International Development

FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.

They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.

FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.

FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.

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The state-owned company Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) is India's largest company devoted to exploration and production (E&P). This paper attempts to unpack the dynamic of the government-ONGC relationship. Focusing specifically on how government ownership and control has influenced ONGC's performance and strategy, this paper makes four main arguments.

First, ONGC exists, just as with national oil companies in many other countries, because of a legacy of suspicion about outsiders.  It performed well when it was tasked with things that were not that difficult and when it had help for the more difficult ventures, such as frontier E&P and development.

Second, ONGC has run into trouble as it matured, and the roots of its troubles are mainly in its interactions with the GoI and secondarily in its management.

Third, a slew of reforms instituted since the mid 1990s have fundamentally changed the landscape of the E&P sector in India and the dynamic of government-ONGC relationship. Targeted at improving corporate governance, enhancing competition in E&P, and eliminating price controls, those reforms have had a mixed impact on ONGC's performance and strategy. They also highlight the difficulties the government has had in encouraging higher efficiencies in ONGC and the oil and gas sector.

Fourth, given the deep interconnects of the oil and gas sector with India's political economy, fixing the oil and gas sector essentially entails fixing the larger political economy within which the sector is embedded.

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Program on Energy and Sustainable Development Working Paper #91
Authors
Varun Rai
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On Tuesday, September 7, 2010, the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development in collaboration with the Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and Stanford Law School hosted a special conference on Climate Policy Instruments in the Real World.

This conference featured presentations by leading researchers on the political, economic, and regulatory challenges associated with major climate policy instruments.  The goal of this conference was to transfer the state-of-the-art in policy-relevant academic research on key aspects of climate policy design and analysis to the business, regulatory and policymaking communities.  Each presentation was followed by comments from two discussants that develop the practical implications of the research results presented for decision-makers in industry and government.

Topics our experts explored included: setting a price for carbon, engaging the developing world in climate change mitigation, the role of renewable energy sources in climate change mitigation, mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gases from the transportation sector, managing intermittency in the electricity sector, and mechanisms for adapting to climate change.  

We would like to thank everybody for their participation on September 7, 2010.

For more conference information, please visit:

http://www.certain.com/system/profile/web/index.cfm?PKwebID=0x1992925e31&varPage=home

 


Thank you to all our sponsors:

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Bechtel Conference Center

Robert Stavins Speaker Kennedy School of Government
Richard K. Morse Speaker
Severin Borenstein Speaker Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
Christopher Knittel Speaker Department of Economics, UC Davis

Stanford University 
Economics Department 
579 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6072 

Website: https://fawolak.org/

(650) 724-1712 (650) 724-1717
0
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in Economics
Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
frank_wolak_033.jpg MS, PhD

Frank A. Wolak is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His fields of specialization are Industrial Organization and Econometric Theory. His recent work studies methods for introducing competition into infrastructure industries -- telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services -- and on assessing the impacts of these competition policies on consumer and producer welfare. He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He is a visiting scholar at University of California Energy Institute and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Professor Wolak received his Ph.D. and M.S. from Harvard University and his B.A. from Rice University.

Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
Date Label
Frank Wolak Speaker
Matt Kahn Speaker Institute of the Environment and Department of Economics, UCLA
Conferences
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Associate Professor Jae-Seung Lee from Korea University, Division of International Studies will be leading the seminar on energy security and cooperation in Northeast Asia (including East Asia).

Professor Lee holds a B.A. in political science from Seoul National University (1991) and an M.A (1993) and PhD (1998) in political science from Yale University. He also earned a certificate from the Institut D'Etudes Politiques de Paris in France in 1995.

Before joining the faculty of Korea University, he had served as a professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. As a scholar in international political economy, he authored a number of books and articles on Korea, East Asia, and Europe. His current research includes energy security and energy diplomacy of Korea, among others. Prof. Lee has directed the Korea Energy Forum (KEF), an interdisciplinary energy research initiative, and conducted a number of energy projects with UNESCAP and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He has taught at Yale University, Seoul National University, and Korea University.

Stanford University

Jae-Seung Lee Associate Professor Speaker Korea University, Division of International Studies
Seminars
News Type
News
Date
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The First Quarter 2010 issue of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE) Energy Forum has published an article written by PESD research fellow Varun Rai and PESD affiliated faculty David G. Victor. This issue of the forum  looks at the far east, particularly China and India. There are six articles that look at multiple facets of energy economics in that area and the forum will continue with this focus in the second quarter issue.

Rai and Victor's article titled "Identifying Viable Options in Developing Countries for Climate Change Mitigation: The Case of India" offers a framework for identifying viable and credible climate change mitigation actions in developing countries. The framework is applied to the case of India to suggest that a large number of options to control warming gases are in India's own self-interest, and that leverage on emissions from each of these options could amount to several hundred million tons of CO2 annually over the next decade and an even larger quantity by 2030.

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IAEE Rai Victor Identifing Viable Options
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Authors
Gang He
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In a new Working Paper, PESD researchers Gang He and Richard K. Morse offer a unique, comprehensive analysis of the biggest controversy in the global carbon market - the additionality of Chinese wind power in the Clean Development Mechanism.
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PESD Director Frank Wolak will be among a number of speakers participating at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research's Policy Forum - "Using Economics to Confront Climate Change."

Frank will be moderating a discussion of difficult challenges posed by the rapidly rising use of coal in India and China, and challenges to trade policy as studied by PESD researchers Richard Morse, Mark Thurber, and Jeremy Carl.

Bechtel Conference Center

Stanford University 
Economics Department 
579 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6072 

Website: https://fawolak.org/

(650) 724-1712 (650) 724-1717
0
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in Economics
Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
frank_wolak_033.jpg MS, PhD

Frank A. Wolak is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His fields of specialization are Industrial Organization and Econometric Theory. His recent work studies methods for introducing competition into infrastructure industries -- telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services -- and on assessing the impacts of these competition policies on consumer and producer welfare. He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He is a visiting scholar at University of California Energy Institute and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Professor Wolak received his Ph.D. and M.S. from Harvard University and his B.A. from Rice University.

Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
Date Label
Frank Wolak Moderator
Workshops
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PESD research associate Richard K. Morse will be presenting "The Real Drivers of CCS in China and Implications for Climate Policy" at the Coal Utilization Research Council's Fall 2009 General Membership Meeting.  Richard's presentation will reflect the research and publication of PESD's Working Paper #88.

Richard's CCS technology collaborative briefing is from 2:15PM to 2:30PM at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel

8:30AM to 12:30PM
Capitol Visitors Center
(Below the East Plaza of the Capital Building)
Room SVC 209

1:00PM to 3:30PM
L'Enfant Plaza Hotel
Washington, D.C. 20024

Richard K. Morse Panelist
Conferences
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Coal is both the world's fastest growing fossil fuel and a leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. While in the West coal use is under pressure, much of the developing world is predicating economic growth on cheap, reliable electricity from coal. As a result, the next few decades are likely to witness a massive build out of coal capacity.

Morse will explore where coal markets are growing, examine what economic and political variables have the greatest impact on coal use and the global coal trade, and discuss possible leverage points for CO2 mitigation. One mitigation option is a technology called carbon capture and storage, or CCS. Should we place big bets on this expensive and largely unproven option? Morse will discuss whether the current state of CCS deployment for coal-fired power falls short of mitigation levels required by many widely publicized targets and proceed to analyze the potential for commercial deployment of CCS technology at scale.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Panofsky Auditorium
Building 43

Richard Morse Speaker
Seminars
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The "Carbon Markets: Developing Countries & the Next Clean Development Mechanism" panel will be held from 3:25PM to 4:45PM

PESD researcher Richard K. Morse to speak at the 2010 MIIS International Trade and Investment Conference: Opportunities and Strategies in Emerging Economies on the "Carbon Markets: Developing Countries & the Next Clean Development Mechanism" panel.

The Monterey Institute of International Studies (an affiliate of Middlebury College) will be hosting this all day conference.  This event is being held with the purpose of bringing together stakeholders in the fields of trade policy, business, and human development to enhance knowledge of and create constructive dialogue around the global trends shaping international trade policy, business innovation, and social ventures in emerging economies.

Monterey Institute of International Studies
Irvine Auditorium
499 Pierce Street
Monterey, CA 93940

Richard K. Morse Panelist
Neal Dikeman Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board for Carbonflow Panelist
Barbara Haya PhD Candidate at the UC Berkeley Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory Panelist
Conferences

This event received over 300 participants, including experts from over 20 countries and presentations from two dozen internationally renowned experts.

The III Lisbon Conference emerged as a platform for the exchange of ideas and experiences on the various aspects of the defence and promotion of competition, contributing to the dissemination of a competition culture.

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation-Lisbon

Stanford University 
Economics Department 
579 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6072 

Website: https://fawolak.org/

(650) 724-1712 (650) 724-1717
0
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in Economics
Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
frank_wolak_033.jpg MS, PhD

Frank A. Wolak is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His fields of specialization are Industrial Organization and Econometric Theory. His recent work studies methods for introducing competition into infrastructure industries -- telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services -- and on assessing the impacts of these competition policies on consumer and producer welfare. He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He is a visiting scholar at University of California Energy Institute and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Professor Wolak received his Ph.D. and M.S. from Harvard University and his B.A. from Rice University.

Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
Date Label
Frank Wolak Speaker
Conferences
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