In China, low levels of early childhood development (ECD) in rural areas may inhibit economic development as the nation attempts to transition from a middle-income manufacturing-based economy to a high-income innovation economy. This paper surveys the recent literature on ECD among children ages 0-3 years in rural China, including rates of developmental delays, causes of delays, and implications for the future of China's economy. Recent studies have found high rates of developmental delays among young children in rural China and point to poor nutrition and psychosocial stimulation as the primary causes. This review highlights the need for large-scale ECD interventions in rural China to raise human capital and support future economic growth.

Coordinating activity among members is an important problem faced by organizations. When firms, or units within firms, are stuck in bad equilibria, managers may turn to the temporary use of simple incentives—flat punishments or rewards—in an attempt to transition the firm or unit to a more efficient equilibrium. We investigate the use of incentives in the context of the “minimum-effort,” or “weak-link,” coordination game. We allow groups to reach the inefficient equilibrium and then implement temporary, flat, “all-or-none” incentives to encourage coordination on more efficient equilibria. We vary whether incentives are positive (rewards) or negative (penalties), whether they have substantial or nominal monetary value, and whether they are targeted to a specific outcome (the efficient equilibrium) or untargeted (apply to more than one outcome). Overall, incentives of all kinds are effective at improving coordination while they are in place, but there is little long-term persistent benefit of incentives—once incentives are removed, groups tend to return to the inefficient outcome. We find some differences between different kinds of incentives. Finally, we contrast our results to other recent work demonstrating greater long-term effectiveness of temporary incentives.

I have been writing about deep politics since 1993, when I gave the example of how the United States after World War sent American mafia figures to fight communism in Italy, thereby creating a corrupted politics that was soon out of control - as bad as the influence the mafia once possessed in cities like Marseille, or Chicago.

It is now fifty years since the so-called “G30S” or “Gestapu” (Gerakan September Tigahpuluh) event of September 30, 1965 in Indonesia, when six members of the Indonesian army general staff were brutally murdered. This event was a decisive moment in Indonesian history: it led to the overthrow of President Sukarno, his replacement by an army general, Suharto, and the subsequent massacre of a half million or more Indonesians targeted as communists. It is also forty years since I first wrote to suggest that the United States was implicated in this horrendous event, and thirty years since I wrote about it again in 1985 in the Canadian journal Pacific Affairs.

In the last decade it has become more and more obvious that we have in America today what the journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin have called

In the last decade it has become more and more obvious that we have in America today what the journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin have called

Prime Minister Abe Shinzō has made Work Style Reform (hatarakikata kaikaku) part of his core policy agenda, promising above all to remedy the Japanese way of work's two greatest problems: dangerously long work hours and grossly unequal wage gaps between regular and non-regular workers. However, critics charge that the proposals will likely aggravate these problems, given that labor policymaking is dominated by conservative business and political leaders bent on deregulation. This paper examines the current Work Style Reform proposals, explaining howthe work hour reduction and equal pay for equal work proposals are being promoted to the public, and why they ultimately fail as reforms from the worker point of view. Despite these serious problems, the government's effective marketing has helped to defuse potential resistance and the reform plans may become law in 2018.

An essay of mine, with the title “Private War Enterprise in Asia: Air America, the Brook Club and the Kuomintang,” was sent by me in 1970 to Ramparts magazine. But it was impounded by the CIA, and retained in their archives until released in 2009, under three CIA cover slips (one almost fully redacted). It is now published here, under a 2022 Introduction I have written for it.

Responses to Japanese Prime Minister Abe's proposed labor reforms, which are part of the economic stimulus plan known as Abenomics, are a window on the positions of major stakeholders’ social debates in Japan's future. This paper identifies, summarizes, and analyzes six responses to one of the proposed structural reforms: new labor rules that would encourage expansion of “limited regular employment,” an employment status between Japan's famous “lifetime employment” and the burgeoning number of non-regular workers. Proponents in the business community and government tout limited regular employment (gentei seiki koyou) as a way to introduce flexibility and mobility in the labor market, boosting productivity, and helping stem the bifurcation of Japanese society into winners, with regular employment, and losers, with non-regular jobs. Opponents, however, see the proposed reforms as an ominous step toward dismantling Japan's already weak worker protections. They argue that limited regular employment is a poison pill containing inherent contradictions that threaten the hopes of women and younger workers for stable careers, as well as loosening long-standing social and legal constraints on employers’ right to dismiss workers. Parliamentary debate on this labor legislation is set for the summer of 2014.

In this study, we use a novel design to test for directional behavioral spillover and cognitive load effects in a set of multiple repeated games. Specifically, in our experiment, each subject plays a common historical game with two different matches for 100 rounds. After 100 rounds, the subject switches to a new game with one match and continues playing the historical game with the other match. This design allows us to identify the direction of any behavioral spillover. Our results show that participants exhibit both behavioral spillover and cognitive load effects. First, for pairs of Prisoners’ Dilemma and Alternation games, we find that subjects apply strategies from the historical game when playing the new game. Second, we find that those who participate in a Self Interest game as either their historical or new game achieve Pareto efficient outcomes more often in the Prisoners’ Dilemma and Alternation games compared to their control counterparts. Overall, our results show that, when faced with a new game, participants use strategies that reflect both behavioral spillover and cognitive load effects.

The election of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 had permanent consequences for U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. major oil companies, which before the election were facing criminal charges for their cartel arrangements, instead were freed to continue their activities, until “In some of the faraway countries where it did business…. Exxon's sway over local politics and security was greater than that of the United States embassy.” Parallel to this was a radical escalation in 1953 of CIA covert operations. Major plots to overthrow the governments of Iran and Guatemala, both of which had been turned down by Truman and his Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, now proceeded, redefining America's relationship to the third world.

The December 2003 deployment of Self-Defense Force troops to Iraq by the Koizumi administration took Japan closer to the practical repudiation of the non-belligerancy principle of Article 9 than any prior move in its more than half-century of existence. Of course, as the very existence of “self-defense forces” attests, Article 9 had already been subjected to considerable abuse by interpretation, virtually since inception. Nevertheless, the deployment to Samawah was controversial. It stirred visible opposition in the beginning even though it soon faded, at least from public view. Thus is a status quo created.

Disaster commemoration serves as a moment to remember victims and honor survivors. In the case of 3.11, commemoration works differently. As a slow disaster, with radiation exposure and evacuation at the center of the story, 3.11 is not yet over. This places special importance on commemoration as a moment for memory, but also for ongoing commitments to research, justice, and health interventions for survivors.

The last century has been, unfortunately, a century of holocausts. The documentary “The Act of Killing” revives the memory — for both Indonesians and Americans — of one of the greatest: the Indonesian mass slaughter of 1965, whose memory, for a half century, has been perhaps the most effectively suppressed. It is, in fact, virtually impossible to consider the film, or the massacre itself, without also considering, as did my poem Coming to Jakarta, the social functions of first suppressing the most excruciating victim memories, and then painfully beginning to recover them.

In a September 2014 address to the nation, President Obama attacked ISIL (or ISIS) as “terrorists… unique in their brutality. They execute captured prisoners. They kill children.” But of course such terrorism in the last half-century is hardly “unique.” Nor is it unprecedented. Still less is it confined to America's foes. In fact the first major Muslim extermination campaign against civilians killed without trial for their “Westernness,” occurred a half century ago, on a far, far vaster scale, and with active American support and encouragement.

The Japanese mass media has been reporting a rising number of foreign workers in Japan based on data published by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The Ministry's data, however, is neither derived from a comprehensive database of foreign workers, nor is it a credible source of information about the foreign workforce. This paper explains how the ministry arrives at its figures, why the reported rapid increase over the past decade is incorrect, and pinpoints flaws in its data collection process. Finally, we suggest a new approach for estimating the total number of foreign workers in Japan at a time when the Japanese government has proposed a significant increase in the number of foreign workers.