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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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International and Area Studies

Singapore Management University

Research Collection School Of Economics

2022

Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Associations Of The Covid-19 Pandemic With Older Individuals' Healthcare Utilization And Self-Reported Health Status: A Longitudinal Analysis From Singapore, Sangnam Ahn, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh Dec 2022

Associations Of The Covid-19 Pandemic With Older Individuals' Healthcare Utilization And Self-Reported Health Status: A Longitudinal Analysis From Singapore, Sangnam Ahn, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

Background: The COVID–19 pandemic has challenged the capacity of healthcare systems around the world and can potentially compromise healthcare utilization and health outcomes among non-COVID–19 patients. Objectives: To examine the associations of the COVID-19 pandemic with healthcare utilization, out-of-pocket medical costs, and perceived health among middle-aged and older individuals in Singapore. Method: Utilizing data collected from a monthly panel survey, a difference-in-differences approach was used to characterize monthly changes of healthcare use and spending and estimate the probability of being diagnosed with a chronic condition and self-reported health status before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. Subjects: Data were …

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Life Satisfaction Changes And Adaptation In The Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Singapore, Terence C. Cheng, Kim, Kanghyock Koh Dec 2022

Life Satisfaction Changes And Adaptation In The Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Singapore, Terence C. Cheng, Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

We provide novel evidence on how COVID-19 affected overall life satisfaction using a monthly longitudinal survey of middle-aged and older Singaporeans. We study how the subjective well-being of individuals evolves over the course of 18 months including the outbreak of the pandemic, the implementation of the lockdown and the spike of cases due to the delta variant in a country where COVID-19 is controlled in a sustained manner. Using an event-study design framework, we find large declines in overall life satisfaction in the lead-up to and following the lockdown. Fifteen months after the outbreak of the pandemic, and 13 months …

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Identifying Knowledge Spillovers From Universities: Quasi-Experimental Evidence From Urban China, Li Jing, Shimeng Liu, Yifan Wu Dec 2022

Identifying Knowledge Spillovers From Universities: Quasi-Experimental Evidence From Urban China, Li Jing, Shimeng Liu, Yifan Wu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the impact of universities on local innovation activity by exploiting a unique university expansion policy in China as a quasi-experiment. We take a geographic approach, empowered by geocoded data on patents and new products at the address level, to identify knowledge spillovers as an important channel. We obtain three main findings. First, university expansion significantly increases universities’ own innovation capacity, which results in a dramatic boom of local industry patents. Second, the impact of university expansion on local innovation activities attenuates sharply within 2 kilometers of the universities. Third, university expansion boosts nearby firms’ new products and …

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Made In Singapore, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen Oct 2022

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.

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The Exchange Rate System Reform In China: Some Important Results, Paul S. L. Yip, Yiu Kuen Tse, Yingjie Dong Aug 2022

The Exchange Rate System Reform In China: Some Important Results, Paul S. L. Yip, Yiu Kuen Tse, Yingjie Dong

Research Collection School Of Economics

We provide a review and empirical study on the exchange rate system reform in China. In the initial stage of the reform the Chinese central bank PBoC's implicit promise of gradual appreciation helped to contain the appreciation rate and volatility of the renminbi. Subsequently, under US pressure for faster appreciation and hence the PBoC's moderate violation of the implicit promise, there was a significant rise in the appreciation rate and the volatility of the renminbi. The moderate violation deteriorated further, forming a vicious cycle of speculative flows and faster exchange rate changes. Upon the onset of the global financial crisis …

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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 ley 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 …

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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 …

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Attenuation Of Agglomeration Economies: Evidence From The Universe Of Chinese Manufacturing Firms, Li Jing, Liyao Li, Shimeng Liu Jul 2022

Attenuation Of Agglomeration Economies: Evidence From The Universe Of Chinese Manufacturing Firms, Li Jing, Liyao Li, Shimeng Liu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper quantifies industry-specific spatial attenuation of agglomeration economies by taking advantage of unique geocoded administrative data on the universe of Chinese manufacturing firms. The estimates of industry-level attenuation speed further allow us to systematically assess the goodness of fit of various spatial decay functional forms and to evaluate the micro-foundations that govern the decay patterns across industries. We obtain three main findings. First, agglomeration spillovers attenuate by about 90 percent on average from 0-1 km to 1-5 km in China, with large heterogeneity in the extent of attenuation ranging from 73 percent to 116 percent across industries. Second, the …

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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 …

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Assessing Gender Parity In Intrahousehold Allocation Of Educational Resources: Evidence From Bangladesh, Sijia Xu, Abu S. Shonchoy, Tomoki Fujii Mar 2022

Assessing Gender Parity In Intrahousehold Allocation Of Educational Resources: Evidence From Bangladesh, Sijia Xu, Abu S. Shonchoy, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Gender parity in education—an important global development goal—has been primarily measured through school enrollment, and the gender parity in education quality has received limited attention until recently. We address this issue by highlighting the intrahousehold allocation of education expenditure. We extend the hurdle model into a three-part model to enable decomposition of households’ education decisions into enrollment, total education expenditure, and share of the total education expenditure on the core component, or items relating to the quality of education such as private tutoring. We apply this model to four rounds of nationally representative household surveys from Bangladesh, a country that …

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Short-Term Impact Of Covid-19 On Consumption Spending And Its Underlying Mechanisms: Evidence From Singapore, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Xuan Zhang Feb 2022

Short-Term Impact Of Covid-19 On Consumption Spending And Its Underlying Mechanisms: Evidence From Singapore, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Xuan Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine the short-term impact of COVID-19 on consumption spending and labor market outcomes. Using monthly panel data of individuals mainly aged 50–70 in Singapore, we find that COVID-19 reduced consumption spending and labor market outcomes immediately after its outbreak, and its negative impact quickly evolved. At its peak, the pandemic reduced total household consumption spending by 22.8% and labor income by 5.9% in April. Probability of full-time work also went down by 1.2 pp and 6.0 pp in April and May, respectively, but employment and self-employment were only mildly affected. Our heterogeneity analysis indicates that the reduction in consumption …

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Jue Insight: Migration, Transportation Infrastructure, And The Spatial Transmission Of Covid-19 In China, Bingjing Li, Lin Ma Jan 2022

Jue Insight: Migration, Transportation Infrastructure, And The Spatial Transmission Of Covid-19 In China, Bingjing Li, Lin Ma

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper evaluates the impacts of migration flows and transportation infrastructure on the spatial transmission of COVID-19 in China. Prefectures with larger bilateral migration flows and shorter travel distances with Hubei, the epicenter of the outbreak, experienced a wider spread of COVID-19. In addition, richer prefectures with higher incomes were better able to contain the virus at the early stages of community transmission. Using a spatial general equilibrium model, we show that around 28% of the infections outside Hubei province can be explained by the rapid development in transportation infrastructure and the liberalization of migration restrictions in the recent decade.

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Sustainable Strategies For Mass Rapid Transit Ppps, Sock Yong Phang, Bin Chye Tan Jan 2022

Sustainable Strategies For Mass Rapid Transit Ppps, Sock Yong Phang, Bin Chye Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Mass rapid transit (MRT) PPPs have proliferated in the past two decades. This chapter provides a framework to categorise and understand alternative PPP designs. As MRT systems are inherently large, unprofitable and risky projects, PPP design is critical to project success and sustainability. We study the experiences of MRT PPPs in London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Beijing to understand factors underlying success and failure and to arrive at policy recommendations for PPPs. Policymakers need to have additional governance improvement and risk mitigation measures in place when tied supply chains are utilised. Hong Kong’s experience illustrates that ‘Rail plus Property’ strategy …

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Rethinking The Role Of Employment Barriers In Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence From A Fixed Effects Analysis, Jian Qi Tan, Irene Y. H. Ng, Kong Weng Ho Jan 2022

Rethinking The Role Of Employment Barriers In Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence From A Fixed Effects Analysis, Jian Qi Tan, Irene Y. H. Ng, Kong Weng Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using a panel dataset from a five-wave survey of participants in Singapore’s Work Support Programme (WSP) from 2010 to 2016, we quantify the cumulative negative impact of facing multiple employment barriers and demonstrate the association between the individual stressors and labor market indicators. Using a fixed effects model to reduce the confounding effects of unobservables, we find that a one standard deviation increase in the number of employment barriers brings about a 2.7 to 3.5 percentage point increase in the probability of being unemployed and a 58 SGD to 78 SGD decrease in individual earnings.

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