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Bubbly Booms And Welfare, Feng Dong, Yang Jiao, Haoning Sun Jul 2024

Bubbly Booms And Welfare, Feng Dong, Yang Jiao, Haoning Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

We show the competing effects of a housing bubble on the real economy by developing a multi-sector dynamic model with housing production. On the one hand, firms can sell or collateralize their housing, so a housing bubble helps firms obtain credit to finance their investment and expand production. On the other hand, a boom in the housing sector crowds out labor in the non-housing sector. We show that housing booms can reduce social welfare both in the steady state and in the transitional dynamics only when the production externalities in the non-housing sector are sufficiently large. We quantitatively evaluate our …


Housing Fever In Australia 2020-23: Insights From An Econometric Thermometer, Shuping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips Sep 2023

Housing Fever In Australia 2020-23: Insights From An Econometric Thermometer, Shuping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

Australian housing markets experienced widespread and, in some cases, extraordinary growth in prices between 2020 and 2023. Using recently developed methodology that accounts for fundamental economic drivers, we assess the existence and degree of speculative behaviour, as well as the timing of exuberance and downturns in these markets. Our findings indicate that speculative behaviour was indeed present in six of the eight capital cities at some time over the period studied. The sequence of events in this nation-wide housing bubble began in the Brisbane market and concluded in Melbourne, Canberra, and Hobart following the interest rate rise implemented by the …


The Impact Of Upzoning On Housing Construction In Auckland*, Ryan Greenaway-Mcgrevy, Peter C. B. Phillips Jul 2023

The Impact Of Upzoning On Housing Construction In Auckland*, Ryan Greenaway-Mcgrevy, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

There is a growing debate about whether upzoning is an effective policy response to housing shortages and unaffordable housing. This paper provides empirical evidence to further inform debate by examining the various impacts of recently implemented zoning reforms on housing construction in Auckland, the largest metropolitan area in New Zealand. In 2016, the city upzoned approximately three quarters of its residential land to facilitate construction of more intensive housing. We use a quasi-experimental approach to analyze the short-run impacts of the reform on construction, allowing for potential shifts in construction from non-upzoned to upzoned areas (displacement effects) that would, if …


Disagreement In Market Index Options, Guilherme Salome, George Tauchen, Jia Li Jun 2023

Disagreement In Market Index Options, Guilherme Salome, George Tauchen, Jia Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

We generate new evidence on disagreement among traders in the S&P 500 options market from high-frequency intraday price and volume data. Inference on disagreement is based on a model where investors observe public information but agree to disagree on its interpretation; disagreement among investors is captured by the volume–volatility elasticity. For options, there are two natural variables related to disagreement: moneyness and tenor, which we relate to disagreement about the distribution of the market index at different quantiles and times. The estimated volume–volatility elasticity equals unity for options near the money and close to expiration, which is consistent with the …


Price Comovement And Market Segmentation Of Chinese A- And H-Shares: Evidence From A Panel Latent-Factor Model, Yingjie Dong, Wenxin Huang, Yiu Kuen Tse Mar 2023

Price Comovement And Market Segmentation Of Chinese A- And H-Shares: Evidence From A Panel Latent-Factor Model, Yingjie Dong, Wenxin Huang, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper examines the price comovement of cross-listed Chinese A- and H-shares using a panel model with latent factors and a heterogeneous long-run structure. Our model is more flexible than the cointegration system and is estimated using the data-driven Cup–Lasso method. The long-run H-share price discounts are heterogeneous across different groups of stocks. We have identified both stationary and nonstationary latent factors in the price differentials, which are driven by different economic variables. By analyzing the factor loadings of the nonstationary latent factor, we identify some trading-friction and information-friction variables that have effects on the price convergence between the A- …


R&D Subsidies In Permissive And Restrictive Environment: Evidence From Korea, Yumi Koh, Gea M. Lee Jan 2023

R&D Subsidies In Permissive And Restrictive Environment: Evidence From Korea, Yumi Koh, Gea M. Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the extent to which a regulatory environment for R&D subsidies shapes the magnitude and direction of R&D subsidies set by a government and consequent innovation paths. When the WTO adopted a permissive regulatory environment, we find that the Korean government increased R&D subsidies significantly (89.21%) and selectively so for firms and industries with higher returns. Recipient firms conducted less basic research and more development research. Improvements in innovations were mostly incremental and minor. However, such changes did not persist once the WTO switched to a restrictive regulatory environment. Our findings show that the regulatory environment imposed by …


What, Why And How Financial Development Matters: Evidence Of Asean-5, Asia-5 And Oecd-7 Economies, Swee Liang Tan Jul 2022

What, Why And How Financial Development Matters: Evidence Of Asean-5, Asia-5 And Oecd-7 Economies, Swee Liang Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper analyzed the association between bank and capital markets financial development with income per capita in three regions; ASEAN-5 economies (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia), Asia-5 (Japan, China, Hong Kong SAR, South Korea, and India), and OECD-7 (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, UK, and US) from 2000 to 2017 using panel data regressions. A key lesson ASEAN-5 can learn from Asia-5 and OECD-7 experience is that bank size does matter despite digital disruptions to their banking system; yet large financial structure that favors banks is negatively associated with Asia-5, and importantly, efficient banking system (not bank size alone) is …


Labor Market Institutions And The Incidence Of Payroll Taxation, Jinyoung Kim, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh May 2022

Labor Market Institutions And The Incidence Of Payroll Taxation, Jinyoung Kim, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

Despite the unambiguous predictions of the canonical model of a competitive labor market, empirical studies of the labor market effects of payroll taxation provide conflicting evidence. We estimate the labor market impacts of payroll taxation in Singapore, the country with the most competitive and flexible labor market among the countries investigated in the literature. By exploiting the sharp reduction in payroll tax rate when workers turn 60, we find that the reduced payroll tax rate in Singapore has a large effect on wages without changes in employment. Our meta-analysis shows consistent evidence that varying degrees of labor market competitiveness across …


Housing Wealth Shocks, Home Equity Withdrawal, And The Claiming Of Social Security Retirement Benefits, Naqun Huang, Li Jing, Amanda Ross Apr 2022

Housing Wealth Shocks, Home Equity Withdrawal, And The Claiming Of Social Security Retirement Benefits, Naqun Huang, Li Jing, Amanda Ross

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper examines the impact of changes in house prices on when eligible individuals start receiving Social Security benefits. If house prices increase, financially constrained households may draw upon the additional home equity to finance expenses and delay receipt of Social Security in order to have increased lifetime monthly benefits. To address concerns that house price changes are correlated with unobserved local demand shocks, we use a control function approach and employ two different instrumental variables. We find that individuals delay Social Security claiming when house prices increase during the housing boom. The probability of claiming within two years after …


Forced Moves And Home Maintenance: The Amplifying Effects Of Mortgage Payment Burden On Underwater Homeowners, John Harding, Li Jing, Stuart Rosenthal, Xirui Zhang Mar 2022

Forced Moves And Home Maintenance: The Amplifying Effects Of Mortgage Payment Burden On Underwater Homeowners, John Harding, Li Jing, Stuart Rosenthal, Xirui Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Although the adverse effect of high loan to value ratios (LTV) on mortgage default is known, the potential amplifying effect of high payment-to-income (PTI) ratios that can force families out of their homes has received limited attention. High PTI and LTV can also add to default costs by discouraging home maintenance. Using the 1985-2013 AHS panel, we show that high PTI prompts families to move and especially so for households with LTV above 120%. This lends support for policies like HAMP and HARP that seek to reduce forced moves and mortgage default by lowering mortgage payment burden for financially stressed …


Forecasting Equity Index Volatility By Measuring The Linkage Among Component Stocks, Yue Qiu, Tian Xie, Jun Yu, Qiankun Zhou Jan 2022

Forecasting Equity Index Volatility By Measuring The Linkage Among Component Stocks, Yue Qiu, Tian Xie, Jun Yu, Qiankun Zhou

Research Collection School Of Economics

The linkage among the realized volatilities of component stocks is important when modeling and forecasting the relevant index volatility. In this article, the linkage is measured via an extended Common Correlated Effects (CCEs) approach under a panel heterogeneous autoregression model where unobserved common factors in errors are assumed. Consistency of the CCE estimator is obtained. The common factors are extracted using the principal component analysis. Empirical studies show that realized volatility models exploiting the linkage effects lead to significantly better out-of-sample forecast performance, for example, an up to 32% increase in the pseudo R2. We also conduct various forecasting exercises …


Vat Treatment Of The Financial Services: Implications For The Real Economy, Ismail Baydur, Fatih Yilmaz Dec 2021

Vat Treatment Of The Financial Services: Implications For The Real Economy, Ismail Baydur, Fatih Yilmaz

Research Collection School Of Economics

Financial institutions are exempt from the value-added tax (VAT) in most countries. We develop a general equilibrium model with endogenous firm entry and a banking sector to accommodate three key distortions related to exempt treatment: (i) self-supply bias in the banking sector, (ii) under-taxation of payment services, and (iii) input distortions in the business sector and tax cascading. We calibrate our model to the average of Germany, France, and the UK data. Our results show that repealing exempt treatment always increases tax revenues. However, welfare gains occur only at low VAT rates due to the hump-shaped VAT Laffer curve.


Subway, Collaborative Matching, And Innovation, Yumi Koh, Li Jing, Jianhuan Xu Dec 2021

Subway, Collaborative Matching, And Innovation, Yumi Koh, Li Jing, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Expansion of subway networks helps to enhance connectivity and matches of people by facilitating their mobility. Using rapid expansion of the Beijing subway from 2000 to 2018, we analyze its impact on collaborative matches in innovations. We find that an hour reduction in travel time between a pair of locations in Beijing brought a 15% to 38% increase in collaborated patents. Far-apart location pairs were more affected, and the local average treatment effect is approximately 35% to 82%. Such effect is mainly driven by increased matches among highly productive inventors due to complementarity between inventors’ productivity and travel time. At …


Entrepreneurship In Singapore, Jungho Lee Sep 2021

Entrepreneurship In Singapore, Jungho Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

Singapore has completed its catch-up growth phase and needs to find a new growth engine. Entrepreneurship can contribute to a nation’s productivity growth. The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, a theoretical framework is presented, along with empirical evidence, to understand government interventions aimed at boosting entrepreneurship. Second, using the framework, the chapter discusses whether Singapore’s current policies are suitable for helping entrepreneurship. The theory demonstrates four reasons why government intervention is needed: (1) resource misallocation, (2) positive externality, (3) entrepreneurial human capital, and (4) tax and default policies. Singapore’s government has implemented various policies that potentially fix market …


Government Support For Smes In Response To Covid-19: Theoretical Model Using Wang Transform, Shaun Shuxun Wang, Jing Rong Goh, Didier Sornette, He Wang, Esther Yang Jul 2021

Government Support For Smes In Response To Covid-19: Theoretical Model Using Wang Transform, Shaun Shuxun Wang, Jing Rong Goh, Didier Sornette, He Wang, Esther Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Purpose: Many governments are taking measures in support of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to mitigate the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. This paper presents a theoretical model for evaluating various government measures, including insurance for bank loans, interest rate subsidy, bridge loans and relief of tax burdens. Design/methodology/approach: This paper distinguishes a firm's intrinsic value and book value, where a firm can lose its intrinsic value when it encounters cash-flow crunch. Wang transform is applied to (1) calculating the appropriate level of interest rate subsidy payable to incentivize banks to issue more loans to SMEs and to extend …


Hedonic Price Of Housing Space, Sumit Agarwal, Yanying Chen, Li Jing, Yi Jin Tan Jul 2021

Hedonic Price Of Housing Space, Sumit Agarwal, Yanying Chen, Li Jing, Yi Jin Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This article estimates hedonic prices for different levels of housing space, by exploiting a unique space‐adding project in Singapore that added a uniform amount of space to each existing housing unit regardless of the original size. This space adding program was carried out if sufficient residents vote in favor of space adding. Using a difference‐in‐differences (DiD) strategy after restricting our sample to narrow margins around the voting cutoff, we find that the additional space increased the resale price of a housing unit by 7% on average, and the extent of price appreciation varied significantly across the original size of the …


Public Health Insurance And Pharmaceutical Innovation: Evidence From China, Xuan Zhang, Huihua Nie Jan 2021

Public Health Insurance And Pharmaceutical Innovation: Evidence From China, Xuan Zhang, Huihua Nie

Research Collection School Of Economics

Developing countries are characterized by low levels of pharmaceutical innovation. A likely reason is their small market size, which is not because of the population size but because of low levels of income and lack of health insurance coverage. This study exploits a natural experiment from the implementation of a public health insurance program for rural residents in China (New Cooperative Medical Scheme [NCMS]) to examine whether the pharmaceutical industry increases innovation regarding diseases covered by the NCMS that are prevalent in rural areas. We examine the 1993–2009 patent data to gauge pharmaceutical innovation in China. Diseases with a 10% …


Informal Institutions And Comparative Advantage Of South-Based Mnes: Theory And Evidence, Pao-Li Chang, Yuting Chen Jan 2021

Informal Institutions And Comparative Advantage Of South-Based Mnes: Theory And Evidence, Pao-Li Chang, Yuting Chen

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper builds a theory based on “informal institutions” to characterize the comparative advantage of South-based MNEs. MNEs headquartered in countries with poorer state institutions are shown to endogenously invest more in firm-specific institutional capital to compensate for the lack of state institutions, and as an optimal response, undertake FDI in countries with weaker institutions. We conduct an extensive test of the theory using worldwide firm-level greenfield FDI flows during 2009–2016, employing (among others) variations in the interaction of prevalence of informal institutions at home and state institutional qualities of host countries, as well as heterogeneity across sectors and firms …


Housing Equity And Household Consumption In Retirement: Evidence From The Singapore Life Panel©, Lipeng Chen, Liang Jiang, Sock Yong Phang, Jun Yu Nov 2020

Housing Equity And Household Consumption In Retirement: Evidence From The Singapore Life Panel©, Lipeng Chen, Liang Jiang, Sock Yong Phang, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Housing affordability for elderly homeowners involves an entirely different set of issues as compared to housing affordability for first-time homeowners. To afford to ‘age-in-place’ may require homeowners to access channels that enable them to withdraw their housing equity to finance consumption in retirement. We utilize data from the Singapore Life Panel© survey to empirically investigate the impact of housing equity on the consumption of elderly households. Based on panel analysis, we find housing equity value has no significant impact on non-durable consumption for elderly people. The conclusion holds for a battery of robustness checks. Moreover, heterogeneity analyses based on subsamples …


A Taxonomy Of Non-Dictatorial Domains, Shurojit Chatterji, Huaxia Zeng Oct 2020

A Taxonomy Of Non-Dictatorial Domains, Shurojit Chatterji, Huaxia Zeng

Research Collection School Of Economics

We provide an exhaustive classification of all preference domains that allow the design of unanimous social choice functions (henceforth, rules) that are non-dictatorial and strategy-proof. This taxonomy is based on a richness assumption and employs a simple property of two-voter rules called invariance. The preference domains that form the classification are semi-single-peaked domains (introduced by Chatterji et al. (2013)) and semi-hybrid domains (introduced here) which are two appropriate weakenings of the single-peaked domains, and which, more importantly, are shown to allow strategy-proof rules to depend on non-peak information of voters’ preferences. As a refinement of the classification, single-peaked domains and …


Made In Singapore, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen Oct 2020

Made In Singapore, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we characterize the position of Singapore in global value chains and identify Singapore’s key upstream and downstream trade partners. We trace how the position of Singapore in global value chains has changed in the past two decades: whether it has moved upstream or downstream, how involved it is in global value chains, how its trend compares with the other major Asian exporters (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong), and which key sectors of Singapore play a major role in these global trade networks.


Capital Controls And Macro-Prudential Housing Policies In Small Open Economies, Taojun Xie, Guay C. Lim, Hwee Kwan Chow Sep 2020

Capital Controls And Macro-Prudential Housing Policies In Small Open Economies, Taojun Xie, Guay C. Lim, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

We evaluate the effects of capital controls and macro-prudential policies in small open economies with a housing sector that is open to foreign ownership. The work is motivated by concerns that foreign investments also respond to housing investment opportunities resulting in potential house price inflation and issues about housing affordability. Our dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model features housing as an internationally traded investment. We also consider macro-prudential policies that are combinations of monetary and fiscal instruments. We investigate whether foreign investments in the housing markets are de-stabilising and whether there are appropriate policy responses to mitigate the negative effects of …


Estimating The Benefits And Costs Of Forming Business Partnerships, Jungho Lee Jun 2020

Estimating The Benefits And Costs Of Forming Business Partnerships, Jungho Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

I estimate a matching model of business‐partnership formation to quantify the relative importance of productivity gains, financing gains, and the coordination failure of effort provision (moral hazard) among partners. Productivity gains account for 61% of the gain from the observed partnerships. For partners in the first quartile of the wealth distribution, however, financing accounts for 93% of the gain. The cost of moral hazard corresponds to 42% of the entire gain from partnerships. A loan policy specifically targeting partnerships is less effective in improving welfare than a conventional loan policy that provides loans to individual entrepreneurs.


A Demand And Supply Game Exploring Global Supply Chains, Bei Hong Nov 2019

A Demand And Supply Game Exploring Global Supply Chains, Bei Hong

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this article, the author describes a classroom experiment in which participants make decisions to achieve the lowest-cost production. Student volunteers acting as smartphone companies are provided with confidential information representing their own cost of production and are asked to make trade decisions to form a supply chain at the lowest possible cost. This interactive classroom experiment facilitates an understanding and appreciation of the basic demand and supply model. Students also explore the motivations, facilitators, and impediments of global supply chains. Suggestions are made to expand the game by incorporating more sophisticated models of the global supply chain, and also …


Forecasting Realized Volatility Using A Nonnegative Semiparametric Model, Anders Eriksson, Daniel P. A. Preve, Jun Yu Sep 2019

Forecasting Realized Volatility Using A Nonnegative Semiparametric Model, Anders Eriksson, Daniel P. A. Preve, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper introduces a parsimonious and yet flexible semiparametric model to forecastfinancial volatility. The new model extends a related linear nonnegative autoregressive modelpreviously used in the volatility literature by way of a power transformation. It is semiparametric inthe sense that the distributional and functional form of its error component is partially unspecified.The statistical properties of the model are discussed and a novel estimation method is proposed.Simulation studies validate the new method and suggest that it works reasonably well in finitesamples. The out-of-sample forecasting performance of the proposed model is evaluated against anumber of standard models, using data on S&P 500 …


Tax Uncertainty And Business Activity, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu Jun 2019

Tax Uncertainty And Business Activity, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate the extent to which uncertainties about tax policies affect business activities. We develop a statewide tax-uncertainty measure (TU measure) and show that it captures state corporate tax uncertainty. By comparing adjacent counties across state borders, we show that increasing tax uncertainty by one standard deviation (a 30% increase in the TU measure) leads to a 0.17% point per-year decrease in the growth rate of establishments over two years. The result holds after conducting a variety of robustness checks and is not likely to be driven by general state-policy uncertainties.


Global Value Chains And The Cptpp, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen Jun 2019

Global Value Chains And The Cptpp, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Economics

The CPTPP, or the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, is an example of a “mega-regional” free trade agreement, whose provisions on the rules of origin and trade facilitation can have potentially large impacts on the CPTPP-wide supply chains. In this paper, we investigate whether the CPTPP members are key upstream and downstream trade partners to each other in the global value chains. We develop formulas of bilateral upstreamness and downstreamness, based on the gross-export decomposition framework of Koopman, Wang and Wei (2014) and Borin and Mancini (2017). We demonstrate how the decomposition of gross exports can be used …


Marginal Cost Of Risk-Based Capital And Risk-Taking, Tao Chen, Jing Rong Goh, Shinichi Kamiya, Pingyi Lou Jun 2019

Marginal Cost Of Risk-Based Capital And Risk-Taking, Tao Chen, Jing Rong Goh, Shinichi Kamiya, Pingyi Lou

Research Collection School Of Economics

We explore the impact of capital adequacy requirements on financial institutions' risk-taking behavior from a novel perspective. Specifically, we show that an important feature of the risk-based capital (RBC) system a built-in diversification benefit in aggregating risk categories induces moral hazard. We find that insurers that face lower marginal RBC costs of fixed-income (FI) investment tend to purchase riskier Fl securities. This relationship holds even when lower marginal RBC costs result from increased risk in other risk categories, which is an unintended consequence of the RBC's square root rule. Using Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy as exogenous shocks to the RBC …


Housing Equity And Household Consumption In Retirement: Evidence From The Singapore Life Panel, Lipeng Chen, Liang Jiang, Sock Yong Phang, Jun Yu May 2019

Housing Equity And Household Consumption In Retirement: Evidence From The Singapore Life Panel, Lipeng Chen, Liang Jiang, Sock Yong Phang, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We utilize data from the Singapore Life Panel© survey to empirically investigate the impact of housing equity on consumption of elderly households. Based on panel analysis, we find housing equity value has no significant impact on non-durable consumption for elderly people. The conclusion holds for a battery of robustness check. Moreover, heterogeneity analyses based on subsamples by age of household head, house type, and number of property possessed also show no significant impact of housing equity on consumption in general. Finally, we use scenario analysis to study the Lease Buyback Scheme (LBS), a novel housing equity monetization scheme which allows …


Optimal Social Insurance With Informal Child Care, Christine Ho Mar 2019

Optimal Social Insurance With Informal Child Care, Christine Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

The possibility of engaging in household child care may exacerbate the incentives of parents and grandparents to falsely claim disability benefits as households also get to save on formal child care costs. This paper considers a multi-generational family model with persistence in privately observed shocks and presents an efficient implementation case for subsidizing formal child care costs of the disabled. An implementation of the optimal scheme that consists of capped formal day care subsidies, non-linear income taxation and asset-testing is proposed. Simulations based on a parametrization that targets key features of the US labor and child care markets suggest that …