sirabhop's blog

Category: political-economics

  • Japan’s First Female Prime Minister

    Japan has made history on 21 October 2025, Sanae Takaichi was elected by the National Diet as the country’s first female prime minister. She succeeded Shigeru Ishiba. Observers view her ascent as a symbolic breakthrough in the Japan political landscape after a long domination by men. This milestone invites us to reflect on what research…

  • What 1980s Economists Can Teach Southeast Asia Today: Median Voters, Redistribution & Debt

    In 1981 Allan Meltzer and Scott Richard published a paper that has been taught in a political economics class at MIT. Their simple model starts with two observations. When the median voter decides the tax rate under majority rule, the size of government is struggling by the force between mean income and the median voter’s income. If…

  • What Burma Teaches Us About the Killings

    Recently, I read “Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War” by Benjamin F. Jones and Benjamin A. Olken (2009). The paper’s main point is that when assassination succeed against autocratic leaders, countries are more likely to move toward democracy. And assassinations tend to intensify conflict. The study compares successful and failed…

  • The Party That Never Learned

    On 7 Aug 2024, Thailand’s Constitutional Court dissolved the Move Forward Party (MFP) and banned its executives for 10 years, citing the party’s campaign to amend Article 112. Pita, a Harvard Kennedy School alumni was the prime–ministerial candidate in 2023, but the military-appointed Senate blocked his sworn in. While four years earlier, the Future Forward…