Towards an Asia-Pacific Digital Economy Governance Regime (Handouts and Video)

Yano received a BA from the University of Tokyo and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester. He taught at number of universities, including Cornell University, Yokohama National University, Keio University and Kyoto University before joining RIETI as President and CRO in 2016, and became Chairman in 2020. He was also Chair of Institute of Economic Research in Kyoto University from 2010 to 2012, and President of the Japanese Economic Association from 2008 to 2009.

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Wendy Cutler is Vice President at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) and the managing director of the Washington, D.C. office. In these roles, she focuses on building ASPI's presence in the nation's capital and on leading initiatives that address challenges related to trade, investment and innovation, as well as women's empowerment in Asia. She joined ASPI following an illustrious career of nearly three decades as a diplomat and negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), where she also served as Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. During her USTR career, she worked on a range of bilateral, regional and multilateral trade negotiations and initiatives, including the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, the Trans Pacific Partnership, U.S.-China negotiations and the WTO Financial Services negotiations. She has published a series of ASPI papers on the Asian trade landscape, and serves as a regular media commentator on trade and investment developments in Asia and the world.

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Jin Guang Chair Professor of Economics and Deputy Dean, National School of Development (NSD) and Director, Institute of Digital Finance (IDF), Peking University. October 2018, appointed Member of the External Advisory Group on Surveillance, International Monetary Fund. 2015-18, Member of the Monetary Policy Committee, People's Bank of China. Currently, Vice-Chairman of the Council, Public Policy Research Center, and Research Fellow, Financial Research Center, both at the Counsellor's Office of the State Council. Chairman of the Academic Committee, China Finance 40 Forum. Member, Chinese Economists 50 Forum. Editor, China Economic Journal; Associate Editor, Asian Economic Policy Review. Current research focuses on financial reform and FinTech. Formerly: Policy Analyst, Research Center for Rural Development of the State Council; Senior Lecturer in Economics, Australian National University; General Mills International Visiting Professor of Economics and Finance, Columbia Business School; Managing Director and Chief Asia Economist, Citigroup; Independent Director, China Life Insurance and Mybank. Bachelor's in Agricultural Economics, Zhejiang Agricultural University; Master's in Economics, Renmin University of China; PhD in Economics, Australian National University.

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Mr. Bilahari Kausikan is the Chairman of the Middle East Institute, an autonomous institute of the National University of Singapore. Mr. Kausikan was Permanent Secretary of Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2010 to 2013, having served as Second Permanent Secretary since 2001. He was subsequently Ambassador-at-Large until May 2018. His earlier appointments at the Ministry include Deputy Secretary for South-east Asia, Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, and Ambassador to the Russian Federation. He was educated at Raffles Institution, the University of Singapore and Columbia University in New York.

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Deborah Elms, Founder and Executive Director of the Asian Trade Centre. The Asian Trade Centre works with governments and companies to design better trade policies for the region. Dr. Elms sits on the International Technical Advisory Committee of the Global Trade Professionals Alliance and is Chair of the Working Group on Trade Policy and Law. She is also a senior fellow in the Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry's Trade Academy. Previously, Dr Elms was head of the Temasek Foundation Centre for Trade & Negotiations (TFCTN) and Senior Fellow of International Political Economy at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her projects include the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and global value chains. She has provided consulting on a range of trade issues to governments including the United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Taiwan, and Singapore. Dr. Elms received a PhD in political science from the University of Washington, a MA in international relations from the University of Southern California, and bachelor's degrees from Boston University. Dr Elms publishes the Talking Trade Blog.

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Peter Lovelock is the Director of TRPC, along with Professor John Ure.
Peter and John established the Telecommunications Research Project (TRP) at the University of Hong Kong in 1993 and the Telecoms Infotechnology Forum (TIF) in 1996. Peter subsequently established the TRPC offices in Beijing (1999) and Singapore (2006) and expanded the academic collaborations in both locations, initially with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and subsequently with Qinghua University and the National University of Singapore (NUS). Between 1999 and 2004, Peter built and ran China's leading IT research consultancy, and prior to that he was a lead policy analyst at the UN in Geneva, where he was principal author on the World Telecommunications Development Report amongst others, including many of the ITU Secretary General's speeches from this period. Throughout his career Peter has provided strategic advice to the likes of RAND, Vodafone, Telstra, all of the Chinese carriers, most of the world's major telecom vendors (Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, ZTE, Nokia), Google, PWC, KPMG and McKinsey, White & Case, Perkins Coie, Baker & Mackenzie, and Mandiri Bank. He has also worked with the World Bank, the IFC, the ADB, the ITU, UNDP, APEC, and has advised most governments around the region.
Peter is currently a senior advisor to Microsoft and senior advisor to the Chairman, Global Yellow Pages. He has previously been a senior advisor to Accenture as well as to China's State Council.
In recent years he has authored reports on global data networks and bandwidth developments, broadband wireless access technologies and market growth, consumer premise equipment and multimedia strategies, and convergence policies in Japan, Singapore, China and Australia, among others.

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Dr. Meltzer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., where he is an expert on international trade law and policy issues, including digital trade, and leads the Digital Economy and Trade Project. Meltzer has testified before the U.S. Congress, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the European Parliament on trade issues. He has been an expert witness in litigation on data flows and privacy issues in the EU and a consultant to the World Bank on trade and privacy matters. He is also a member of Australia's National Data Advisory Council. Meltzer teaches digital trade law at Melbourne University Law School and at the University of Toronto Law School, where he is an adjunct professor. Meltzer also teaches ecommerce and digital trade at the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office diplomatic academy. Before joining Brookings, Meltzer was posted as a diplomat at the Australian Embassy in Washington D.C. and prior to that was an international trade negotiator in Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Meltzer has appeared in print and news media, including the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Bloomberg, MSNBC, CBS, Fox, the Asahi Shimbun and China Daily. Meltzer holds an S.J.D. and LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor and law and commerce degrees from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

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Tan Sri Datuk Rebecca Fatima Sta Maria is the executive director of the APEC Secretariat based in Singapore, which serves as advisory body, implementation arm and custodian of institutional memory for the 21 member economies that make up the APEC forum.
Dr Sta Maria was a top-level Malaysian civil servant and trade negotiator.
As Secretary-General of the Malaysian Ministry of International Trade and Industry from December 2010 to July 2016, she oversaw the formulation of Malaysia's international trade policies and positions. She often took the lead in their implementation as chief negotiator for bilateral and regional free trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
Dr Sta Maria played an integral role in Malaysia's participation in multilateral forums such as APEC, where she often represented her economy during the APEC Ministers' Responsible for Trade Meetings and the Small and Medium Enterprises Ministerial Meetings. In the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Dr Sta Maria chaired the body that drafted the ASEAN Economic Community 2015 Blueprint as well as the ASEAN Economic Community 2025 Blueprint. An accomplished academic and writer, Dr Sta Maria's scholarship has been recognized through awards from the American Academy of Human Resource Development and from the University of Georgia. In 2017, she authored a book about her personal slice of Malaysian heritage and cuisine, called The Smell of Home. Before 2010, the position of executive director of the APEC Secretariat rotated yearly among officials assigned by the incumbent host economy. Starting in 2010, the appointment was opened to applications from highly qualified professionals who will, when appointed, lead the Secretariat in fixed three-year terms with an option to renew. Dr Sta Maria is the first woman executive director of the APEC Secretariat.

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Shiro Armstrong is Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University. He is Director of the Australia-Japan Research Centre, Editor of the East Asia Forum, Director of the Asian Bureau of Economic Research and Research Associate at the Center on Japanese Economy and Business at the Columbia Business School. Dr. Armstrong took his PhD in Economics from the Australian National University and has been visitor to Tokyo University, Peking University, Harvard University and Columbia University. He is Head of the Secretariat for the Pacific Trade and Development (PAFTAD) conference series. His publications include 5 edited books, numerous peer-reviewed journals including in the World Economy, Asian Economic Journal, Foreign Affairs and Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, and is a regular contributor to the opinion pages of the Australian Financial Review.

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