WAGE Newsroom

The UW-Madison Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE) is pleased to announce the winners of our 2008 Individual Research Award competition. WAGE will provide $10,000 to support each of three research projects that explore the consequences of and challenges posed by economic globalization and its governance. Four faculty, Allison Christians (Law), Zhongdang Pan (Communication Arts), Yongming Zhou (Anthropology), and Jason Yackee (Law) will pursue important research respectively on tax norms and global governance, Chinese intellectual property rights, and the impact of international investment law on foreign direct investment.

This conference was based on the work of the Current Account Sustainability collaborative, led by Prof. Menzie Chinn and Prof. Charles Engel with support from the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE). The event was organized and sponsored by WAGE, the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), and the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs. It was co-sponsored by the UW-Madison Department of Economics and European Union Center of Excellence, the Wisconsin Department of Commerce Bureau of Investment and Export, the International Credit Executives Group of Wisconsin, the Madison International Trade Association, and World Trade Center Wisconsin.

Professors Anne Miner and Brad Barham, leaders of the WAGE-sponsored Technology Entrepreneurship & Institutions Collaborative, recently won a $40,000 grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The grant will help to extend the reach of their third annual conference, which features top-tier researchers and emerging scholars from around the world. Conference themes will include: (1) how specific webs of laws, rules, and norms influence technology entrepreneurship, and (2) how efforts to promote technology entrepreneurship influence long-term changes in the private and public institutions involved in both anticipated and unanticipated ways. For example, do university regulations to promote startups have deleterious effects on science in the long-term?

The Symposium provided an opportunity for researchers, policymakers and health care practitioners to address the challenges in aligning incentives with the goals of quality improvement and cost-containment as we move toward a value-driven health care system. The keynote speaker, Gwyn Bevan, provided examples of health care performance measurement in England, taken from serving on various government advisory committees and his research on performance measurement and devolution. Bevan discussed the results of the star rating system and other quality improvement initiatives and addressed the unintended consequences of payment reform in England. The first panel of health care practitioners then reviewed current and emerging efforts to reform health care payment systems in Wisconsin, including pay-for-performance initiatives at the Marshfield Clinic, at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and in Wisconsin Medicaid. The second panel of academic experts from the UW covered lessons learned from evaluations of pay-for-performance (P4P) in education, cash-assistance, and workforce development programs.

The Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs, John A. Scocos, presented Jeremi Suri, WAGE Senior Fellow and Professor of History at the UW-Madison, with a Certificate of Recognition for outstanding service to Wisconsin veterans and the community. The award acknowledges Suri’s “devotion to advancing the discussion of political, diplomatic, and military history in the public realm” and his “role in promoting the Distinguished Lecture Series.”

Inaugurated in early 2006, the Distinguished Lecture Series has featured several of the top military, political, and diplomatic historians in the United States including Pulitzer Prize winner David Kennedy and covered topics such as War and the Media: From Vietnam to Iraq, The Road to Iraq, The Living Legacy of the Vietnam War and lectures on World War II, the bombing of Japan, and the Phillipines war among others. Secretary Scocos honored Suris service during a special event focusing on Melvin Laird, the former Secretary of Defense and Wisconsin congressman.

Scott Ritter, who served as Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq, visited Madison for a series of campus and community events from April 16-19, 2008. Ritter began his visit with an evening presentation at the Madison Committee on Foreign Relations (MCFR), where Ritter recalled his personal experience investigating the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq from 1991-1998. The following day, Ritter continued this discussion in a campus lecture entitled “Intelligence Failure: Why did so many people think there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?” Speaking before an audience of students and community members, Ritter recounted the miscommunication that characterized the disarmament effort and fielded questions about his activities since resigning his position in 1998. Next, Ritter addressed American involvement in regional politics during a presentation at the Wisconsin Historical Society entitled “Overt and Covert Wars: From Iraq to Iran in US Foreign Policy, 1990-2008.” Finally, he concluded his visit with a second appearance at the Historical Society, participating in a forum addressing the antiwar effort and the status of American citizenship in a time of war.

Ritter's visit to Madison was sponsored by the UW-Madison Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE), the Middle East Studies Program, the Division of International Studies, Global Studies, the Madison Committee on Foreign Relations (MCFR), and The Madison Institute (TMI).

An audio file of Thursday's talk, "Intelligence Failure: Why Did So Many People Think There Were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq?" is available here. Audio of Saturday's talk, "Waging Peace: Citizenship in a Time of Unjust War," is available here.

The UW-Madison Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE) is pleased to announce the three winners of our research collaborative competition, each receiving a total of $100,000 over a three year period. Through these awards, WAGE seeks to catalyze cutting edge research on important challenges related to globalization and its governance. The three collaboratives cover the critical topics of import safety, energy and biofuels, and the changing role of law and the state in economic development.

The Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE) announces an individual grant competition to support research projects on globalization and the international economy. All University of Wisconsin Madison faculty and qualified members of the academic staff are encouraged to apply. We anticipate awarding 2-4 grants of up to $10,000, which will be available for use from June 1, 2008 thru June 30, 2009.

With this call for proposals we aim to support research projects that explore the consequences of and challenges posed by economic globalization and its governance. The primary criteria to be used in judging proposals are the relevance of the topic and the quality of the research.

Please review the Call for Proposals for more detailed application guidelines. To learn more about WAGE, we invite you to visit our website –http://wage.wisc.edu/.

Louise Trubek, Clinical Professor of Law and WAGE Senior Fellow, recently edited a special issue of the journal Regulation and Governance focusing on health care regulation. The issue pays special attention to challenges faced by regulatory institutions, specifically highlighting four key themes: regulatory pluralism, participation, accountability, and capacity. Authors tell cautionary stories that describe the need to reform regulation while also demonstrating the complexity of the search. They propose 'new rules' rather than the elimination of regulation, showcasing a variety of health care innovations that will be valuable for scholars, policymakers, administrators, and health care professionals.

Jonathan Patz, Associate Professor, Population Health and the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and WAGE Senior Fellow recently published a new article on the global health impacts of climate change. The article, published in the journal EcoHealth, places the disproportionate health burdens that developing countries will face due to climate change in an ethical context. These countries, particularly in Africa, have contributed very little to the crisis, and yet will face the largest impacts in the form of more widespread diseases like malaria and worsening malnutrition.

On February 18, Eswar Prasad, former head of the IMF’s China division and Senior Professor of Trade Policy at Cornell University, gave a fascinating talk on China’s and

India

’s “growth miracles.” Prasad detailed the similarities and differences between the growth of the two nations, including investment rates, consumption, and employment. Cautiously optimistic about the countries’ economic futures, Prasad believes that internal threats, like inflation, are possibly more threatening to growth than international financial pressures.

A question-and-answer session followed the talk, which covered issues of global imbalances, the relationship between the U.S. and Chinese economy and Chinese consumption patterns. More than sixty students, faculty and community members attended the event at the Pyle Center, which was co-sponsored by the La Follette School of Public Affairs, the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), Global Studies, the Center for South Asia, the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS), the Wisconsin Department of Commerce, and the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

The Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE) is pleased to announce the three winners of our WAGE Advanced Dissertation Spring 2008 Research Assistantships: Erick Danzer (Political Science), Swati Dhingra (Economics), and Timo Weishaupt (Political Science). The selection committee was impressed by the research agendas pursued by all three Ph.D. candidates, each of whom explores compelling questions related to globalization and its governance.

Two WAGE Senior Fellows have entered the blogosphere. Menzie Chinn, Professor of Public Affairs and Economics, and Jeremi Suri, Professor of History, have established an online presence with their popular blogs. Chinn is the co-blogger of Econbrowser (with James Hamilton of UC-San Diego), offering analysis of current economic and financial news. Suri posts at the Huffington Post, where he offers critical commentary about world politics and American foreign policy.

On Wednesday, November 14, some 85 faculty, students and community members gathered to discuss the future of environmental governance at “Beyond Kyoto.” A distinguished panel of University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty (including Professors Greg Nemet, Jonathan Patz and Tracey Holloway) shared their expertise as they presented the complex problems and opportunities facing policymakers as they converge in Bali to launch talks on the successor to the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. The general tone of the remarks reflected optimism on the part of the experts.

Dominique Brossard, WAGE Affiliate and Assistant Professor of Journalism, has just published a new book examining the role of the press in informing public opinion about biotechnology and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food supply. The Public, the Media and Agricultural Biotechnology explores how the American media’s portrayal of genetically modified foods as non-controversial, and its lack of exploration of the science behind it, has led to general disinterest in the issue by the general public. The role of the media becomes even more complex when this is contrasted with the fervor with which GMOs are debated in other parts of the world.

The book, edited by Brossard, James Shanahan of Fairfield University and T. Clint Nesbitt of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, brings together case studies in public perception of GMOs from around the world. The issue, asserts Brossard, is too complex to be treated so lightly by the American press.

To view the table of contents and a sample chapter, please click here.

Jonathan Patz, Associate Professor, Population Health and the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and WAGE Senior Fellow, was one of two UW-Madison faculty members who significantly contributed to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with former Vice President Al Gore. According to UW’s The Daily Cardinal, the UN awarding the IPCC and Gore the Nobel Peace Prize “signals the increased recognition that climate change is one of the world’s major security issues.”

Jeremi Suri, Professor of History and WAGE Senior Fellow, has been named one of Smithsonian Magazine's "37 Under 36: America's Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences." In naming Suri one of its first "37 Under 36", the magazine honors him for innovation and creativity as a young scholar. The magazine reports, “Jeremi Suri looks locally and sees globally. And that lets him make novel connections between, say, the protest movements of the 1960s and superpower détente in the 1970s.” This innovation, says Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy, will give Suri “recognition as the premier scholar of a wholly original—and unusually demanding—approach to the study of international affairs.”

In preparation for the State of Wisconsin trade mission to Japan and China led by Governor Jim Doyle, approximately 50 individuals attended an August 7, 2007 pre-mission briefing held at UW-Madison’s Fluno Center for Executive Education. The trade delegation, representing Wisconsin businesses, trade organizations, educational institutions and governmental agencies, will visit Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Harbin and Ningbo in September 2007. The pre-mission briefing provided participants with economic and political updates on China and advice on pursuing business opportunities in that country.

Since 2004, Wisconsin exports to China have increased by 50 percent, making it the state’s third largest export market after Canada and Mexico. The emphasis during this trade mission will be on strengthening those relationships developed since the last mission and on forming new ties as well as marketing Wisconsin as a site for foreign investment.

The briefing was sponsored by the Department of Commerce, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE) and the Center for East Asian Studies.

At the invitation of the rotating German Presidency of the European Union, WAGE Director Jonathan Zeitlin presented a paper on "Strengthening the Social Dimension of the Lisbon Strategy" to a meeting of the EU Social Protection Committee (a body of high-level national and EU officials responsible for European social policy coordination) in Erfurt, Germany, on May 23. He then went on to present a paper on "A Decade of Innovation in EU Governance: The European Employment Strategy, the Open Method of Coordination, and the Lisbon Strategy" to an Expert Seminar on "European Social and Employment Policy Coordination" in Lisbon on May 25, organized by the upcoming Portuguese Presidency (now in office since July 1). This paper was circulated as an annex to the Presidency paper to a meeting of the Employment, Social Affairs, Health, and Consumer Protection (EPSCO) Council of Ministers in Guimaraes, Portugal, on July 5-7, and will be presented to a Presidency conference on "Ten Years of the European Employment Strategy" in Lisbon on October 8-9.

Professor Zeitlin also presented a keynote address on "Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the European Union" to the 19th annual conference of the Society for the Study of Socio-Economics (SASE), held in Copenhagen, Denmark, on June 28-30. Earlier this summer, he presented a paper on "The Open Method of Coordination and the Governance of the Lisbon Strategy" at the 10th biennial conference of the European Union Studies Association (EUSA), held in Montreal on May 17-19.

Harvard University Press just published Henry Kissinger and the American Century, a new book by Jeremi Suri, a UW-Madison Professor of History and WAGE Senior Fellow. Suri's book connects Henry Kissinger's career as one of the most prominent American diplomats in the twentieth century to his childhood experiences in 1930s Germany and later as a teenage immigrant to the United States. The feeble Weimar state of his youth, unable to check the violent and destructive Nazi rise to power, impressed upon Kissinger the dangers of populism and weak democracy. This contrasted sharply with the opportunities the vigorous United States presented the young German immigrant in World War II and the early Cold War. These experiences cemented Kissinger's faith in America; and the Atlantic community as bulwarks against global disorder and as guarantors of opportunity, assumptions that underpinned his later policies. Yet, as Kissinger penetrated the innermost circles of political power at Harvard, Washington DC, and the worlds capitals, his Jewish identity always kept him as an outsider, even as it offered unique diplomatic openings and personal connections. Suri's book not only offers insight on Kissinger's life, career, and worldview; it also uses Kissinger to explore the larger changes and dynamics of the increasingly international twentieth century.

The UW-Madison Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE) and the European Union Center of Excellence (EUCE) received joint recognition for teaching, research, and outreach activities in support of innovative systems of environmental governance at the annual workshop of the Multi-State Working Group (MSWG) on Environmental Performance. Professor Jonathan Zeitlin, WAGE and EUCE Director, accepted the “International Innovation Award” from Scott Hassett, the Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and Jeff Smoller, MSWG President, on June 19 at the Monona Terrace Conference Center in Madison.

WAGE and EUCE organized a day-long workshop on "“Innovative Environmental Governance and Regulation in the European Union: Lessons for US?"” as part of the larger MSWG conference. The WAGE-EUCE workshop brought together representatives of academia, business, and international organizations for a discussion of new forms of governance and regulation in the European Union and their promise for meeting environmental challenges in the United States and elsewhere.

Two WAGE Senior Fellows, Professors Jeremi Suri and Jonathan Zeitlin, will lead a Fall '07 Faculty Development Seminar in the Humanities on the topic of INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE. As a co-sponsor of this seminar WAGE would like to invite all faculty members to apply to participate.

This seminar aims to build a community of scholars interested in one of the most enduring questions at the root of humanistic study: how can human beings live peacefully together. Weekly meetings will center on the reading and discussion of argumentative, conceptual texts. The texts will offer diverse perspectives on three theoretical and empirical questions, around which we will structure discussions:

1. What kinds of authority are legitimate for governing diverse cultures and societies?
2. What are the appropriate aims of international governance?
3. What are the effective mechanisms for instituting international governance?

Click here to view application details, a broader seminar description, and a draft syllabus.

The Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE) is happy to announce the appointment of Jason Yackee as an Assistant Professor of Law and Political Science, attached to the Global Governance and International Finance Cluster. Dr. Yackee holds a JD from Duke University, and has just successfully defended his Political Science PhD dissertation at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Mr. Yackee specializes in international political economy and international law, and focuses his research on the intersection of international law, regulation and politics. He has published on the administrative rules of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the interaction of international private law with international business activity, and the connection between federal agency rulemaking and business interests. His PhD dissertation, Sacrificing Sovereignty: International Dispute Settlement and Foreign Direct Investment, evaluates the issue of the costs and benefits of Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) for investors and host governments. Mr. Yackee will join the UW-Madison faculty in July 2007 and will teach two courses in Fall 2007: “Contracts” and “International Commercial Arbitration.”