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Friday, 4 March 2016 - 5.30pm

On 4-5 March 2016 Darwin College and the University of Cambridge will be hosting an event entitled 'Fukushima Five Years on: Legal Fallout in Japan, Lessons for the EU'.

The event comprises a public lecture on 4 March by Prof J. Mark Ramseyer (Harvard) entitled 'Nuclear Power and the Mob: Extortion and Social Capital in Japan', and on 5 March there will be a workshop with keynote speech entitled 'The Law and Economics of Nuclear Risks' by Prof Michael G. Faure (Maastricht).

You can download the event poster for more information. The event is further complemented by an outreach exhibition of captivating photographs taken by victims of the disaster, which will be free and open to the public on 5, 6 and 11 March 2016!

Nuclear Power and the Mob: Extortion and Social Capital in Japan

Abstract

This talk treats surprising relationships of Japanese organized crime (yakuza) with the development of nuclear power stations.

Nuclear reactors entail massive non-transferrable site-specific investments. The resulting appropriable quasi-rents offer the mob the ideal target. In exchange for large fees, it can either promise to "protect" the utility (and silence the reactor's local opponents) or "extort" from it (and desist from inciting local opponents). Using municipality-level (1742 cities, towns, villages) and prefecture-level (47) Japanese panel data covering the years from 1980 to 2010, I find exactly this phenomenon: when a utility announces plans to build a reactor, the level of extortion climbs. Reactors have broad-ranging effects on social capital as well. In general, the perceived health costs to nuclear power are highest for young families. As a result, if a utility announces plans for a new reactor, these families disappear. Yet these are the men and women who invest most heavily in the social capital that keeps communities intact. When they disappear, reliance on government subsidies increases, and divorce rates rise. Firms stay away, and unemployment climbs.

Bio

Mark Ramseyer is the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He spent most of his childhood in provincial towns and cities in southern Japan, attending Japanese schools for K-6. He returned to the U.S. for college. Before attending law school, he studied Japanese history in graduate school. Ramseyer graduated from HLS in 1982. He clerked for the Hon. Stephen Breyer (then on the First Circuit), worked for two years at Sidley & Austin (in corporate tax), and studied as a Fulbright student at the University of Tokyo. After teaching at UCLA and the University of Chicago, he came to Harvard in 1998. He has also taught or co-taught courses at several Japanese universities (in Japanese). In his research, Ramseyer primarily studies Japanese law, and primarily from a law & economics perspective. In addition to a variety of Japanese law courses, he teaches the basic Corporations course. With Professors Klein and Bainbridge, he co-edits a Foundation Press casebook in the field.

Convened by Julius Weitzdörfer (JRF, Faculty of Law, Cambridge); Prof Moritz Bälz (Japanese Law and Culture, Interdisciplinary Center of East Asian Studies, Frankfurt) and Dr Ludo Veuchelen (Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics; former President, Safety and Regulation, International Nuclear Law Association).

Venue: The Old Library, Darwin College Cambridge

Registration is obligatory via Eventbrite.

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