About

Richard Dasher is an adjunct professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University, where he also serves as the Director of the US-Asia Technology Management Center since 1994. His research and teaching focus on the flow of people, knowledge, and capital in innovation systems, the impact of new technologies on industry value chains, and open innovation management. He has played a significant role in fostering international collaboration and innovation, serving on various national and international committees, including the governance of Tohoku University in Japan and the Program Committee of the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI) of Japan. Dr. Dasher holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Linguistics from Stanford University. His professional experience includes serving as the Executive Director of the Center for Integrated Systems at Stanford's School of Engineering from 1998 to 2015, and prior to his academic career, he was involved in developing international business in Tokyo and directed the U.S. State Department’s Advanced Language and Area Training Centers in Japan and Korea. He is a founding partner of the Tokyo-based venture capital firm Global Hands-On Venture Capital (GHOVC) and advises startups, business accelerators, and venture capital firms across Silicon Valley, Japan, India, and South Korea. His contributions have been recognized with honors such as the Foreign Minister's Commendation from the Government of Japan in 2023.

Research topics

• Mathematics
• Political Science
• Economics
• Business
• Marketing
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Statistics
• Public administration
• Industrial organization
• Econometrics
• Economic growth
• Market economy
• Engineering
• Linguistics
• World Wide Web
• Philosophy
• Geography
• Management
• Public economics

Selected publications

• The Impact of Carbon Tax and Research Subsidies on Economic Growth in Japan

  Higher School of Economics Economic Journal · 2025-03-19

  articleOpen access

  A considerable amount of work has shown that a carbon tax combined with research subsidies may be regarded as effective policy for encouraging the spread of low-carbon technologies for the benefit of society. This paper exploits the macro­ economic approach of endogenous growth models with technological change in or­der to make a comparative assessment of the impact of such policy measures on economic growth in the US and Japan in the medium and long term. Our estimates with the micro and macro data reveal similarities among Japanese and US energy firms as regards the elasticity of the innovation production function in R&D expenditure and the probability of radical innovation. However, according to energy patent statistics, clean innovation is not as wide-spread in Japan as it is in the US. This may explain our quantitative findings of the need for a stronger reliance on a carbon tax in Japan as opposed to the US.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Regularity in semantic change

  Cognitive linguistic studies in cultural contexts · 2024 · 1274 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Linguistics

  List of figures Preface and acknowledgements Conventions List of abbreviations 1. The framework 2. Prior and current work on semantic change 3. The development of modal verbs 4. The development of adverbials with discourse marker function 5. The development of performative verbs and constructions 6. The development of social deictics 7. Conclusion Primary references Secondary references Index of languages Index of names Index of subjects.

  DOI

• Foreword II

  Elsevier eBooks · 2024-11-22

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Financing and Management of Innovation in India: New Paths for Green Innovation

  Journal of Corporate Finance Research / Корпоративные Финансы | ISSN 2073-0438 · 2024-10-23 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  India is a fascinating example of an emerging economy which adapts the concept of innovation-based growth to its own specific economic and cultural context. Innovation in India has attracted growing interest among researchers, with a steady increase in the number of published works on the subject and in the number of their citations. The present paper provides a meta-review of the literature on the financing and management of innovation and green innovation in India. The novelty of the analysis is severalfold. Firstly, we highlight the coexistence of universal and India-specific features in the types of innovation and the practices of financing and management of innovation in the country. Secondly, the paper not only summarizes a range of bibliometric surveys and a large number of methodological and empirical papers on innovation in India, but also reviews a unique series of papers associated with the World Management Survey, which compare and contrast managerial practices in India with those in a large number of developed and emerging economies. Our analysis shows that India follows a number of universal approaches to the financing and management of innovation, and that parallels can be established between innovative IT companies in India and Japan. However, India uses many practices that are deemed inefficient in developed countries: the government, not the private sector, is the major supplier of R&D expenditure and green investment; family ownership is a driver of (not an obstacle to) innovation; there is a focus on low-income consumers; and cost-cutting rather than quality competition is the primary innovation technique. In conclusion, we link the India-specific innovation path to various opportunities for fostering green growth in the country.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Consumer heterogeneity and the use of cashless payments in Japan in 2007–2020: a latent class approach

  Applied Econometrics · 2024-01-01

  article

  The paper exploits ordered choice logit models with latent classes to account for unobservable consumer heterogeneity in analyzing the preferences for cashless payments in Japan for purchases of different sizes. Using the data of the Survey of Household Finance (2007–2020), we discover that consumers separate into classes of more and less frequent users of cashless payments for each category of purchases. The probability of belonging to the former class is positively related to the fact of consumer taking measures for the protection of their financial assets. The results reveal a statistically different effect of consumer socio‐demographic characteristics (sex, age, income, employment, education, household size), the binary variable for residence in a large city and Kanto region, and the dummies for 2019 and 2020 on the choice of cashless payments in the two latent classes.

  PublisherDOI

• Quantifying heterogeneity in the relationship between R&D intensity and growth at innovative Japanese firms: A quantile regression approach

  Applied Econometrics · 2022 · 5 citations

  • Econometrics
  • Economics
  • Business

  This paper focuses on innovative manufacturing firms in Japan in 2009–2020 and evaluates differences in the relationship between R&D intensity and firm growth. We use a longitudinal version of the conditional quantile regression model to estimate the augmented Gibrat’s law equation for each of four innovative industries: chemicals and allied products; electronic and other electrical equipment; industrial and commercial machinery and computer equipment; and transportation equipment. The analysis reveals statistical differences in estimated coefficients for R&D intensity across low, median and high-growth firms within each industry and across pairs of industries. The results imply the presence of different patterns of R&D effectiveness which are discussed in the light of R&D management drawing on the experience of Sony and other fast-growing Japanese electronics firms. We also discover heterogeneity in the impact on growth of the age and size of firms.

  PublisherDOI

• Implications for Regional Development Drawn from the Hometown Tax Donation System—Aiming to Produce Regional Entrepreneurship

  SpringerBriefs in economics · 2021-01-01

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  Hometown Tax Donation is a system where citizens donate to a region or regions they wish to endorse or support, and receive tax credit benefits in return. In effect, donors only pay 2000 yen out of their pockets. In addition, the system is a “bargain deal” since each municipality offers reciprocal gifts worth up to 30% of the donated amount, and donors essentially receive goods worth more than the 2000 yen they actually paid

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Regarding Measures by Rural Areas to Promote Migration and Settlement and Increase Associating Populations—Implications from Various Measures Triggered by Hometown Tax Donation

  SpringerBriefs in economics · 2021-01-01

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  The circulation of people, goods and capital is important in revitalizing rural areas. Hometown Tax Donation gifts have forged a scheme where rural areas secure capital by providing goods to the Tokyo metropolitan area and other urban areas. Ideally, however, rural areas should promote local specialties in the gift market (i.e., capture recognition), then obtain consumers in regular markets (i.e., capture real demand), and finally attract people to their region.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• With a View Toward Initiating Regional Entrepreneurship—Based on Data Analysis and Survey Research of Hometown Tax Donation Gift Providers

  SpringerBriefs in economics · 2021-01-01

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  The previous chapter examined several cases where local SMEs (i.e., gift providers) enhanced their business motivation or skills through providing gifts for Hometown Tax Donation, a system unlike conventional SME support policies. If similar cases can be found in other regions nationwide, this may offer political implications for creating an ecosystem that initiates much-needed regional entrepreneurship in Japan. To gain insight into elements necessary in fostering local businesses, this chapter introduces results of a survey that asked gift providers about the seeds of regional entrepreneurship deriving from Hometown Tax Donation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Analysis of Successful High-Funded Projects on Japanese Reward-Based Crowdfunding Platforms－Implications for Fundraising by Startups and SMEs as Evidenced through the Share of CF Projects by Overseas Firms and Large Corporation

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Elizabeth Closs Traugott

  Stanford University

  14 shared

• Takaaki Hoda

  11 shared

• Galina Besstremyannaya

  National Research University Higher School of Economics

  5 shared

• Dwight Bolinger

  4 shared

• Sergei Golovan

  New Economic School

  3 shared

• Eva Maria Grochowski

  Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering

  2 shared

• HB Chen

  2 shared

• Jim Sweeney

  1 shared

Labs

• Vice Provost for Student AffairsPI

Education

• Ph.D., Linguistics

  Stanford University

• M.A., Linguistics

  Stanford University

Awards & honors

• Foreign Minister's Commendation, Government of Japan (2023)
• Japan Economic Foundation. Tokyo. 2018