with "high" production values. (I find it charming in a juvenile sort of way, actually.)

For the 2008 Presidential Election Observations, I will be escorting Mr. Alexander Downer. Here are some additional information on him.

Schedules and details are still under coordination and planning. This will be a bigger project--compared with the Legislative Elections--with more VIPs and escorts. I hope it will be successful!

I was notified today to pick up my book on reserve, The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions, and International Trade, written by Masahisa Fujita, Paul Krugman, Anthony J. Venables.

Here is the full introduction. Although it might sound difficult for beginners, some of the questions asked inside are interesting enough for every ordinary person to think about. Below is a brief excerpt to give you a peek at the study of "new economic geography " :

Around the corner from the English National Opera lies St. Martin's Court, a short street occupied mainly by sellers of secondhand books and prints. It is a reasonable location for such shops, but there are no doubt other locations that would serve as well. Why, then, have the shops' owners chosen to be there? To be near each other. No doubt there is some interesting story about how that clusters of book and print shops originally became established, but what sustains it now is a sort of circular logic: Potential customers come to St. Martin's Court because they expect to find a range of shops to browse in, and shops locate there because they know they will have access to a large pool of potential customers.

As attentive readers may notice, the circular logic is similar to what the "Qwerty model" (mentioned in earlier articles) is trying to explain--the factors that "lock" some countries in economic growth and "lock" others out.