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Articles 1 - 30 of 86
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Within-Development Density And Housing Prices In Singapore, Eric Fesselmeyer, Haoming Liu, Louisa Poco
Within-Development Density And Housing Prices In Singapore, Eric Fesselmeyer, Haoming Liu, Louisa Poco
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This paper measures how much more households pay for less density in their immediate surroundings. Using transaction and administrative data and exploiting the introduction of a regulation that restricted the number of housing units for certain land lots, we find that households discount density: a 10% increase in within-development density decreases the price per square meter by 5%. Further, the mean price per square meter of the average development increased by 1%–3% after the regulation was introduced, while the amount of built-up space remained constant. The increase in total revenue suggests developers may underestimate the externality caused by density.
Good Names Beget Favors: The Impact Of Country Image On Trade Flows And Welfare, Pao-Li Chang, Tomoki Fujii, Wei Jin
Good Names Beget Favors: The Impact Of Country Image On Trade Flows And Welfare, Pao-Li Chang, Tomoki Fujii, Wei Jin
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper estimates the effects of time-varying consumer preference bias on trade flows and welfare. We use a unique data set from the BBC World Service Poll, which surveys (annually during 2005–2017 with some gaps) the populations of a wide array of countries on their views of whether an evaluated country is having a mainly positive or negative influence in the world. We identify the effects on consumer preference parameters due to shifts in these country image perceptions and quantify their general equilibrium effects on bilateral exports and welfare (each time for an evaluated exporting country, holding the exporting country’s …
Housing Wealth Shocks, Home Equity Withdrawal, And The Claiming Of Social Security Retirement Benefits, Naqun Huang, Li Jing, Amanda Ross
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 …
The Case Of Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow, Kong Weng Ho
The Case Of Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow, Kong Weng Ho
Research Collection School of Economics
The economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Singapore was more severe and protracted than the global financial crisis. Singapore responded with easing of the monetary policy stance, reinforcing financial stability, helping individuals to reduce debt obligations, easing business cashflow constraints, adjusting financial regulatory and supervisory protocols to cope with immediate challenges, and enabling the financial sectors to build long-term capabilities. Fiscal responses were unprecedented with four consecutive budgets and two ministerial statements, initially focusing on immediate assistance in respect of jobs, businesses, households, and later refined to providing more sector-specific assistance as the pandemic evolved with more detailed information …
Sustainable Strategies For Mass Rapid Transit Ppps, Sock Yong Phang, Bin Chye Tan
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 …
The Importance Of Considering Debt And Young Children In Activation: A Survival Analysis Of Return To Welfare, Irene N. Y. Ng, Jian Qi Tan, Mathews Mathew, Kong Weng Ho, Yi Ting Ting
The Importance Of Considering Debt And Young Children In Activation: A Survival Analysis Of Return To Welfare, Irene N. Y. Ng, Jian Qi Tan, Mathews Mathew, Kong Weng Ho, Yi Ting Ting
Research Collection School Of Economics
While there has been much research on welfare exit and entry into employment, less research has looked at return to government assistance. Applying survival analysis on data from a national government assistance programme in Singapore, we found two important factors of welfare return to which activation programmes need to pay greater attention. First, return was more likely if former beneficiaries accumulated a higher number of types of arrears rather than higher dollar values of arrears. This new finding contributes to the emerging literature on bandwidth tax, and suggests the importance of designing programmes that relieve mental accounting due to debt …
Providing Childcare, Christine Ho, Sunha Myong
Providing Childcare, Christine Ho, Sunha Myong
Research Collection School Of Economics
Women’s economic empowerment has been hailed as one of the most remarkable revolutions in the past 50 years. Yet, women still face the lion’s share of the burden of childcare despite major progress in their education and earnings capacity. This is particularly salient in many Asian countries. This chapter proposes a synthesis of the state of knowledge on childcare and discusses policy-relevant issues applicable to the Singapore context. Selected policies are documented and lessons from the international landscape are discussed. Raising children incurs both direct costs in the form of childcare and opportunity costs in the form of career costs. …
Jobs For Justice(S): Corruption In The Supreme Court Of India, Madhav S. Aney, Shubhankar Dam, Giovanni Ko
Jobs For Justice(S): Corruption In The Supreme Court Of India, Madhav S. Aney, Shubhankar Dam, Giovanni Ko
Research Collection School Of Economics
We investigate whether judicial decisions are affected by career concerns of judges by analyzing two questions: Do judges respond to incentives to pander by ruling in favor of the government in the hope of receiving jobs after retiring from the Supreme Court? Does the government reward judges who rule in its favor with prestigious jobs? We construct a data set of Supreme Court of India cases involving the government for 1999–2014. We find that incentives to pander have a causal effect on judicial decision-making, and they are jointly determined by the importance of the case and whether the judge retires …
On Incentive Compatible, Individually Rational Public Good Provision Mechanisms, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang
On Incentive Compatible, Individually Rational Public Good Provision Mechanisms, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper characterizes mechanisms satisfying incentive compatibility and individual rationality in the classical public good provision problem. Many papers in the literature obtain the results in the so-called standard model of ex ante identical agents with a continuous, closed interval of types. The main contribution of this paper is the characterization of the budget-surplus maximizing mechanism satisfying incentive compatibility and individual rationality (Theorem 1 for Bayesian implementation and Theorem 3 for dominant strategy implementation) that applies to a finite discretization over the standard model. Making use of the proposed budget-surplus maximizing mechanisms, we show that some known results do not …
Housing Equity And Household Consumption In Retirement: Evidence From The Singapore Life Panel©, Lipeng Chen, Liang Jiang, Sock Yong Phang, Jun Yu
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 …
Is Predicted Data A Viable Alternative To Real Data?, Tomoki Fujii, Roy Van Der Weide
Is Predicted Data A Viable Alternative To Real Data?, Tomoki Fujii, Roy Van Der Weide
Research Collection School Of Economics
It is costly to collect the household- and individual-level data that underlies official estimates of poverty and health. For this reason, developing countries often do not have the budget to update their estimates of poverty and health regularly, even though these estimates are most needed there. One way to reduce the financial burden is to substitute some of the real data with predicted data. An approach referred to as double sampling collects the expensive outcome variable for a sub-sample only while collecting the covariates used for prediction for the full sample. The objective of this study is to determine if …
Building An Equitable And Inclusive City Through Housing Policies: Singapore’S Experience, Sock Yong Phang
Building An Equitable And Inclusive City Through Housing Policies: Singapore’S Experience, Sock Yong Phang
Research Collection School Of Economics
Inequality is an age-old concern. In recent years, the rise of income inequality has received worldwide media and policy attention, beginning with the Occupy movement of 2011-2012 and a wave of notable scholastic books such as Stiglitz (2012), Piketty (2014), and Atkinson (2015). Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, an unlikely bestseller, contained a vast amount of data showing that the rich are taking rising shares of income and wealth in the advanced economies. Piketty’s approach towards capital and wealth is an aggregative one, and he does not treat real estate or land as a different or distinct form of …
The Impact Of In-House Unnatural Death On Property Values: Evidence From Hong Kong, Zheng Chang, Jing Li
The Impact Of In-House Unnatural Death On Property Values: Evidence From Hong Kong, Zheng Chang, Jing Li
Research Collection School Of Economics
The occurrence of in-house unnatural death could negatively affect the value of housing property. This study evaluates the geographic and temporal scope of the impact of unnatural death on property values in Hong Kong. By exploiting the spatial and intertemporal variation of the shock in a difference-in-differences approach, we find significant negative externalities of unnatural death incidence on neighborhood housing values. On average, units in which an unnatural death occurred experience a 25% drop in value following the death. Nearby units on the same floor also show a significant price drop of 4.5%. Prices of units on other floors of …
Strategic Sequential Bidding For Government Land Auction Sales – Evidence From Singapore, Sumit Agarwal, Jing Li, Ernie Teo, Alan Cheong
Strategic Sequential Bidding For Government Land Auction Sales – Evidence From Singapore, Sumit Agarwal, Jing Li, Ernie Teo, Alan Cheong
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper studies the extent to which equilibrium auction prices are pushed up sequentially due to strategic bidding behaviors in government land auction sales. Using a unique dataset that covers the universe of tendering prices submitted by all developers for all residential land auction sales in Singapore, we find that a tenderer’s bids are significantly higher where there was a previous land parcel sold within two years and located within four kilometers. The elevated price margin decreases with time and geographic distance. Tracking sequential bids submitted by same developers over time, we find that the incumbent winner of a previous …
The Role Of Royalties In Resource Extraction Contracts, Robert F. Conrad, Robert Bryce Hool, Denis Nekipelov
The Role Of Royalties In Resource Extraction Contracts, Robert F. Conrad, Robert Bryce Hool, Denis Nekipelov
Research Collection School Of Economics
The manner in which governments charge mineral resource producers has been the subject of considerable debate. Income-based charges such as resource rent taxes have been advocated on the theory that royalties and other output-based charges create inefficiency by distorting production decisions. Using a principal-agent approach to resource contracts, separating asset ownership from asset use, we demonstrate that royalties can be efficient under conditions of certainty and also when there is uncertainty and asymmetric information. Royalties serve a key pricing purpose, signaling the marginal impact of extraction on the residual value of reserves and surrounding land or sea.
Policy Innovations For Affordable Housing In Singapore: From Colony To Global City, Sock Yong Phang
Policy Innovations For Affordable Housing In Singapore: From Colony To Global City, Sock Yong Phang
Research Collection School Of Economics
Global cities today are facing fundamental challenges in relation to unaffordable housing and growing economic inequality. Singapore’s success in making home ownership possible for 90% of its population has attracted much attention internationally. This book represents a culmination of research by the author on key housing policy innovations for affordable housing. Housing policy changes were effected in the 1960s through reforms of colonial legislation and institutions dealing with state land acquisition, public housing, and provident fund savings. The comprehensive housing framework that was established enabled the massive resettlement of households from shophouses, slums and villages to high-rise government-built flats. In …
Urban Rail Transit Ppps: Lessons From East Asian Cities, Zheng Chang, Sock Yong Phang
Urban Rail Transit Ppps: Lessons From East Asian Cities, Zheng Chang, Sock Yong Phang
Research Collection School Of Economics
Private sector participation in urban rail transit has proliferated in the past two decades. The large metropolises of East Asia have had decades of experience with private sector participation in the provision of heavy metro services. The design of these public–private partnerships (PPP) are varied. The diverse experiences of Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Beijing contain valuable lessons for other cities. Using a case study approach, this paper discusses three features of urban rail transitdevelopments in the context of East Asian cities, viz., farebox recovery, land value capture mechanisms, and vertical structure of the industry. Super vertical integration between rail …
Determinants Of Urban Land Supply In China: How Do Political Factors Matter?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Xiaolu Li, Yang Tang, Jing Wu
Determinants Of Urban Land Supply In China: How Do Political Factors Matter?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Xiaolu Li, Yang Tang, Jing Wu
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper explores two political factors for their potential effects on urban land supply in China: corruption, and competition for promotion. We find that standard urban economic predictions hold in the sense that both population and income increases are strongly significant determinants for the increase in urban land supply. Conditional on these demand-side factors, we find that the usage of two-stage auctions (as a proxy for corruption) is highly correlated with the increase in land supply. The corruption effects are strongest for commercial land, followed by residential land and then industrial land. To shed light on the competition motives among …
Determinants Of Urban Land Supply In People's Republic Of China: How Do Political Factors Matter?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Xiaolu Li, Yang Tang, Jing Wu
Determinants Of Urban Land Supply In People's Republic Of China: How Do Political Factors Matter?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Xiaolu Li, Yang Tang, Jing Wu
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper explores whether and how corruption and competition-for-promotion motives affect urban land supply in the People's Republic of China. Conditional on demand-side factors, we find that corruption is highly correlated with an increase in land supply. The corruption effects are strongest for commercial land, followed by residential land, and then industrial land. To shed light on the competition motives among prefectural leaders, we examine how the number of years in office affects land supply and distinguish among different hypotheses. Our empirical results show robust rising trends in land sales. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that among prefectural …
Housing Policies In Singapore, Phang Sock Yong, Matthias Helble
Housing Policies In Singapore, Phang Sock Yong, Matthias Helble
Research Collection School of Economics
Singapore has developed a unique housing system, with three-quarters of its housing stock built by the Housing & Development Board (HDB) and homeownership financed through Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings. As a result, the country’s homeownership rate of 90% is one of the highest among market economies. At different stages of its economic development, the Government of Singapore was faced with a different set of housing problems. An integrated land–housing supply and financing framework was established in the 1960s to solve the severe housing shortage. By the 1990s, the challenge was that of renewing aging estates and creating a market …
Is Predicted Data A Viable Alternative To Real Data?, Tomoki Fujii, Roy Van Der Weide
Is Predicted Data A Viable Alternative To Real Data?, Tomoki Fujii, Roy Van Der Weide
Research Collection School Of Economics
It is costly to collect the household- and individual-level data that underlies official estimates of poverty and health. For this reason, developing countries often do not have the budget to update their estimates of poverty and health regularly, even though these estimates are most needed there. One way to reduce the financial burden is to substitute some of the real data with predicted data. An approach referred to as double sampling collects the expensive outcome variable for a sub-sample only while collecting the covariates used for prediction for the full sample. The objective of this study is to determine if …
Is Predicted Data A Viable Alternative To Real Data?, Tomoki Fujii, Roy Van Der Weide
Is Predicted Data A Viable Alternative To Real Data?, Tomoki Fujii, Roy Van Der Weide
Research Collection School Of Economics
It is costly to collect the household- andindividual-level data that underlies official estimates of poverty and health. Forthis reason, developing countries often do not have the budget to update their estimatesof poverty and health regularly, even though these estimates are most neededthere. One way to reduce the financial burden is to substitute some of the realdata with predicted data. An approach referred to as double sampling collectsthe expensive outcome variable for a sub-sample only while collecting thecovariates used for prediction for the full sample. The objective of this studyis to determine if this would indeed allow for realizing meaningful reductionsin …
Incense Burning During Pregnancy And Birth Weight And Head Circumference Among Term Births: The Taiwan Birth Cohort Study, Le-Yu Chen, Christine Ho
Incense Burning During Pregnancy And Birth Weight And Head Circumference Among Term Births: The Taiwan Birth Cohort Study, Le-Yu Chen, Christine Ho
Research Collection School Of Economics
Incense burning for rituals or religious purposes is an important tradition in many countries. However, incense smoke contains particulate matter and gas products such as carbon monoxide, sulfur and nitrogen dioxide, which are potentially harmful to health. We analyzed the relationship between prenatal incense burning and birth weight and head circumference at birth using the Taiwan Birth Cohort Study. We performed multivariate regression analysis on a sample of 15,773 Taiwanese babies born in 2005 and controlled extensively for factors that may be correlated with incense burning and birth outcomes. Prenatal incense burning environment was associated with lower birth weight and …
A General Framework For Price Regulation Of Airports, Sock Yong Phang
A General Framework For Price Regulation Of Airports, Sock Yong Phang
Research Collection School Of Economics
Price cap regulation (PCR) was first implemented for privatized utilities in the UK in the 1980s. It has since been adopted by numerous countries as a regulatory regime in several sectors. This paper focuses on the development of different forms of price regulation of airports of which PCR is one variant. In countries where airport privatization is still in the early stages, the spectrum of airports and varied nature of regulatory regimes can be confusing and the lack of a general framework can itself become an obstacle to privatization. This paper proposes a general framework comprising decisions to be made …
Housing Policies In Singapore, Sock Yong Phang, Matthias Helble
Housing Policies In Singapore, Sock Yong Phang, Matthias Helble
Research Collection School Of Economics
Singapore has developed a unique housing system, with three-quarters of its housing stock built by the Housing & Development Board (HDB) and homeownership financed through Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings. As a result, the country’s homeownership rate of 90% is one of the highest among market economies. At different stages of its economic development, the Government of Singapore was faced with a different set of housing problems. An integrated land–housing supply and financing framework was established in the 1960s to solve the severe housing shortage. By the 1990s, the challenge was that of renewing aging estates and creating a market …
Are House Prices Driven By Capital Flows? Evidence From Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow, Taojun Xie
Are House Prices Driven By Capital Flows? Evidence From Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow, Taojun Xie
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper investigates whether real house price appreciations can be attributed to the surge in real capital inflows into Singapore. We proxy capital flows by using the amount of foreign direct investments (FDI) to real estate capturing the foreign purchases of property in Singapore which we deflate by the private residential property price index. Notwithstanding the absence of a cointegrating relationship, our results support the hypothesis that lagged short term fluctuations in capital inflows are positively associated with the growth rates of house prices over the last decade. We also provide evidence that macroprudential measures implemented by Singapore reduced the …
Monetizing Housing For Retirement In Singapore, Sock Yong Phang
Monetizing Housing For Retirement In Singapore, Sock Yong Phang
Research Collection School Of Economics
In 2015, the value of housing assets owned by households in Singapore at the aggregate level was 55% of their net worth.1 Ninety percent of Singapore households owned their homes, meaning that almost all households had wealth saved in housing, and households’ housing wealth was 2.1 times that of the country’s gross domestic product. In addition, Singapore is facing an aging population. The resident old age support ratio, defined as the number of persons aged 20–64 per person aged 65 years and over, decreased from 9.0 in 2000 to 5.7 in 2015.2 Against this backdrop of asset-rich and aging households, …
Expropriation Risk And Competition Within The Military, Madhav S. Aney, Giovanni Ko
Expropriation Risk And Competition Within The Military, Madhav S. Aney, Giovanni Ko
Research Collection School Of Economics
How can agents in the military, who control the means of coercion, commit not to expropriate from producers? In this paper we propose competition within the military as one of the mechanisms that can deter predation and consequently create commitment. In our model, even if agents within the military could expropriate all output costlessly, it is attractive to protect producers from predating military units. This marginal defensive advantage and consequently defence is an effective way to potentially eliminate is because there is a other military units, reducing competition and leading to higher future payoffs. Our model predicts that greater internal …
Singapore’S Housing Policies: Responding To The Challenges Of Economic Transitions, Sock Yong Phang
Singapore’S Housing Policies: Responding To The Challenges Of Economic Transitions, Sock Yong Phang
Research Collection School Of Economics
Singapore has developed its own unique state-driven housing system, with more than three quarters of its housing stock built by the Housing and Development Board and homeownership financed through Central Provident Fund savings. As a result, it has one of the highest homeownership rates amongst market economies. This paper provides a historical perspective of the main housing problems faced by successive prime ministers and their respective policy responses. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (1959-1990), the government established an integrated landhousing supply and housing finance framework to channel much needed resources into the housing sector to deal …
Home Prices And Inequality: Singapore Versus Other Global Superstar Cities, Sock Yong Phang
Home Prices And Inequality: Singapore Versus Other Global Superstar Cities, Sock Yong Phang
Research Collection School Of Economics
The Global City concept originates from the work of sociologist Saskia Sassen, which dates back to the 1980s. In an age of globalisation, division of labour is international in scope and production activities are distributed across the world. A global city is a significant point where the internationally oriented financial and producer services that make the global economy run choose to agglomerate.