2011

  • 2011 Dec 08

    Covering Disasters in Southeast Asia: A Reporter’s Perspective

    12:15pm

    Location: 

    Taubman 301, Harvard Kennedy School

    A Disaster Management in Asia Seminar Series Event
    Margie Mason, Acting Vietnam Bureau Chief, Associated Press

    Margie Mason is the AP’s Acting Bureau Chief in Vietnam and medical writer for the Asia-Pacific region. She has reported from more than 20 countries over the past decade, writing about an array of disasters and global outbreaks. Among other events, she has covered the flooding that recently ravaged Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam; the 2010 floods in Pakistan; Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar in 2008; and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. In this brownbag talk, Mason will discuss the unique challenges of reporting on these and other disruptive events in the region. Arnold M. Howitt, faculty co-director of the Program on Crisis Leadership will moderate the event.... Read more about Covering Disasters in Southeast Asia: A Reporter’s Perspective

  • 2011 Dec 08

    Traffic Congestion and Poverty Reduction in Indonesia

    12:00pm to 1:30pm

    Location: 

    124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 160-South, Room 105

    About the Seminar
    Please join us as the following four Harvard student recipients of HKS Indonesia Program travel research grants present their work. Justin Brandon and Nicholas Hornig, candidates for a master’s degree in urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), will present their research on the Jakarta Bus Rapid Transit system and its failures in mitigating urban traffic congestion in the city. Brandon and Hornig conducted their research under the direction of HKS-GSD Professor José Gómez-Ibañez, and in collaboration with the Indonesia Transportation Society. Eric Dodge and Sinafikeh Gemessa, candidates for a MPP at Harvard Kennedy School will share their experiences serving as interns with the Indonesian Vice-Presidential Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction. Indonesia Research Fellow Akhmad Rizal Shidiq will serve as moderator.... Read more about Traffic Congestion and Poverty Reduction in Indonesia

  • 2011 Dec 01

    The Urgent Need for Electoral Reform in Indonesia

    12:00pm to 1:30pm

    Location: 

    124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Cambridge, MA

    Peter Erben, Senior Electoral Advisor

    About the Seminar
    At this seminar, Senior Electoral Advisor Peter Erben will discuss how the 2014 national elections in Indonesia may well present a highly competitive contest and hence a risk of a challenged or even compromised election. This is a risk not only to the investment made in the election itself, but to significant parts of the overall achievements realized since 1998. A relatively minor investment in strengthening the electoral process in Indonesia certainly constitutes a worthwhile insurance against a potential electoral crisis in 2014. A light lunch will be served.... Read more about The Urgent Need for Electoral Reform in Indonesia

  • 2011 Nov 30

    How Americans Think about Taxes: Citizens, Elites, and the Politics of Taxation

    4:10pm to 5:30pm

    Location: 

    124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Cambridge, MA

    Andrea Louise Campbell

    Andrea Louise Campbell, MIT

    About the Seminar
    In this seminar, Professor Campbell shares excerpts from a new book project exploring the nature of Americans’ attitudes toward taxes and the implications for the politics of taxation. First she uses insights from cognitive psychology and behavioral economics to explore the ways in which the designs of taxes and elite rhetoric can obscure individuals’ self-interest and produce tax attitudes that stray from citizens’ material stakes. Armed with this information about how Americans think about taxes, she then takes an over-time perspective in examining why taxes are so prominent in American politics. A confluence of economic and political events raised the salience of taxes and discontent around them, which Republican politicians in particular capitalized upon, taking advantage of Americans’ confusion about taxes to keep the middle class on the tax-cutting band wagon while enacting enormous cuts for the rich. She will conclude the seminar with the implications for the Obama presidency and the meaning of different paths forward.... Read more about How Americans Think about Taxes: Citizens, Elites, and the Politics of Taxation

  • 2011 Nov 17

    Clearing the Air: The Role of NGOs in China’s Environmental Transparency Measures

    12:00pm to 1:00pm

    Location: 

    124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 2000 South, Cambridge, MA

    Yeling Tan, Harvard Kennedy School

    About the Seminar

    Yeling Tan, a pre-doctoral candidate in the Ph.D. in Public Policy degree program at the Kennedy School of Government, will present her paper titled “Clearing the Air? The Role of NGOs in China’s Environmental Transparency Measures” at a brown bag lunch. Tan will examine the impact of NGOs in using China’s Open Environmental Information measures, focusing on an online database disclosing enterprise pollution, and an index disclosing government performance in environmental transparency. The analysis focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of various accountability channels between state, enterprise and society, and identifies the successful pathways through which change occurs. NGOs have been able to affect environmental governance in clear but marginal ways, when stakeholder incentives have been aligned. This has taken place with MNCs using the online database to monitor Chinese suppliers, and to a lesser extent with local governments responding to the index by engaging more closely with NGOs. However, the impact of NGO actions remains limited. For the environment ministry, enforcement costs remain high in a decentralized bureaucracy. For local governments and enterprises, the cost-benefit calculus depends on government capacity and type, state-enterprise bargaining relations, and internal government interests alignment. The improvements in environmental governance, moreover, do not map directly onto stronger accountability, given China’s authoritarian structure.

  • 2011 Nov 16

    Memories of Justice: Distributive Politics and the Arab Uprisings

    4:10pm to 5:30pm

    Location: 

    124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Cambridge, MA

    Steven HeydemannSteven Heydemann, United States Institute of Peace
    Co-sponsored the Middle East Initiative, HKS

    About the Seminar
    This presentation will address questions about the extent to which issues of economic justice and popular preferences for distributive equity factor into repertoires of collective action in Arab societies, and continue to shape popular reactions to shifts in economic policy that expose citizens to increased levels of economic insecurity. Heydemann will focus on the historical processes through which popular conceptions of distributive justice became institutionalized within systems of economic governance in Arab societies in ways that have had enduring effects on state-society relations. He will argue that the intensity of redistributive preferences in the Arab world can be shown to be higher than in other comparable developing regions, and that this divergence is important for understanding both the mass uprisings that have swept the Middle East over the past year and the emerging politics around issues of social and distributive justice that have become especially prominent in post-authoritarian societies in the region.... Read more about Memories of Justice: Distributive Politics and the Arab Uprisings

  • 2011 Nov 16

    Innovations in American Government Finalist Presentations

    12:00pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    JFK Jr. Forum, Littauer Building, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA

    Innovations sealGood Government. Good Ideas.

    Six reasons why these words go together.

    Representatives from the government finalists in competition for the Innovations in American Government Award will present their initiatives before the National Selection Committee at the JFK Jr. Forum on Wednesday, November 16 from 12-2 p.m. These six government initiatives demonstrate creative problem solving to some of our nation’s most pressing issues ranging from education, economic development, and poverty to civic services and healthcare. The winner of the competition will be announced in early 2012.... Read more about Innovations in American Government Finalist Presentations

  • 2011 Nov 15

    Best Practices to Combat Child Trafficking

    9:00am to 11:00am

    Location: 

    Online Webinar

    Online event. Registration required, and free of charge.

    About the Webinar
    As part of their online conference series, the Harvard Program on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation are joined by the U.N. Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT) in hosting a Web-based conference: “Best Practices to Combat Child Trafficking.” Bringing together a panel of experts from academia, policy, and non-governmental organizations, the conference will be an opportunity to share their perspectives on best practices to combat the trafficking of children. Ms. Thatun will represent UNICEF’s perspective on service provision to children; Mr. Davis will share insights into the role of private companies in combating trafficking; and, Mr. van de Glind will highlight viewpoints from major labor organizations.... Read more about Best Practices to Combat Child Trafficking

  • 2011 Nov 10

    Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com

    12:00pm to 1:00pm

    Location: 

    124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Room 226, Cambridge, MA

    Michael Luca124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Room 226

    About the Seminar

    Michael Luca is an assistant professor in the Negotiation, Organizations, and Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. Luca studies the role of information (such as rankings, expert evaluations, online consumer reviews, and quality disclosure laws) in market settings. He is interested in understanding which types of information are most salient for decisionmakers, how information is produced, and how it shapes markets. His current work investigates learning in the internet age, where consumer review websites such as Yelp.com are changing the way people make decisions.... Read more about Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com

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