Long House

Tips for Refereeing and Discussing Papers

2012-01-22T18:08:00.001-05:00

How to referee an academic paper?
How to be a discussant on a seminar paper?

Individual Level H-1B Visa Data

2012-01-22T18:02:00.000-05:00

H-1Bs: How Do They Stack Up to US Born Workers?

Combining unique individual level H-1B data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and data from the 2009 American Community Survey, we analyze earnings differences between H-1B visa holders and US born workers in STEM occupations. The data indicate that H-1Bs are younger and more skilled, as measured by education, than US born workers in the same occupations. We fail to find support for the notion that H-1Bs are paid less that observationally similar US born workers; in fact, they appear to have higher earnings in some key STEM occupations, including information technology.

Recent Remittance and Migration Studies.

2011-12-29T17:49:00.000-05:00

Inverse relationship between remittances and unemployment (HT: People Move).

As a consequence of the global economic crisis, 2009 marked a hiccup in the trend of increasing remittance flows to developing countries. In most parts of the world, the growth rate of remittances was indeed negative. But what is striking is that there was an inverse relationship between remittances and unemployment. In other words, the greater the drop in remittances, the higher was the increase in the unemployment rate. In Moldova, for instance, remittances decreased by 36% in 2009, while the unemployment rate increased by 61%. By contrast, in Fiji, remittances increased by 24% and unemployment dropped by 7%.

Source: People Move

Impacts of Green Card Lottery on Ethiopian Households (HT: Development Impact).

Since migrants are typically positively selected (Chiswick, 1999 Chiquiar and Hanson, 2005;McKenzie etal, 2006), non-experimental estimates of the effects of emigration may be biased if there are concerns with the identifying assumptions...

... In my job market paper, I add to the literature by focusing on migrants from an extremely poor country – Ethiopia – who are randomly assigned the possibility of migration through the United States’ Diversity Visa lottery. My analysis is based on a specially designed survey (which I conducted) of households of previous DV lottery winners and lottery participants in Addis Ababa – the Ethiopian capital. I use comparisons between the lottery winners and the (non-winning) participants to infer the causal effects of having a family member migrate to the U.S....

...The study finds that having a family member win the lottery and migrate has significant positive effects on several dimensions of the remaining family’s standard of living. Families of DV migrants spend about 30% more on food, are thus better fed and have higher body mass indexes. Moreover, families of winners possess more and better quality consumer durables, which include personal computers, modern cooking stoves, household furniture and home entertainment appliances. Having a family member who won the DV lottery also gives families access to improved sources of drinking water and sanitation facilities. Winners’ families, however, have about the same savings and physical capital accumulation as other families. Most of the positive effects of emigration appear to be on the consumption side of the family budget.

Recent Reports on High Skilled Migration

2011-12-03T20:02:00.001-05:00

Highly Skilled Migrants Seek New Destinations as Global Growth Shifts to Emerging Economies

The emerging economies of Asia and Latin America continued to gain steam in 2011, fueled in large part by regional powerhouses China, India, and Brazil. Developing nations that were once primarily migrant-sending states are now experiencing a boom that is beginning to increase their attractiveness for highly educated and highly skilled migrants and beckoning their diaspora members home.

Substantial Investments to Court Diaspora Entrepreneurs for Development Gains

As the world economy continues to struggle to regain its footing following the 2007-09 global recession and contend with the fiscal crisis that has engulfed most wealthy states, it has become clearer that the road to recovery will be a long and winding one for many. Migrants and their descendants play a role in that recovery, whether by sending remittances, taking part in volunteer and philanthropic efforts in home countries, or creating jobs by initiating or supporting entrepreneurial efforts.

H-1B visa becoming less attractive?

2011-05-07T11:42:00.000-04:00

Long-Prized Tech Visas Lose Cachet.

A visa program designed to supply skilled foreign workers to companies in the U.S. has slowed sharply, attracting about 50% fewer petitions so far this year than last year, and 80% fewer than in 2009.

Several factors have contributed to the decline in H-1B visas, including the lackluster pace of the U.S. recovery, more opportunities for skilled workers in their home nations and higher visa fees, which appear to have spurred Indian companies operating in the U.S. to seek fewer visas. Attacks on the program by congressional foes of U.S. immigration policies have also cast a shadow over it.

Recent Links on High Skill Migration

2011-04-06T21:41:00.013-04:00

Russians protest by emigrating, not demonstrating (Washington Post)

While protesters have been marching in the Middle East demanding liberty, Russians have been mostly silent. Instead of packing the streets, some have been quietly packing their bags, pursuing freedom in a new wave of emigration.

People are not property: Please stop saying that countries “steal” doctors from Africa (Michael Clemens).

This week, Professor Jonathan Wolff has warned the world that the United States “steals doctors from poorer countries” because it “simply does not train enough doctors to meet its voracious appetite for medical attention.” This is a strong accusation. Professor Wolff, a philosopher, should reconsider several dubious assumptions that his strong claim requires.

How much does it cost to send money home?

2011-04-01T22:22:00.000-04:00

World Bank's Remittance Price Worldwide.

This website provides data on the cost of sending and receiving small amounts of money from one country to another. Called remittances, these international transfers are often initiated by migrant workers. The aggregate cash flows and the number of participants are enormous. In fact, the World Bank estimates that remittances totaled $440 billion in 2010, of which $325 billion went to developing countries, involving some 192 million migrants or 3.0% of world population. The money received is an important source of family (and national) income in many developing economies, representing in some cases a very relevant percentage of the GDP of the receiving countries. The site covers 200 "country corridors" worldwide. The corridors studied flow from 29 major remittance sending countries to 86 receiving countries, representing more than 60% of total remittances to developing countries.

For those interested in the causes and consequences of remittances, this should be an awesome data source. Here are examples of tables and figures you can create based on its monthly data.

Cool Global Migration Graphs

2011-03-19T11:36:00.000-04:00

Global Migration Maps. This is the first time I actually saw migration visualized, most likely due to data limitations.

Migrations of people have existed for millennia and occur at a range of scales and time-periods (from small-scale journeys to work through to intercontinental resettlement). As a geographer I have long been interested in these and thought it was about time I mapped them! Using data from the Global Migrant Origin Database (thanks Adam for the tip) and R, my favourite stats software, I have produced the maps you see here (click on them for higher resolution). Each line shows the origins and destinations of at least 4000 people in a given year (2000 in this case). The more red the line the more people it represents. I have used great circle distance to plot them onto the Earth. The map below shows the same magnitude of flows but just for Europe. The Earth has been flattened for this one so the flows are represented by arbitrary arcs.

Some caveats though.

Firstly they are based on a dataset where many of the movements are best guesses rather than measured data. You can read more about this here. It would also be great to have actual flows rather than inferred flows based on the number of migrants in each country. If I made these maps again I might draw lines between capital cities or population centres to avoid the impression that the majority of migrations to/ from Russia start/end in Siberia for example.

Forced Return Migration

2011-03-06T10:11:00.000-05:00

Today's TechCrunch article points to visa restrictions as the cause of high skill return migration in the Silicon Valley.

NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw visited Silicon Valley last month to meet immigrant entrepreneurs. At Microsoft’s Mountain View campus, he met with a dozen of them. More than half said that they might be forced to return to their home countries. That’s because they have the same visa issues that Kunal Bahl had. Unable to get a visa that would allow him to start a company after he graduated from Wharton in 2007, Kunal returned home to India. In February 2010, he started SnapDeal—India’s Groupon. Instead of creating hundreds of jobs in the U.S., Kunal ended up creating them in New Delhi.

Causes of Return for High Skilled Chinese Migrants in the US

2010-12-28T19:10:00.001-05:00

FP article today mentioned that:

China is getting a major boost from the return home of Western-educated, skilled workers. They are returning because of frustrations with U.S. visa policies that make it extremely difficult for skilled workers from high-population countries to obtain permanent-resident visas; because of opportunities back home; and because the Chinese government is offering huge incentives to engineers and scientists. These returnees are teaching locals how to build world-class companies and how to innovate. In almost every high-growth tech company in China, you find returnees in senior management positions. In scientific research, top research labs have returnees in lead positions. And these scientists are beginning to make breakthroughs.

In short, the article suggests that these migrants return because of (frustrating) US naturalization policies, job market incentives back home, and active government recruiting policies.

Different Measures of Ethnic Diversity

2010-12-22T11:43:00.002-05:00

KATE BALDWIN and JOHN D. HUBER (2010). Economic versus Cultural Differences: Forms of Ethnic Diversity and Public Goods Provision. American Political Science Review, 104, pp 644-662.

Arguments about how ethnic diversity affects governance typically posit that groups differ from each other in substantively important ways and that these differences make effective governance more difficult. But existing cross-national empirical tests typically use measures of ethnolinguistic fractionalization (ELF) that have no information about substantive differences between groups. This article examines two important ways that groups differ from each other—culturally and economically—and assesses how such differences affect public goods provision. Across 46 countries, the analysis compares existing measures of cultural differences with a new measure that captures economic differences between groups: between-group inequality (BGI). We show that ELF, cultural fractionalization (CF), and BGI measure different things, and that the choice between them has an important impact on our understanding of which countries are most ethnically diverse. Furthermore, empirical tests reveal that BGI has a large, robust, and negative relationship with public goods provision, whereas CF, ELF, and overall inequality do not.

Analyzing the Financial Records of Al Qaeda

2010-12-21T22:50:00.001-05:00

A new RAND study of captured documents from Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) reveals some interesting facts about the organization. It found that “AQI was a hierarchical organization with decentralized decision making; AQI in Anbar was profitable enough to send substantial revenues out of the province in 2006; AQI relied on extortion, theft, and black market sales to fund its operations in Anbar; AQI needed large, regular revenue sources to fund its operations, but its administrative leaders did not hold much cash on hand.” Significantly, the study found that “disrupting AQI’s financial flows could disrupt the pace of their attacks.”

HT: Freakonomics

Rationality of Irrationality

2010-11-25T14:42:00.003-05:00

Guessing North Korea's dangerous game. An interesting article applying Thomas Schelling's "rationality of irrationality" to recent North Korean moves.

Actually, Pyongyang seems to be following a familiar playbook in great-power politics. Its hardliners appear to have learned Thomas Schelling's teachings on the rationality of irrationality. Schelling saw the manipulation of shared risks as one of the best strategies to get one's way in international politics. Imagine, he suggested, a game in which you're walking on the edge of a cliff chained by the ankle to someone else. The first to cry uncle loses. What do you do?

HT: The Monkey Cage

Data Cleaning Tool

2010-11-23T14:08:00.002-05:00

Google Refine.

Google Refine is a power tool for working with messy data, cleaning it up, transforming it from one format into another, extending it with web services, and linking it to databases like Freebase.

See sample video (1/3) below:

HT: Andrew Gelman

Why is nobody worried about the Asian brain drain?

2010-11-20T12:20:00.001-05:00

Willian Easterly asks this question.

Aid-financed scholarships for African students to study in the US or Europe would be worth a lot more than a million “capacity-building” projects. The usual argument against such scholarships is fear of brain drain — that the African students would not return home.

So why would Asian students return more than African students? The answer to this is highly related to the causes of return migration, and for those who know my current research you would probably know my answer. Looking forward to analyzing my data and see if the results support my theory!

Plans and Aspirations

2010-11-14T00:24:00.006-05:00

Gallup's recent survey on "migration aspirations" suggests that United States attracts less educated migrants, developed Asia poised to lose most educated, and developing regions loses potential population across the board, etc.

These conclusions are based on three of their indices: Potential Net Migration Index, Potential Net Brain Gain Index, and Potential Net Youth Migration Index. Indices are based on responses from the following questions:

Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in this country?

(If "would like to move permanently to another country") To which country would you like to move?[Open-ended, one response allowed]

Ideally, systematic data that trace actual migrant movements across borders and record their individual characteristics (skill level, income, etc) would be the most reliable source for making inferences like this. However, as people who study migration or return migration probably understand, this type of data rarely exists. Another alternative is to make inferences based on survey data. First, you ask whether respondents plan to emigrate and where they plan to move to (in the case of emigration studies) or whether respondents plan to return to their home countries (in the case of return migration studies). Then you estimate probabilities of emigration or return migration based on individual characteristics and generate estimates for the coefficients of the variables of interest.

My main concern about the above conclusions is how Gallup made inferences based on aspirations. For example, when I asked my wife the above 2 questions, her response was that if she had the opportunity, which may imply both budgetary and time permitting, she would want to move to Paris because it sounds so romantic to live there. However, if I changed the wording of the same question to whether you plan on moving to another country and where would you move, her answer changed to "no, there are many realistic concerns I have to take into account."

Although you could argue that my wife's case may just be an anomaly, it seems pretty plausible to say that answers based on hypothetical questions ("if you had the opportunity") would be very different from questions that are based more on reality ("do you plan to migrate") even when both intentions may not ultimately realize. My bet is that responses to the latter type of question would be closer to actual migration outcomes.

Therefore, here I pose a question to Gallup and readers of this blog: if you had the budget to conduct such a survey, why not ask plans instead of "aspirations"? Am I missing something?

Foreign Aid and Armed Conflict

2010-09-16T21:31:00.001-04:00

Foreign Aid Shocks as a Cause of Violent Armed Conflict by Nielsen et al. (forthcoming in AJPS). Manuscript here.

In this study we resolve part of the confusion over how foreign aid affects armed conflict. We argue that aid shocks – severe decreases in aid revenues – inadvertently shift the domestic balance of power and potentially induce violence. During aid shocks, potential rebels gain bargaining strength vis-à-vis the government. To appease the rebels, the government must promise future resource transfers, but the government has no incentive to continue its promised transfers if the aid shock proves to be temporary. With the government unable to credibly commit to future resource transfers, violence breaks out. Using AidData’s comprehensive dataset of bilateral and multilateral aid from 1981-2005, we evaluate the effects of foreign aid on violent armed conflict. In addition to rare-event logit analysis, we employ matching methods to account for the possibility that aid donors anticipate conflict. The results show that negative aid shocks significantly increase the probability of armed conflict onset.

We already know how cool AidData is, so this is definitely going to be an exciting read for people interested in the intersection of IPE and security (like me).

Global attitudes database and US migration map

2010-06-18T11:33:00.001-04:00

Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Since its inception in 2002, Pew Global Attitudes Project has surveyed more than 240,000 people in 57 countries. This interactive database provides users with the ability to access key trends on questions ranging from attitudes toward the U.S. to people's assessments of their own lives and views about the current state of the world and important issues of the day. These key trends can be accessed by question topic or by country.

Where Americans are moving?

More than 10 million Americans moved from one county to another during 2008. The map below visualizes those moves. Click on any county to see comings and goings: black lines indicate net inward movement, red lines net outward movement.

Newest Development in the Korean Peninsula

2010-05-20T14:50:00.001-04:00

South Korea threatens sanctions. North Korea responds by threatening all-out war. Will this dispute escalate into a militarized conflict?

My guess is that South Korea won't back down because they are highly resolved; South Korea's decision to threaten sanctions despite anticipating North Korea's response beforehand indicates their high resolve. In addition, with local and provincial elections coming up, backing down from their threat would incur audience costs.

Whether or not North Korea backs down is less clear. On one hand, you could argue that North Korea has a history of rhetorical responses thus they could be just bluffing. On the other hand, with North Korea's recent domestic problems and instability such as the failed currency reform and rumors of Kim Jong-il's health issues, Kim may want to show a more hard-line approach.

To assess and predict whether this dispute escalates or not, a more sophisticated argument that incorporates extended immediate deterrence may be needed. Right now the US and Japan seem to be willing to back up South Korea. Therefore, North Korea will need to consider the costs of facing the two states when deciding whether to follow through its threat. China's position is less clear. China has defended North Korea in they past, but currently they are only urging restraint by both sides. Without the backing of China, escalation would less likely be a success for North Korea.

Finally, you could also challenge the unitary actor assumption and say that perhaps, hypothetically, Kim Kong-il's regime has weakened to a point that he doesn't have full control of his military. Military Hawks may be behind the torpedo attack and when North Korea really gets sanctioned, they may press for military escalation or even start a coup. However, it's highly unlikely that we'll be able to get information to confirm this explanation.

Is Identity Economics in Economics the Equivalent of Liberalism or Constructivism in Political Science?

2010-05-17T15:29:00.008-04:00

After reading Akerlof and Kranton's new article about identity economics, why do I seem to get the impression that the state of political science is more advanced than economics?

... But in most economic analysis, the decision makers’ point of view is quite narrow. It starts with what people like and don’t like. People may have a taste for oranges or bananas, or a preference for enjoying life today instead of saving for the future. They then decide what to buy or how much to save, given prevailing prices, interest rates, and their own income. Economists have included in such analysis that people interact with others, but they have largely treated such social interactions in a mechanical fashion, as if they were commodities.

...When we examine people’s decisions from the perspective of their identities and social norms, we get new answers to many different economic questions. Who people are and how they think of themselves is key to the decisions that they make. Their identities and norms are basic motivations. We call this approach identity economics.

They are basically saying that the majority of the economic discipline have treated preference as exogenous. This reminds me of two big debates in the field of international relation in the 90s. First, liberalism's challenge to realism. For example, Andrew Moravcsik's argument that realists tend to treat state preferences as exogenous and that we should instead look at national characteristics and how state preferences vary. Second, constructivism's challenge to rationalism. For example, Alexander Wendt's argument of how norms and identity shape the interests and behavior of actors. Or Peter Katzenstein's argument of how culture and identity affects national security.

To me, political science seems to be quicker to admit and face the weakness of rationalism and its assumptions.

Diaspora Engagement Policy and dual citizenship

2010-04-25T23:28:00.000-04:00

Expatriates are now relinquishing US Citizenship.

For U.S. citizens, cutting ties with their native land is a drastic and irrevocable step. But as Overseas American Week, a lobbying effort by expatriate-advocacy groups, convenes in Washington this week, it's one that an increasing number of American expats are willing to take. According to government records, 502 expatriates renounced U.S. citizenship or permanent residency in the fourth quarter of 2009 — more than double the number of expatriations in all of 2008. And these figures don't include the hundreds — some experts say thousands — of applications languishing in various U.S. consulates and embassies around the world, waiting to be processed. While a small number of Americans hand in their passports each year for political reasons, the new surge in permanent expatriations is mainly because of taxes.

Policies that try to extract obligations such as taxing expatriates can be seen as a type of diaspora engagement policy. However, extracting obligations without cultivating and extending rights to the diaspora may have negative impacts. For more on diaspora engagement policy, see Gamlen (2008).

Transparency Data (for AP)

2010-04-24T19:20:00.006-04:00

Transparency Data. Looks like a pretty useful site for American Politics students who have a focus on lobbying and electoral campaign contributions. The following is its descriptions:

Transparency Data is a central source for all federal and state campaign contributions made in the last twenty years. Here you can begin your search, find the information you need and then download records of what a candidate has received, what an individual has given, and how much companies and their employees have given.

Skill type and attitudes towards immigration in the US

2010-04-17T13:58:00.006-04:00

Anti-immigration sentiment in the United States is usually based on views towards low-skilled immigrants. However, an article in NYT suggests that more immigrants may now be high-skilled.

According to a new analysis of census data, more than half of the working immigrants in this metropolitan area hold higher-paying white-collar jobs — as professionals, technicians or administrators — rather than lower-paying blue-collar and service jobs.

Among American cities, St. Louis is not an exception, the data show. In 14 of the 25 largest metropolitan areas, including Boston, New York and San Francisco, more immigrants are employed in white-collar occupations than in lower-wage work like construction, manufacturing or cleaning.

The data belie a common perception in the nation’s hard-fought debate over immigration — articulated by lawmakers, pundits and advocates on all sides of the issue — that the surge in immigration in the last two decades has overwhelmed the United States with low-wage foreign laborers.

Over all, the analysis showed, the 25 million immigrants who live in the country’s largest metropolitan areas (about two-thirds of all immigrants in the country) are nearly evenly distributed across the job and income spectrum.

In addition, Hainmueller and Hiscox (2010) find that American's, regardless of skill level, strongly prefer high-skilled immigrants over low-skilled labor. Perhaps this will mitigate US decision maker's fear of pursuing a more accommodative immigration policy. (emphasis mine)

Past research has emphasized two critical economic concerns that appear to generate anti-immigrant sentiment among native citizens: concerns about labor market competition and concerns about the fiscal burden on public services. We provide direct tests of both models of attitude formation using an original survey experiment embedded in a nationwide U.S. survey. The labor market competition model predicts that natives will be most opposed to immigrants who have skill levels similar to their own. We find instead that both low-skilled and highly skilled natives strongly prefer highly skilled immigrants over low-skilled immigrants, and this preference is not decreasing in natives' skill levels. The fiscal burden model anticipates that rich natives oppose low-skilled immigration more than poor natives, and that this gap is larger in states with greater fiscal exposure (in terms of immigrant access to public services). We find instead that rich and poor natives are equally opposed to low-skilled immigration in general. In states with high fiscal exposure, poor (rich) natives are more (less) opposed to low-skilled immigration than they are elsewhere. This indicates that concerns among poor natives about constraints on welfare benefits as a result of immigration are more relevant than concerns among the rich about increased taxes. Overall the results suggest that economic self-interest, at least as currently theorized, does not explain voter attitudes toward immigration. The results are consistent with alternative arguments emphasizing noneconomic concerns associated with ethnocentrism or sociotropic considerations about how the local economy as a whole may be affected by immigration.

Blattman and Miguel on Civil War

2010-04-02T23:34:00.000-04:00

A helpful review on civil war literature.

Most nations have experienced an internal armed conflict since 1960. Yet while civil war is central to many nations’ development, it has stood at the periphery of economics research and teaching. The past decade has witnessed a long overdue explosion of research into war’s causes and consequences. We summarize progress, identify weaknesses, and chart a path forward. Why war? Existing theory is pro- vocative but incomplete, omitting advances in behavioral economics and making little progress in key areas, like why armed groups form and cohere, or how more than two armed sides compete. Empirical work finds that low per capita incomes and slow economic growth are both robustly linked to civil war. Yet there is lit- tle consensus on the most effective policies to avert conflicts or promote postwar recovery. Cross-country analysis of war will benefit from more attention to causal identification and stronger links to theory. We argue that micro-level analysis and case studies are also crucial to decipher war’s causes, conduct, and consequences. We bring a growth theoretic approach to the study of conflict consequences to high- light areas for research, most of all the study of war’s impact on institutions. We conclude with a plea for new and better data.

HT: Chris Blattman

Foreign Aid Data

2010-03-31T17:57:00.002-04:00

For those who are interested in foreign aid, here's a super helpful website I've learned about today in my IPE class. Some descriptions about AidData.org:

The core of the AidData database currently encompasses multilateral and bilateral donor projects spanning the years 1945-2009. It contains information from traditional aid sources such as the OECD's Creditor Reporting System (CRS) as well as donors not captured by the CRS and activities that do not fit the OECD definition of Official Development Assistance (ODA). AidData augments existing data by publishing more complete project descriptions and more detailed aid project purpose codes. In particular, AidData is dedicated to collecting project-level data from all multilateral donors and non-DAC bilateral donors (NDBs) to provide a more complete picture of development finance flows and activities. This resource will allow donor organizations, citizens in donor countries, researchers, NGOs, recipient governments, and, ultimately, the beneficiaries on the ground in developing countries to gain a more detailed understanding of past and present trends in aid.

On Renminbi

2010-03-19T12:44:00.000-04:00

A summary of China currency views.

HT: ielpblog

Advice on choosing grad programs

2010-03-15T16:45:00.005-04:00

Here are some great advice on choosing grad programs via Mankiw and Blattman (not limited to Economics).
Mankiw:

1. Start with the rankings. For some recent rankings of economics departments, click here and here and here. All ranking systems are imperfect, but other things equal, higher is probably better.

2. Talk with the graduate students who are now in the programs you are considering. Are they happy?

3. Don't make a decision based on a single faculty member. He or she may leave or turn out to be not quite as wonderful as you now presume. Look for a department that is strong overall.

4. Don't presume you know your specific research interests and focus just on faculty in that narrow area. Many students change their mind over their first few years of grad school.

5. Is the location of the school a fun place to live? Grad school is a long haul, typically 4 to 6 years, which is a significant fraction of your life. Being a PhD student is hard work, but it should not be a miserable existence.

6. Is the university overall a good place? It is always more fun being part of a great institution. Even if the economics department is perfect, if it is an island in a sea of mediocrity, being there will be less satisfying.

7. Are the undergraduates there good students? At some point as a graduate student, you will (and should) do some teaching, perhaps as a teaching assistant in an undergraduate course. If the undergraduates are an academically strong group, they will be more intellectually engaged and more rewarding to teach.

8. Don't be distressed if you did not get into your top choice. What you do in graduate school (or college) is far more important than where you go. Your personal drive matters more than the ranking of the school you attend.

Update: Readers suggest an additional criterion:

9. Look at the record of recent PhD students. What fraction who start the program complete a PhD? What kinds of jobs do they get upon completion? Are they the kinds of jobs you aspire to? The placement record will give you an indication of the caliber of students who enter the program, the value-added of the program itself, and how well the department sells its students on the job market.

Blattman:

... This (referring to Mankiw) is great advice–especially 1, 3, 4 and 8–though one suspects they encourage students to choose Harvard. (Well… maybe not number 5). I would only add a few thoughts:

10. Look for programs with strengths in your area of interest. Clusters of senior and junior faculty are a good sign.

11. Senior faculty are more likely to stay around than juniors.

12. Ask about research and summer support for independent projects and travel.

13. Ask current grad students about relationships with faculty. Do they mingle outside class and mentor their students, and invite them to the dinners with visiting speakers, or do they forget their names and avoid their glances in the elevator?

Macro Data 4 Stata

2010-02-19T17:40:00.004-05:00

Merging datasets into SATA:

Giulia Catini, Ugo Panizza and Carol Saade have started a Macro Data 4 Stata repository which collects and creates common identifiers for the Penn World Tables, Barro and Lee's Educational data, the World Bank's Development Indicators and about 20 other datasets commonly used in macroeconomics. Any dataset in the repository can be merged with any other with just a couple of standard commands.

Hat tip: MR

"Finlandization" and Taiwan

2009-12-31T01:30:00.009-05:00

A specific article caught the attention of all major media in Taiwan yesterday. Bruce Gilley wrote an article--published in the Jan/Feb 2010 edition of Foreign Affairs--about Finlandization and its implication on the Taiwan Strait. The article immediately drew sharp criticisms and President Ma seemed to be responding to it indirectly today by saying "cross-Strait relations isn't moving towards Finlandization." To read the article, see "Not So Dire Straits." The following is a short excerpt:

To understand the evolution of the Taipei-Beijing relationship, it is useful to consider the theory and practice of what has become known as "Finlandization" in the field of political science. The term derives its name from Finland's 1948 agreement with the Soviet Union under which Helsinki agreed not to join alliances challenging Moscow or serve as a base for any country challenging Soviet interests. In return, the Kremlin agreed to uphold Finnish autonomy and respect Finland's democratic system. Therefore, from 1956 to 1981, under the leadership of President Urho Kekkonen, Finland pursued a policy of strategic appeasement and neutrality on U.S.-Soviet issues and limited domestic criticism of the Soviet Union. This policy enjoyed wide support in Finland at the time (despite the subsequent debate in Finland on its merits). Kekkonen also won praise across the political spectrum in the United States, especially from foreign policy realists such as George Kennan, who lauded the Finnish leader's "composure and firmness."

I haven't taken a thorough look at the article, but I would guess that the analysis is based on analogies. And most likely, it wouldn't be a PERFECT analogy. Therefore, we should be extremely cautious with the article's implications--although similarities may exist, the differences shouldn't be overlooked.

I'll get back with my thoughts when I'm done reading it.

The Selectorate Theory and Global Governance

2009-11-04T18:44:00.003-05:00

One random thought just occurred to me when I was reading Duncan Snidal's “The Limits of Hegemonic Stability Theory:”

Is Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's "selectorate theory" applicable to global governance? When the selectorate (in this case members of the international system) expands, for example decolonization after WW2, in order for the "hegemon" to sustain legitimacy, it is more likely to provide public goods instead of paying the "winning coalition" off--simply because it would be far too costly to provide private goods to every single member of the coalition. This might explain the effort of the US to promote public goods such as free trade.

I'm not sure whether BDM's theory can be applied like this, but it sure sounds interesting if it can. What do you think? Comments appreciated!

So this is the rating we cared so much about.

2009-10-25T15:50:00.006-04:00

How Moody sold its ratings.

The ratings deeply affect the cost of borrowing. This is extremely important for the semiconductor industry in Taiwan, which does a lot of borrowing. I wonder whether Taiwan was overrated or underrated. Or maybe the effects canceled off each other...

Via IPE at UNC.

Geographical Distance and the Internet

2009-10-21T12:17:00.003-04:00

Distance Is Not Dead: Social Interaction and Geographical Distance in the Internet Era

While technology has undoubtedly increased the overall level of communication, this increase has been most pronounced for local social ties. We show that the volume of electronic communications is inversely proportional to geographic distance, following a Power Law. We directly study the importance of physical proximity in social interactions by analyzing the spatial dissemination of new baby names. Counter-intuitively, and in line with the above argument, the importance of geographic proximity has dramatically increased with the internet revolution.

The study is based on facebook and e-mails data. In addition, to show evidence of the importance of physical proximity over time, they study...baby names.

Via Trade Diversion.

More Comments On The Nobel Prize in Economics

2009-10-14T12:45:00.002-04:00

Stephen Walt, "A More Rational Choice for a Nobel Prize."

Ostrom (and the co-winner, organization theorist Oliver Williamson) join a group of recent winners chosen more for theoretical insight and real-world relevance than for mathematical scholasticism. Others in this same group would include economic historians Douglass North and Robert Fogel, behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, game theorist/strategist Thomas Schelling, and economist-philosopher Amartya Sen. Scholars with an international orientation have been doing pretty well in recent years too: Schelling was awarded for game-theoretic work on international conflict, Paul Krugman for his work on international trade, and Sen's work on poverty and famines has clear international implications. Kudos to the prize committee for their eclectic approach to the award--if only more economics departments thought this way.

Daniel Drezner, "What Other Political Scientists Deserve the Nobel?"

Paul Romer, "Skyhooks versus Cranes: The Nobel Prize for Elinor Ostrom."

A typical conclusion was that rules that assign property rights and rules that let people trade lead to good outcomes. What’s the skyhook? That people will follow the rules. Why would they respect the property rights of someone else? We had no idea. We might have had in mind something like this: police officers will arrest people who don’t follow the rules. But this is just another skyhook. Who are these police officers? Why do they follow rules? This is not an idle concern. Elinor showed that there are lots of important cases where people follow rules about ownership without police officers. One of the central challenges in understanding failures of economic development is that in many places, police officers don’t follow the rules they are meant to enforce.

This Year's Nobel Prize In Economics Goes to...

2009-10-12T14:13:00.004-04:00

A political scientist and an economist! Congratulations Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson!

To read more about their contributions specifically in the field of "New Institutional Economics," the following are some related links:

Blogging by Paul Krugman, "An Institutional Economics Prize. "

The way to think about this prize is that it’s an award for institutional economics, or maybe more specifically New Institutional Economics.

Commentary by Michael Spence, "Markets Aren't Everything." (Via Mankiw)

The common theme underlying the prize this year is that markets do not solve all problems of resource allocation and incentives well or even at all. That is not a new idea. What is important is that people and societies find ways through organizational structures and arrangements, political and other institutions, values, incentives and recognition, and the careful management of information, to solve these problems. Professors Ostrom and Williamson have led the development of this increasingly important part of economics.

...The prizes this year can be celebrated in recognizing two highly original scholars and in so doing, highlighting the important parts of economics, political science and political economy that they have done so much to build.

Blogging by Steven Levitt, "What This Year's Nobel Prize in Economics Says About the Nobel Prize in Economics."

So the short answer is that the economics profession is going to hate the prize going to Ostrom even more than Republicans hated the Peace prize going to Obama. Economists want this to be an economists’ prize (after all, economists are self-interested). This award demonstrates, in a way that no previous prize has, that the prize is moving toward a Nobel in Social Science, not a Nobel in economics.

Government Stimulus and Empirical Evidence

2009-10-01T12:52:00.003-04:00

Robert Barro concludes in today's WSJ article that when looking at the US:

"The existing empirical evidence on the response of real gross domestic product to added government spending and tax changes is thin."

Simply put, he argues that "government stimulus packages don't work," which brings up the question about whether the recent "consumer voucher" policy and stimulus packages in Taiwan worked or not.

If I recall correctly, The Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) of Executive Yuan in Taiwan has given estimates proving that consumer vouchers worked, though moderately.

This points to an interesting research topic: perhaps people in Taiwan who are interested in Macroeconomics could investigate empirically how government stimulus packages are affecting real GDP.

Settling Down in Charlottesville

2009-09-06T19:46:00.006-04:00

The Rotunda

Two weeks have already passed since I arrived here at UVA. Below are some of the things that have kept me busy.

For the first week or so I was busy settling down: buying furniture (I was offered an unfurnished apt.) and home appliances, etc. Soon after courses began, I was then overwhelmed by reading materials and TA work. Leading TA sections were the most challenging at first, since I had to shake the rust off my English comprehension skills and talk about concepts I've learned in Mandarin. The huge reading lists have benefited me, however, by significantly expanding my vocabulary in such short time.

Considering the limited free time I will have in the near future, perhaps sharing the notes of my recent readings will be a plausible way to keep this blog running.

Below are some more pictures I've taken recently.

Garrett Hall and the symbol of the "Z" society

The Rotunda

The Chapel

Fun IR Related Books

2009-07-24T02:49:00.005-04:00

Stephen Walt has a book list for summer vacation:

It's summertime, and some of you will be headed for the beach, or the country, or wherever you go to relax and recharge. You want to take along something fun to read, and you're not quite ready to tackle that new translation of War and Peace. But you're afraid you’ll feel guilty if you don't read something that is at least tangentially related to international politics.

Reputation and Credibility

2009-06-01T23:11:00.003-04:00

Drezner has a nice list of books/ articles on reputation and credibility. In chronological order, the following is his list:

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1532 [1513]).
Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (1960).
Earnest May and Philip Zelikow, ed., The Kennedy Tapes (1962 [2002]).
Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (1996).
George Downs and Michael Jones, "Reputation, Compliance, and International Law." Journal of Legal Studies 31 (January 2002): S95-S114.
Anne Sartori, Deterrence by Diplomacy (2005).
Daryl Press, Calculating Credibility (2005).
Mark Crescenzi, "Reputation and International Conflict," American Journal of Political Science 51 (April 2007): 382-396.
Michael Tomz, Reputation and International Cooperation.

Blogging Drought

2009-05-26T23:51:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the drought. The reason to it is because I'm getting married!

The wedding is set on:

Friday, the fifth of June,

Two thousand and nine

at ten o'clock in the morning

Tainan Theological College and Seminary

Taiwan

Invitations are already out!

Why do different countries favor different professions?

2009-04-27T23:25:00.009-04:00

The Economist has a in-depth article about the variance of professions of different countries.

Why do different countries favour different professions? And why are some professions so well represented in politics? To find out, The Economist trawled through a sample of almost 5,000 politicians in “International Who’s Who”, a reference book, to examine their backgrounds.

Different countries—because of their history, or cultural preferences, or stage of development—seem to like particular qualities, and these qualities are provided disproportionately by only a few professions. Lawyers and business executives are common; economists, academics and doctors do surprisingly well.
Countries often have marked peculiarities. Egypt likes academics; South Korea, civil servants; Brazil, doctors. Some emerging-market countries are bedevilled by large numbers of criminals, even if this doesn’t usually show up in their “Who’s Who” records.

(ht: IPE at UNC)

2009 US News & World Report Rankings: Political Science

2009-04-23T01:29:00.003-04:00

Just came out. Here are the rankings (or compare to 2006):

Top 50
1. Harvard U
   Princeton U
   Stanford U
4. Michigan U
5. Yale U
6. UC-Berkeley
7. Columbia U
   UC-San Diego
9. Duke U
   MIT
11. UCLA
   U of Chicago
13. U of North Carolina
   Washington U
15. U of Rochester
   U of Wisconsin
17. NYU
   Ohio State U
   U of Minnesota
20. Cornell
21. Northwestern U
   U of Illinois
   U of Texas
24. Texas A&M
   UC-Davis
26. Indiana U
   U of Washington
28. Emory U
   Michigan State U
   Penn State U
   U of Maryland
   U of Pennsylvania
33 Suny - Stony Brook
   U Iowa
   U VA
36 Rice
   UC Irvine
   Notre Dame
39 FSU
   GWU
   Georgetown
   Johns Hopkins
   U Pitt
   Vanderbilt
46 Brown
   U Arizona
48 Rutgers
49 UC Santa Barbara
   U Florida

Subfield:
American
1. Michigan
2. Stanford
3. Harvard
4. Princeton
5. Yale
6. UCSD
7. Berkeley
8. OSU
9. Duke
10. Wisconsin

Comparative
1. Harvard
2. Princeton
3. Berkeley
4. Stanford
5. Yale
6. UCSD
7. Michigan
8. Columbia
9. UCLA
10. Duke

IR
1. Princeton
1. Stanford
3. Harvard
4. Columbia
5. Michigan
6. UCSD
7. Chicago
8. Berkeley
9. Yale
10. MIT
10. NYU

Methodology
1. Harvard
2. Stanford
3. Michigan
3. Rochester
5. Princeton
6. NYU
7. WashU
8. UCSD
9. Berkeley
10. MIT

Theory
1. Harvard
   Chicago
3. Princeton
4. Yale
5. Berkeley
6. Duke
7. Northwestern
8. Johns Hopkins
9. Columbia
10.UCLA
   Notre Dame

IR Scholars vs. Policymakers

2009-04-20T04:51:00.007-04:00

Joe Nye's Washington Post op-ed has started a debate on IR scholars and their policy relevance. Following Dan Drezner's thread, I summerize recent arguments as below.

Nye is concerned about the growing gap between the government and IR scholars.

"While important American scholars such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski took high-level foreign policy positions in the past, that path has tended to be a one-way street. Not many top-ranked scholars of international relations are going into government, and even fewer return to contribute to academic theory...

The fault for this growing gap lies not with the government but with the academics.

Scholars are paying less attention to questions about how their work relates to the policy world, and in many departments a focus on policy can hurt one's career. Advancement comes faster for those who develop mathematical models, new methodologies or theories expressed in jargon that is unintelligible to policymakers.

And the solution must come from the academy itself.

The solutions must come via a reappraisal within the academy itself. Departments should give greater weight to real-world relevance and impact in hiring and promoting young scholars. Journals could place greater weight on relevance in evaluating submissions. Studies of specific regions deserve more attention. Universities could facilitate interest in the world by giving junior faculty members greater incentives to participate in it. That should include greater toleration of unpopular policy positions.

Drezner disagrees.

I don't accept that this isonly the academy's fault. Even when IR scholars try to speak with one loud voice, the result is often a deafening silence in the policy world.

Raj M. Desai and James Raymond Vreeland also disagree; they believe that "both sides need to make an effort."

Nye complains about the methodological rigor in contemporary political science as an impediment to its relevance. This is ironic, given that it is precisely this rigor that has allowed modern political science to improve its forecasting power - something that is presumably vital to policymaking. We now have better statistical tools to predict, for example, the likelihood of state failure, civil conflict, democratic breakdown, and other changes in governments. Game-theoretic models can be used to analyze trade disputes and war, as well as the behavior of international organizations, terrorist movements, and nuclear stateswith greater precision and clarity than just a few decades before.

But a part of this fault may also lie within the halls of certain government agencies. Nye also points to a strong connection between economists and policy makers. No wonder. Staffers at the US Treasury, the Fed, the National Economic Council (to name a few places) are comfortable reading cutting-edge economic analyses because they have been trained to understand mathematical models and statistical results. If people at the State Department or the National Security Council have not been comparably trained, however, they will not understand contemporary political science or its capacity to inform policy. Academic political science can do a much better job of reaching out to policymakers. But governmental agencies need to focus some effort on recruiting individuals who have the background and skills needed to apply modern political science to their daily work. Both sides need to make an effort.

What do you think? Comments invited.

Can Inflation Save the Economy?

2009-04-20T03:42:00.004-04:00

Greg Mankiw says yes. He talks about why cutting interest rates negative wouldn't work:

"So why shouldn’t the Fed just keep cutting interest rates? Why not lower the target interest rate to, say, negative 3 percent?

At that interest rate, you could borrow and spend $100 and repay $97 next year. This opportunity would surely generate more borrowing and aggregate demand.

The problem with negative interest rates, however, is quickly apparent: nobody would lend on those terms. Rather than giving your money to a borrower who promises a negative return, it would be better to stick the cash in your mattress. Because holding money promises a return of exactly zero, lenders cannot offer less."

And how obtaining negative interest rates might be possible through inflation:

"Suppose that, looking ahead, the Fed commits itself to producing significant inflation. In this case, while nominal interest rates could remain at zero, real interest rates — interest rates measured in purchasing power — could become negative. If people were confident that they could repay their zero-interest loans in devalued dollars, they would have significant incentive to borrow and spend."

Paul Krugman, however, says not yet.

"we’re talking about making a credible commitment to fairly high inflation over the medium term, yet you still have distinguished central bankers appalled at the Fed’s 2 percent inflation target."

Facts on International Relations and Security Trends (FIRST)

2009-04-20T03:05:00.005-04:00

People looking for security and economic related facts or statistics of different countries can check out FIRST 3.0.

FIRST is a "structured factual reference system on international relations and security trends."

It contains high-quality, up-to-date and clearly documented information in areas such as:
conflicts, arms transfers and military expenditure
hard facts on states and international organizations
economic and social statistics
chronologies

Walt's Top Ten IR Book List

2009-04-15T02:15:00.014-04:00

Stephen Walt offers a "top ten list" on IR books to read for leisure. Below is the list:

1. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War.

2. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel.

3. Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence.

4. James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.

5. David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.

6. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics.

7. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

8. Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism.

9. Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years & Years of Upheaval.

10. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation.

In general, this list leans more towards security and classics.

Walt offers another "top ten" list on IR books written by women scholars. As follows:

1. Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision.

2. Susan Strange, States and Markets.

3. Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force.

4. Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam.

5. Kathryn Sikkink and Margaret Keck, Activists beyond Border: Advocacy Networks in International Politics.

6. Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell": American in the Age of Genocide.

7. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.

8. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions.

9. Beth Simmons, Who Adjusts?: Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy during the Interwar Years, 1923-1939.

10. Valerie Hudson and Andrea Den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population.

Going to the University of Virginia

2009-04-14T12:56:00.006-04:00

I've been admitted to the Phd program at the Department of Politics, UVA, and decided to accept their offer. They will be providing me full funding including tuition waive, a generous amount of stipend, and health insurance.

I'm glad everything worked out ok. Looking forward to studying at Charlottesville!

Familiar faces at the TRA conference

2009-04-12T09:56:00.007-04:00

Went to the conference today, and since I hadn't read the agenda in advance, I was surprised by seeing so many familiar faces; especially Steven Phillips and Lowell Dittmer.

What a pleasant surprise! The two were here in Taiwan last year for legislative election observations and I was one of the students who took them for a field trip in Tainan and Kaohsiung. (series of related blogs are on the right side panel under title "2008 Legislative Election Observations") Professor Phillips later on helped me out tremendously with my applications and thus I owe him a huge debt. If I eventually end up at UVA, he would be one of the main factors that made it happen.

IR theory for Valentine's

2009-04-10T11:23:00.009-04:00

Didn't know how I could have missed this: Steve Walt writes about how IR theory can provide insights for people in love. (Hey Grace, I TOLD you! Finish that book I had you read yet?)

Below is the first paragraph-- just to give you a taste of it:

To begin with, any romantic partnership is essentially an alliance, and alliances are a core concept on international relations. Alliances bring many benefits to the members (or else why would we form them?) but as we also know, they sometimes reflect irrational passions and inevitably limit each member's autonomy. Many IR theorists believe that institutionalizing an alliance makes it more effective and enduring, but that’s also why making a relationship more formal is a significant step that needs to be carefully considered.

New Journal: International Theory

2009-04-07T05:43:00.003-04:00

Organized by Duncan Snidal and Alexander Wendt. Editorial board here. First issue is online for free.

International Theory (IT) promotes theoretical scholarship about the positive, legal, and normative aspects of world politics respectively. IT is open to theory of absolutely all varieties and from all disciplines, provided it addresses problems of politics, broadly defined and pertains to the international. IT welcomes scholarship that uses evidence from the real world to advance theoretical arguments. However, IT is intended as a forum where scholars can develop theoretical arguments in depth without an expectation of extensive empirical analysis.

IT’s over-arching goal is to promote communication and engagement across theoretical and disciplinary traditions. IT puts a premium on contributors’ ability to reach as broad an audience as possible, both in the questions they engage and in their accessibility to other approaches. This might be done by addressing problems that can only be understood by combining multiple disciplinary discourses, like institutional design, or practical ethics; or by addressing phenomena that have broad ramifications, like civilizing processes in world politics, or the evolution of environmental norms. IT is also open to work that remains within one scholarly tradition, although in that case authors must make clear the horizon of their arguments in relation to other theoretical approaches.

Cute Power

2009-04-04T10:07:00.002-04:00

Speaking of soft Powe r and the recent smart Power, Japan is promoting "kawaii" (cute) power.

Krasner on Sovereignty

2009-04-03T02:08:00.004-04:00

In the latest Foreign Affairs, Stephen Krasner discusses the relativity of sovereignty.

Summery: Sovereignty is the ultimate prize in international relations. But it is not an objective term -- increasingly, it is awarded and defined by powerful actors whose interests are at stake.

Profile of Krugman

2009-04-02T05:10:00.001-04:00

"Obama's Nobel Headache" in Newsweek.

TRA Conference at Academia Sinica

2009-03-29T23:02:00.006-04:00

Last Friday, I attended the TRA conference and got to ask Professor Krasner for some advice regarding school decisions. We had a nice conversation and he offered some wonderful insights --perspectives from a top US political science professor is especially valuable here in Taiwan now.

If anyone would like a scanned text of Krasner's speech or the papers of other presenters, please let me know, I can e-mail them to you.

Difference Between Pirates and Pirate Fighters

2009-03-17T03:03:00.003-04:00

FP shows a difference in body type between Pirates and Pirate fighters.

Stephen Krasner will give keynote speech at the Academia Sinica

2009-03-11T22:58:00.008-04:00

Picture from Theory Talks

Stephen Krasner will give speech at the conference "Taiwan Relations Act Entering Its 30th Anniversary: Continuities, Changes, and Challenges" held at the Academia Sinica during March 27-28.

Stephen Krasner is an international relations professor at Stanford University and is the former Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State.

Conference agenda here. Application form here. Website here.

To understand more about Krasner's work, see Sovereignty, Failed States and International Regimes on Theory Talks.

Test your Knowledge on Globalization

2009-02-24T20:24:00.003-05:00

The FP Quiz.

For example, Question 7: Which country has the highest percentage of women in its Parliament?

Newest TRIP Survey

2009-02-13T01:25:00.004-05:00

See "One Discipline or Many? 2008 TRIP Survey of International Relations Faculty in Ten Countries."

To what extent is there national variation in how scholars teach IR, think about the discipline,view their role in the policy process, and approach critical contemporary foreign policy debates? Conversely, to what extent is there a single-perhaps American-driven-IR discipline? To begin to answer these questions, the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) project has conducted the first cross-national survey of IR faculty in ten countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. This report provides descriptive statistics and top line results for all 90 questions asked on the 2008 survey.

About Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP).

Outcomes in international relations (IR) have changed dramatically over the past 25 years. The sudden and peaceful end of the Cold War, dramatic increases in interdependence, the diffusion of democracy, and the rise of non-state actors have all shaped outcomes and put new policy issues on the agenda. Are students and scholars of IR equipped to assist policy makers as they confront this rapidly changing world? Has teaching and research in IR changed to the same degree during this time period? Are teaching and research efforts responsive to changes in the real world of international politics and policy?

Conversely, does research and teaching in IR have any influence on the real world of international politics and policy making? Almost no systematic research has been done to document empirical patterns or verify causal hypotheses along these lines. The TRIP project seeks to remedy these shortcomings by creating new datasets and analyzing the relationships illustrated below.

More publications here.

Director of Policy Planning

2009-01-24T06:03:00.009-05:00

Photo from FP

Anne-Marie Slaughter confirmed as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department here. Excerpt below:

So it's no great surprise that the Princeton newspaper the Daily Princetonian reports that Slaughter has "confirmed in an e-mail to Wilson School students this evening that she will be leaving the Wilson School to serve under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton." Slaughter also told students that, "When Senator Clinton offered me a position, I told her that I could only take a limited public service leave and that I would be commuting back and forth to Princeton on weekends," the paper reports. The Cable has previously reported that Washington foreign-policy hand and former John Edwards advisor Derek Chollet will be the deputy director of the Office of Policy Planning.

About the Director of Policy Planning on Wiki:

The Director of Policy Planning is the United States Department of State official in charge of the Department's internal think tank, the Policy Planning Staff. The position of Director of Policy Planning is one of the most prestigious in the State Department, and has traditionally been held by some of the most intellectual members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Former Directors of Policy Planning include two National Security Advisors, a President of the World Bank, and several presidents of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations.

Reconsidering the Domestic Demand Expansion in Taiwan

2009-01-19T21:58:00.010-05:00

While the Taiwan government--both central and domestic-- and public opinion bandwagons on the Domestic Demand Expansion Project (擴大內需方案), they should keep in mind opinions on the other side of the argument.

Grew Mankiw has recently wrote an article on New York Times, "Is Government Spending Too Easy an Answer," reminding the Obama administration certain unsolved puzzles regarding Keynesian prescriptions.

Economic downturns, Mr. Keynes and Mr. Samuelson taught us, occur when the aggregate demand for goods and services is insufficient. The solution, they said, was for the government to provide demand when the private sector would not. Recent calls for increased infrastructure spending fit well with this textbook theory.

But there is much to economics beyond what is taught in Econ 101. In several ways, these Keynesian prescriptions make avoiding depressions seem too easy. When debating increased spending to stimulate the economy, here are a few of the hard questions Congress should consider...

As I've been saying in the past, policy discussions in Taiwan politics tend to focus on minutiae instead of core theoretical arguments. In this case, as usual, the aforementioned counterpoint has received nearly no attention in our media.

Harsh Reality: Sweatshops and its Alternatives

2009-01-16T01:06:00.027-05:00

See Nicholas Kristof's article: "Where Sweatshops Are a Dream."

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

Paul Kennedy on the Decline of America

2009-01-14T21:48:00.009-05:00

I have always loved reading Paul Kennedy's writings. Below are excerpts from his article on WSJ today:

As I suggested at that time, a strong person, balanced and muscular, can carry an impressively heavy backpack uphill for a long while. But if that person is losing strength (economic problems), and the weight of the burden remains heavy or even increases (the Bush doctrine), and the terrain becomes more difficult (rise of new Great Powers, international terrorism, failed states), then the once-strong hiker begins to slow and stumble. That is precisely when nimbler, less heavily burdened walkers get closer, draw abreast, and perhaps move ahead.

If the above is even half-true, the conclusions are not pleasant: that the economic and political travails of the next several years will badly crimp many of the visions offered in Mr. Obama's election campaign; that this nation will have to swallow, domestically, some very hard choices; and that we should not expect, even despite a surge in international goodwill towards America, any increase in our relative capacity to act abroad decisively or in any sustained way. A rather wonderful, charismatic and highly intelligent person will occupy the White House, but, alas, in the toughest circumstances the U.S. has faced since 1933 or 1945.

Kissinger and Brzezinksi on US-China Relations

2009-01-14T21:19:00.007-05:00

See: "Taiwan shouldn't be obstacle in U.S.-China relations: Kissinger."

Two former American diplomats placed the onus on China to diffuse tension in the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday, following comments from Chinese officials claiming that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan may strain ties with China even as the two countries cooperate more closely.

"I do not think Taiwan should be a fundamental obstacle to our relationship," Kissinger said yesterday on the sidelines of the conference. Kissinger served as secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and played a key role in Nixon's 1972 visit to China.

Brzezinski, 80, veteran diplomat who was national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter and advised President-elect Barack Obama during his campaign, also downplayed the importance of Taiwan in U.S.-China ties.

"The better the American-Chinese relationship, the less salient is the Taiwan issue and the easier it is for Taiwan and the mainland to establish an increasingly organic relationship," he told reporters yesterday.

Brzezinksi and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft put the onus on China to take steps to decrease military tensions related to Taiwan.

"If the Chinese, for example, would pull back or eliminate some of the missiles directed at Taiwan, it would make it possible for the American president to say, 'Taiwan does not need additional arms,'" said Scowcroft, who served under presidents Ford and George H. W. Bush.

"That would be a very stabilizing direction in which the two sides could go."

I agree with Scowcroft.