http://irps.ucsd.edu IR/PS News Host Peter Cowhey of UC San Diego leads an enlightening discussion with Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs, Vizio CEO Willliam Wang, former Gateway CEO Ted Waitt and journalist James Fallows on strategies to bring manufacturing jobs to the United States while keeping their companies competitive in the global marketplace. The program is presented by The Atlantic Meets the Pacific, CONNECT and the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UC San Diego. Click here to watch a video of the event. Wed, 22 May 2013 12:16:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130522.htm /media-center/news/news_20130522.htm Participating in insurgency is physically risky. Why do people do so? Using new data on 3,799 payments to insurgent fighters by Al Qa'ida Iraq, we find that: (i) wages were extremely low relative to outside options, even compared to unskilled labor; (ii) the estimated risk premium is negative; and (iii) the wage schedule favors equalization and provides additional compensation for larger families. These results challenge the notion that fighters are paid their marginal product, or the opportunity cost of their time. They may be consistent with a "lemons" model in which fighters signal commitment by accepting low wages. Click here to read the full article. Tue, 21 May 2013 16:43:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130521108584.htm /media-center/news/news_20130521108584.htm The recurring joke in “Peanuts” involves Lucy teeing up a football for Charlie Brown to kick. Just as he reaches the ball, Lucy pulls it away, laughing as poor Charlie Brown lands on his back. Each time, Charlie is skeptical, but ultimately is won over by Lucy’s insistence that this time, she really means it. We were reminded of this cartoon when a new charter school study was released by Mathematica, showing that over a three-year period, KIPP charter students gained an average of 11 months’ learning in math and eight months in reading than district school peers. Click here to read the full article. Tue, 21 May 2013 09:05:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130521.htm /media-center/news/news_20130521.htm Last week at Waseda University, Ellis Krauss, professor of Japanese politics at UC San Diego gave a public lecture entitled: “What’s Wrong with Japan? …It’s the Politics.” It was a convincing lecture from one of U.S. academia’s most respected Japan scholars. One of the points Krauss made was that Japan has many–arguably too many–elections. Japanese voters are called to the polls for one or another level of government election on average once every year, under six election systems with rules for weighting of votes from urban and rural districts (malapportionment) and single seat and multi-seat districts sufficiently different to produce different party or candidate results from the same voters in successive elections. This situation leads to unstable politics and easily changeable outcomes. Click here to read the full article. Sun, 19 May 2013 10:02:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130521108463.htm /media-center/news/news_20130521108463.htm Adela Navarro Bello es co-editora del semanario Zeta en Tijuana, cuenta con una larga trayectoria y ha recibido varios reconocimientos como el Premio Internacional de Libertad de Prensa en 2007 y ha sido nombrada una de las 150 mujeres más valientes del mundo por la revista News Week. El alto nivel de profesionalismo de Navarro queda evidenciado en los importantes reportajes que ha cubierto como el levantamiento Zapatista en 1994 y la captura de Jorge Hank Rhon en 2011. Recientemente, fue invitada a la Universidad de California, San Diego (UCSD por sus siglas en Inglés) a participar en el Programa de Liderazgo del Pacífico, el cual trae a reconocidos líderes de toda la región del Pacífico para participar en diálogo, investigación y docencia con estudiantes, profesores y la comunidad de San Diego. Click here to read the full article (Spanish). Fri, 17 May 2013 16:37:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130521108578.htm /media-center/news/news_20130521108578.htm Japan's electronics giant Sony is in the headlines after rejecting it's biggest shareholder's suggestion of offering current shareholders to buy 15 to 20 percent of its music and movies division. American activist investor and Third Point CEO Daniel Loeb, who owns about $1.1 billion stake in Sony, has reportedly made the suggestion to allow the Japanese maker of PlayStation and Bravia TV sets to fund its ailing electronics operations. Find out what Japan experts are saying about Sony's refusal to sell its entertainment business.Click here to read article Wed, 15 May 2013 15:58:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130516.htm /media-center/news/news_20130516.htm A recently released analysis, conducted and designed by students at the UC San Diego’s School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), reveals San Diego’s competitive strengths and opportunities to increase global competitiveness through exports of goods and services. The analysis will serve as the foundation for a regional export plan to drive economic growth and job creation, part of a Brookings Institution initiative. San Diego is part of a select group of cities nationwide to lead this effort. The Washington-based public policy organization, the Brookings Institution selected San Diego as one of only eight U.S. cities to participate in a national initiative to pioneer new strategies that boost exports and global economic competitiveness. Click here to read the full article. Wed, 15 May 2013 13:52:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130515.htm /media-center/news/news_20130515.htm From touring the production floor of one of Mexico’s best places to work to witnessing a student-run free health clinic in action, UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla’s visit to Tijuana, Mexico Friday offered him an introduction to the bustling metropolis just across the border from San Diego. The one-day tour included visits to Hospital Angeles Tijuana, the Health Frontiers in Tijuana Clinic, the Business Innovation and Technology Center, El Florido Parque Industrial and the Culinary Art School. “I’m pleased to have the opportunity to meet with our community partners in Tijuana and learn more about this region and cross-border issues,” said Khosla. “My goal is to strengthen the existing partnerships between UC San Diego and our neighboring country, and pursue other opportunities for collaboration. Our teamwork is vital for the economic and social growth and prosperity of our regions, and we look forward to the ongoing exchange of ideas.” Click here to read the full article. Thu, 09 May 2013 14:49:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130510.htm /media-center/news/news_20130510.htm University of California, San Diego Professor Stephan Haggard discusses North Korea with Mark Crumpton on Bloomberg Television's "Bottom Line." Click here to see the video on Bloomberg Businessweek. Tue, 07 May 2013 10:16:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130509.htm /media-center/news/news_20130509.htm Last year, Mitchell Erickson earned what he believed would be his ticket to a lucrative new career: a bachelor’s degree in computer science and software engineering from the University of Washington, Bothell. Erickson, a former community-college philosophy instructor, feared his days of making a living teaching symbolic language and logic couldn’t last. So sensing an intellectual similarity between philosophy and computer coding, Erickson decided to go back to school. Though he was then in his late 50s, Erickson figured the drumbeat of complaints from Microsoft and other tech companies about a dearth of good applicants promised an easy career switch. Nine months past his graduation, however, Erickson has yet to find full-time work. Click here to read the full article. Sat, 04 May 2013 08:50:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130507.htm /media-center/news/news_20130507.htm The United States urged North Korea on Thursday to grant amnesty and free an American citizen sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for alleged hostile acts against North Korea. Patrick Ventrell, acting deputy spokesman for the State Department, told reporters that the U.S. wanted the immediate release of Kenneth Bae, a tour operator first detained in November. The U.S. is still seeking more information about the case, Ventrell said. North Korean state media announced Thursday that Bae had been sentenced, but did not provide any details about his alleged crime. Before the reported sentencing, the State Department had been calling for his release on humanitarian grounds. Click here to read the full article. Thu, 02 May 2013 11:28:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130503.htm /media-center/news/news_20130503.htm In many ways, it was a typical May Day: Hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers — doctors, sailors, dancers, bank clerks — marched Wednesday toward this city’s vast Revolution Plaza, waving flags, holding aloft banners that proclaimed fidelity to socialism and tooting plastic horns. But dotted among the throngs of state employees bused in before dawn to observe International Workers’ Day, there was a novel, and increasingly favored, breed: entrepreneurs whose private businesses the government is counting on to absorb thousands of the state workers it considers redundant and hopes to shed. Click here to read the full article. Wed, 01 May 2013 09:12:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130507107715.htm /media-center/news/news_20130507107715.htm UC San Diego’s School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) has received a $189,000 grant from the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) for a new research initiative titled “New Thinking and the New G-20: An Expanding Research Network to Support Global Cooperation.”Over the next two years, the project will tap new sources of policy innovation in the emerging economies and link those to established networks of researchers in the industrialized world for better global cooperation. The project is directed by Miles Kahler, Rohr Professor of Pacific International Relations at IR/PS, and Barry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science at UC Berkeley.“The project promises new thinking on issues of global economic governance and the beginnings of a policy research network that includes both industrialized (G-7) economies and the emerging economies,” Kahler said.It will aim to contribute original policy analysis in two central global and G-20 agenda items, international monetary and financial governance, and international collaboration in financial regulation. Cooperation among the industrialized and largest emerging economies (Brazil, India and China, among others) is central to the success of global cooperative efforts across issue-areas, whether economic, security or environmental. In addition to this substantive analysis, Kahler and Eichengreen will begin to build a network among researchers in the G-20 economies that should help to sustain international cooperation among these economies in the long run. The project will also place an emphasis on engaging new talents and women researchers. “We are making every effort to engage researchers who are not the usual suspects in this enterprise, so we can expect new thinking,” remarked Kahler.The annual joint CIGI and INET grants program seeks to accelerate the development of innovative thinking that will lead to insights and solutions for some of the most challenging economic and governance issues of the 21st century. Wed, 01 May 2013 09:05:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130501.htm /media-center/news/news_20130501.htm In a remote corner of Sichuan with lush, terraced hillsides, oil exploration teams have been scaling cliffs to lay seismic charges and struggling to move heavy equipment along winding mountain roads. That is where China hopes to find vast stores of natural gas trapped in shale rock. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has estimated that China’s technically recoverable shale gas resources could be 50 percent bigger than those in the United States, where shale has transformed the energy sector. Click here to read the full article. Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:12:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130501107362.htm /media-center/news/news_20130501107362.htm It's more than 5,000 metres above sea level, cold, inhospitable, uninhabited, with hardly any vegetation or wildlife in sight. Welcome to the icy desert wastelands of Daulat Beg Oldi, a forgotten pit stop on the Silk Road catapulted to overnight geopolitical fame as two nuclear neighbours vie for its possession in a dangerous game of tactical brinkmanship. For two weeks now, Chinese and Indian soldiers have been standing eyeball to eyeball, barely 100 metres apart, at this easternmost point of the Karakoram Range on the western sector of the China-India border. Click here to read the full article. Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:53:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130430.htm /media-center/news/news_20130430.htm Every morning at 6am, more than two dozen of the world's leading submarine watchers, aviation experts, government specialists, imagery analysts, cryptanalysts, and linguists gather at the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. Their job is to probe the overnight intelligence reports to guide the activities and strategies of the six aircraft carrier groups, 180 ships, and 1500 aircraft that patrol the Pacific and Indian oceans. The morning meetings are convened by the fleet's top intelligence officer, Captain James Fanell, and are supposed to cover activities emanating ''from Hollywood to Bollywood'', as the head of U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Locklear, likes to put it. But the group never takes long before zeroing in on the country driving the military and diplomatic ''pivot'' to Asia which was announced by President Barack Obama in Canberra in November 2011 and which now has support from almost every maritime nation in east and south-east Asia. Click here to read the full article. Sat, 27 Apr 2013 11:21:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130426.htm /media-center/news/news_20130426.htm As the post-game analysis on the Boston bombings grinds on, a conventional wisdom is starting to take shape based on the heated claims of pundits, officials, and security experts, as well as the post-9/11 liturgy on terrorist theory. It goes something like this: Terrorists are highly intelligent foes who wield violence strategically, bringing immediate and significant attention to their political ends relative to their limited means. Here's just a quick sampling of the reactions to the marathon attacks, from some serious people: Michael Leiter, former director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, characterized the Boston bombings as a "sophisticated attack," an opinion echoed from Congress to the FBI. Pennsylvania Rep. Patrick Meehan described the bombings as a "sophisticated operation." Jack Cloonan, who from 1996 to 2002 headed the FBI's Osama bin Laden unit, said the attacks exhibited unmistakable "sophistication." The terrorists were highly trained, said Ron Craig, a professor of pyrotechnics who has advised the FBI. And so on. Click here to read the full article. Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:30:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130426107041.htm /media-center/news/news_20130426107041.htm Disadvantaged students across the state will have difficulty meeting stiff new graduation requirements unless sweeping interventions are quickly implemented, according to a report released Wednesday that draws on evidence from the San Diego Unified School District. Several districts — San Diego Unified, Sweetwater, Carlsbad, Los Angeles and San Francisco among them — will require students to pass courses necessary to apply to a California State University or University of California campus in order to graduate high school in the coming years. Click here to read the full article. Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:17:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130425.htm /media-center/news/news_20130425.htm Palomar’s Political Economy Days lectures were held April 17-18, covering a wide range of speakers and topics. Below are summaries of select lectures from Wednesday’s sessions. “China: The End of Hyper Growth” – University of California Professor Barry Naughton  Barry Naughton, Professor of Economics and Chinese Economy from University of California, spoke on the country of China in his speech titled China: The End of Hyper growth, at Palomar’s Political Economy Days on April 17. Naughton argued that China is a rapidly growing country and has become an increasingly large part of our world. Naughton said that the China’s GDP has grown 10 percent every year for 30 years. Click here to read the full article. Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:41:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130423106718.htm /media-center/news/news_20130423106718.htm How can we alleviate poverty? What policies can be implemented to promote health, welfare and security? The University of California, San Diego is helping to answer these questions with the launch of a new lab designed to find innovative solutions, utilizing information technology, to help address the most pressing issues around the globe. UC San Diego is launching the Policy Design and Evaluation Lab (PDEL), a breakthrough academic endeavor which combines advanced social science methods with the power of information technology to develop policies and programs that alleviate poverty; promote health, welfare, and security; and enhance accountability. “The creation of PDEL reflects UC San Diego’s dedication to producing multidisciplinary research relevant to real-world problems that impact society,” said UC San Diego’s executive vice chancellor for Academic Affairs, Suresh Subramani. Click here to read the full article. Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:12:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20130423.htm /media-center/news/news_20130423.htm