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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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- Repeated games (4)
- Singapore (4)
- Household demand (3)
- Intertemporal price discrimination (3)
- Durable good (2)
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- Employment (2)
- Firm size (2)
- Managerial compensation (2)
- Moral hazard (2)
- Aging (1)
- Agricultural productivity (1)
- Asian financial crisis (1)
- Auditing (1)
- Bandwidth (1)
- Bayes factors (1)
- Beliefs (1)
- Bias Reduction (1)
- Bond Pricing (1)
- Bootstrap; Conditional symmetry; Characteristic function; Test; U-statistics. (1)
- Cambodia (1)
- Cointegration (1)
- Concentration curve (1)
- Continuous time models (1)
- Convergence of income (1)
- Corporate governance (1)
- Cross-validation (1)
- Cultures (1)
- Decision Criterion (1)
- Decomposition (1)
- Determinants of job turnover intentions: Evidence from Singapore (1)
Articles 1 - 30 of 52
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
China's Changing Economic Structures And Its Implications For Regional Patterns Of Trade Production And Integration, Kim Song Tan, Hoe Ee Khor
China's Changing Economic Structures And Its Implications For Regional Patterns Of Trade Production And Integration, Kim Song Tan, Hoe Ee Khor
Research Collection School Of Economics
There is tremendous momentum for economic and financial integration in East Asia today. Partly inspired by the formation of the European Union and partly as a response to the 1997/98 Asia financial crisis, many East Asian countries are showing greater commitment to regional economic cooperation. A number of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) have either been concluded or are being negotiated.1 At a less formal level, the ASEAN+3 grouping has brought the whole region together in regular consultations over trade, investment, as well as monetary and exchange rate policy matters.
Institutions, Wages, And Inequality: The Case Of Europe And Its Periphery (1500-1899), Davin Chor
Institutions, Wages, And Inequality: The Case Of Europe And Its Periphery (1500-1899), Davin Chor
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper explores the long-run relationship between institutions and wage outcomes in Europe and its periphery. I find that cities that exercised stronger institutional protection of private property experienced: (i) higher levels of both skilled and unskilled real wages, as well as (ii) lower levels of inequality as measured by the skilled-unskilled wage ratio. While the first result corroborates existing work on the positive growth effects of better institutions, the second finding is more novel to the literature. Some explanations are proposed for how stronger institutions can cause an increase in the relative supply of skilled workers, thus lowering wage …
Determinants Of Job Turnover Intentions: Evidence From Singapore, Xiaolin Xing, Zhenlin Yang
Determinants Of Job Turnover Intentions: Evidence From Singapore, Xiaolin Xing, Zhenlin Yang
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper explores both observable and unobservable variables that would affect employed workers’ decisions on job change. We find that age, job satisfaction, satisfaction with working environment or job security, and firm size are among the major factors determining workers’ intentions of job-to-job mobility. Younger workers and workers in smaller firms are more likely to look for other jobs. We also find that men are more likely to consider a change in job than women, but when “actually looking for another job” is concerned, men and women do not differ. Furthermore, monthly income and working sector contribute significantly to looking …
A New Approach To Robust Inference In Cointegration, Sainan Jin, Peter Phillips, Yixiao Sun
A New Approach To Robust Inference In Cointegration, Sainan Jin, Peter Phillips, Yixiao Sun
Research Collection School Of Economics
A new approach to robust testing in cointegrated systems is proposed using non-parametric HAC estimators without truncation. While such HAC estimates are inconsistent, they still produce asymptotically pivotal tests and, as in conventional regression settings, can improve testing and inference.
Cross-Validation In Nonparametric Regression With Outliers, Denis H. Y. Leung
Cross-Validation In Nonparametric Regression With Outliers, Denis H. Y. Leung
Research Collection School Of Economics
A popular data-driven method for choosing the bandwidth in standard kernel regression is cross-validation. Even when there are outliers ill the data, robust kernel regression can be used to estimate the unknown regression curve [Robust and Nonlinear Time Series Analysis. Lecture Notes in Statist. (1984) 26 163-184]. However, Under these Circumstances Standard cross-validation is no longer a satisfactory bandwidth selector because it is unduly influenced by extreme prediction errors caused by the existence of these Outliers. A more robust method proposed here is a cross-validation method that discounts the extreme prediction errors. In large samples the robust method chooses consistent …
The Optimal Design Of Fallible Organizations: Invariance Of Optimal Decision Criterion And Uniqueness Of Hierarchy And Polyarchy Structures, Winston T. H. Koh
The Optimal Design Of Fallible Organizations: Invariance Of Optimal Decision Criterion And Uniqueness Of Hierarchy And Polyarchy Structures, Winston T. H. Koh
Research Collection School Of Economics
We present a general framework to study the project selection problem in an organization of fallible decision-makers. We show that when the organizational size and the majority rule for project acceptance are optimized simultaneously, the optimal quality of decision-making, as determined by the decision criterion, is invariant, and depends only on the expertise of decision-makers. This result clarifies that the circumstances under which the decision-making quality varies with the organizational structure are situations where the organizational size or majority rule is restricted from reaching the optimal level. Moreover, in contrast to earlier findings in the literature that the hierarchy and …
Q-Convergence With Interquartile Ranges, Sung Jin Kang, Myoung-Jae Lee
Q-Convergence With Interquartile Ranges, Sung Jin Kang, Myoung-Jae Lee
Research Collection School Of Economics
We introduce a new convergence concept ‘Q-convergence’ which defines convergence in national incomes as a shrinking interquartile range (IQR) of the national income distribution. Compared with the other convergence definitions in the literature, Q-convergence has the following advantages. First, IQR, which represents dispersion and inequality of the income distribution, is also closely linked to the two-group clustering with the lower and upper quartiles being the ‘centers’ of the two groups. Second, IQR is equivariant to increasing transformations and thus reconciles better conflicting empirical findings using level or log data. Third, IQR is insensitive to outliers, leading to robust statistical inferences. …
Future Targets And Multiple Equilibria, Ashok S. Guha, Brishti Guha
Future Targets And Multiple Equilibria, Ashok S. Guha, Brishti Guha
Research Collection School Of Economics
Multiple Pareto-rankable equilibria may obtain in an overlapping generations model where consumers save to reach a fixed target. Existence and uniqueness conditions are discussed. The model displays excess consumption sensitivity to current income and perfect old-age insurance.
Growth Is Good For Whom, When, How?, John A. Donaldson
Growth Is Good For Whom, When, How?, John A. Donaldson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Economic growth often helps the poor, but what about the many cases when it does not? The consensus that economic growth reduces poverty, encapsulated by two World Bank economists in the above-quoted article entitled Growth is Good for the Poor, leaves many important questions unanswered. What help does the knowledge that economic growth can reduce poverty provide for economies with few realistic prospects for robust, sustained growth? What hope does the understanding that growth reduces poverty on average provide for poor families that are excluded from prosperity? How should we respond when economic growth undermines the market positions of the …
The State, The Market, Economic Growth And Poverty In China, John A. Donaldson
The State, The Market, Economic Growth And Poverty In China, John A. Donaldson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The People’s Republic of China is often cited as an unprecedented success story as far as rural poverty is concerned. Despite recent reports of sometimes violent protests in rural areas over illicit land seizures and pollution, since implementing reforms in 1978, China has seen rural poverty rates fall from xxx to yyy, as economic growth increased zzz on average each year, according to World Bank estimates. Some have ascribed liberal policy prescriptions based on open markets and pro-market government policies as are largely responsible, even as they forwent expensive, large-scale mass welfare programs. Starting with their initial round of fundamental …
The Auditor And The Firm: A Simple Model Of Corporate Cheating And Intermediation, Brishti Guha
The Auditor And The Firm: A Simple Model Of Corporate Cheating And Intermediation, Brishti Guha
Research Collection School Of Economics
We apply a game-theoretic model to the analysis of the recent spate of corporate scandals in which firms have cheated their investors, often with the aid of external auditors. We characterize the different types of equilibria that obtain for different parameter ranges in an auditor’s absence (the parameters we consider being early signal accuracy – a measure of transparency – and withdrawal costs – a measure of the liquidity of investments). We also analyze whether and under what conditions the presence of an informed auditor could lead to an improvement in the sense of honest behavior replacing cheating as the …
Green Revolutions And Miracle Economies: Agricultural Innovation, Trade And Growth, Brishti Guha
Green Revolutions And Miracle Economies: Agricultural Innovation, Trade And Growth, Brishti Guha
Research Collection School Of Economics
The purpose of this paper is to develop a simple model of an economy in which growth is driven by a combination of exogenous technical change in agriculture as well as by a rising world demand for labor-intensive manufactured exports. We explore the relative roles of agricultural innovation and rising export demand in a model with two traded industrial goods and a non-traded agricultural good, food. When the non-traded sector uses a specific factor, we show that technical change in agriculture may be the key to sustained factor accumulation in industry, in particular driving intersectoral labor migration. A key assumption …
Comment On "Realized Variance And Market Microstructure Noise" By Peter R. Hansen And Asger Lunde, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu
Comment On "Realized Variance And Market Microstructure Noise" By Peter R. Hansen And Asger Lunde, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu
Research Collection School Of Economics
With the availability of ultra high frequency financial data, the task of finding an appropriate econometric model to describe the movement of financial variables at the tick-by-tick level has become an important goal in financial econometric research. The task has both theoretical and empirical dimensions. From an empirical perspective, the near continuous recording of financial asset prices has opened up the intriguing possibility of fitting the quadratic variation process empirically, leading to what is possibly the most direct nonparametric measure of asset price volatility. The resulting quantity has become known in the financial econometrics literature as realized variance (RV) and …
Trade, Growth And Increasing Returns To Infrastructure: The Role Of The Sophisticated Monopolist, Ashok S. Guha, Brishti Guha
Trade, Growth And Increasing Returns To Infrastructure: The Role Of The Sophisticated Monopolist, Ashok S. Guha, Brishti Guha
Research Collection School Of Economics
We consider a model of international trade with increasing returns in a non-traded input into industry, infrastructure, and show that the nature of equilibrium depends crucially on whether the infrastructure provider acts in a naïve manner – akin to a Level 1 agent in a cognitive hierarchy (C-H) model – or in a more sophisticated manner. Infrastructure requires a fixed investment and is produced under decreasing marginal costs, and we model two possible market forms, monopoly and Cournot oligopoly with free entry – both capable of generating pecuniary externalities in the manufacturing sector . Unlike most other work exploring the …
Honesty And Intermediation: Corporate Cheating, Auditor Involvement And The Implications For Development, Brishti Guha
Honesty And Intermediation: Corporate Cheating, Auditor Involvement And The Implications For Development, Brishti Guha
Research Collection School Of Economics
We examine self-enforcing honesty in firm-investor relations in an imperfect public information game. Minimum firm size requirements and moral hazard limit ability to raise outside capital, yielding a floor on personal wealth required to enter entrepreneurship. Credible auditing could create efficiency gains. We propose mandatory disclosure of audit fees and an interpretation of international differences in shareholding patterns. We endogenize auditor-firm collusion and extortion by auditors. We embed our game-theoretic analysis in a general equilibrium model to generate unique equilibria that trace the impact of the distribution of wealth on the existence of the market and consequences for development.
The Case Of The Errant Executive: Management, Control And Firm Size In Corporate Cheating, Brishti Guha
The Case Of The Errant Executive: Management, Control And Firm Size In Corporate Cheating, Brishti Guha
Research Collection School Of Economics
Firm insiders – a manager and a board – face moral hazard in relation to their outside shareholders in a repeated game with asymmetric information and stochastic market outcomes. The manager determines whether or not outsiders are cheated; the board, whose objectives differ from those of outside shareholders, attempts to control the manager through compensation contracts and dismissal threats Since compensation determines the manager’s incentive to cheat, firms competing for outside capital publicly announce their managerial contracts. However, secret renegotiation between firm and manager is still possible: so outsiders guard against being cheated by limiting their total stake in any …
Games Suppliers And Producers Play: Upstream And Downstream Moral Hazard With Unverifiable Input Quality, Brishti Guha
Games Suppliers And Producers Play: Upstream And Downstream Moral Hazard With Unverifiable Input Quality, Brishti Guha
Research Collection School Of Economics
We pin down the optimal relational contract between an input supplier and a final goods producer given a framework of bilateral moral hazard with variable but non-verifiable input quality. Given the inability of third parties to verify input quality, each party has an incentive to cheat the other by making a false claim about input quality. We derive the contract which (a) induces honest behavior and brings about the Pareto superior first-best outcome for the widest possible range of exogenous parameters, and (b) maximizes the Nash product of both parties’ payoffs subject to incentive compatibility. An interesting feature of the …
On Leverage In A Stochastic Volatility Model, Jun Yu
On Leverage In A Stochastic Volatility Model, Jun Yu
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper is concerned with the specification for modelling financial leverage effect in the context of stochastic volatility (SV) models. Two alternative specifications co-exist in the literature. One is the Euler approximation to the well-known continuous time SV model with leverage effect and the other is the discrete time SV model of Jacquier et al. (J. Econometrics 122 (2004) 185). Using a Gaussian nonlinear state space form with uncorrelated measurement and transition errors, I show that it is easy to interpret the leverage effect in the conventional model whereas it is not clear how to obtain and interpret the leverage …
The 2004 Global Labour Survey: Working Institution And Practices Around The World, Davin Chor, Richard B. Freeman
The 2004 Global Labour Survey: Working Institution And Practices Around The World, Davin Chor, Richard B. Freeman
Research Collection School Of Economics
The 2004 Global Labor Survey (GLS) is an Internet-based survey that seeks to measure de facto labor practices in countries around the world, covering issues such as freedom of association, the regulation of work contracts, employee benefits and the prevalence of collective bargaining. To find out about de facto practices, the GLS invited labor practitioners, ranging from union officials and activists to professors of labor law and industrial relations, to report on conditions in their country. Over 1,500 persons responded, which allowed us to create indices of practices in ten broad areas for 33 countries. The GLS' focus on de …
Protection For Sale Under Monopolistic Competition, Pao Li Chang
Protection For Sale Under Monopolistic Competition, Pao Li Chang
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper proposes a general empirical framework to estimate the protection-for-sale model, where the protection regime shifts according to a sector's market structure (perfectly or monop-olistically competitive). We base the protection structure on Grossman and Helpman (1994) for the subset of perfectly competitive sectors and on Chang (2005) for the subset of monop- olistically competitive sectors. The two protection regimes are simultaneously estimated with joint constraints. The results of the J-test consistently reject the homogeneous (perfect compe- tition) protection-for-sale model often adopted in previous literature and suggest a direction of improvement toward the proposed heterogeneous protection structure model.
Micro-Level Estimation Of Child Malnutrition Indicators And Its Application In Cambodia, Tomoki Fujii
Micro-Level Estimation Of Child Malnutrition Indicators And Its Application In Cambodia, Tomoki Fujii
Research Collection School Of Economics
One of the major limitations in addressing child malnutrition is lack of information that could be used to target resources. By combining demographic and health survey (DHS) and population census data, the author disaggregates the estimates of the prevalence of child malnutrition in Cambodia from currently available 17 DHS strata into 1,594 communes. The methodology is built on the small-area estimation technique developed by Elbers, Lanjouw, and Lanjouw. The author extends it to jointly estimate multiple indicators and to allow for a richer structure of error terms. Average standard errors for the commune-level estimates in this study were about 4 …
Intraday Stock Prices, Volume, And Duration: A Nonparametric Conditional Duration Analysis, Anthony Tay
Intraday Stock Prices, Volume, And Duration: A Nonparametric Conditional Duration Analysis, Anthony Tay
Research Collection School Of Economics
We investigate the distribution of high-frequency price changes, conditional on trading volume and duration between trades, on four stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The conditional probabilities are estimated nonparametrically using local polynomial regression methods. We find substantial skewness in the distribution of price changes, with the direction of skewness dependent on the sign of trade. We also find that the probability of larger price changes increases with volume, but only for trades that occur with longer durations. The distribution of price changes vary with duration primarily when volume is high.
Protection For Sale Under Monopolistic Competition, Pao Li Chang
Protection For Sale Under Monopolistic Competition, Pao Li Chang
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper broadens the protection for sale model of Grossman and Helpman (1994) by incorporating the Krugman–Dixit–Stiglitz model of monopolistic competition, given its importance in explaining the prevalence of intraindustry trade. Several new results arise in this paper. First, the endogenous import tariff will never fall below zero, even in unorganized sectors. Second, the endogenous export policy for organized sectors is not necessarily an export subsidy, and can be an export tax as in unorganized sectors. Third, the level of import protection varies inversely with the degree of import penetration, regardless of whether the sector is organized or not.
Jackknifing Bond Option Prices, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu
Jackknifing Bond Option Prices, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu
Research Collection School Of Economics
Prices of interest rate derivative securities depend crucially on the mean reversion parameters of the underlying diffusions. These parameters are subject to estimation bias when standard methods are used. The estimation bias can be substantial even in very large samples and much more serious than the discretization bias, and it translates into a bias in pricing bond options and other derivative securities that is important in practical work. This article proposes a very general and computationally inexpensive method of bias reduction that is based on Quenouille's (1956; Biometrika, 43, 353-360) jackknife. We show how the method can be applied directly …
Optimal Sequential Decision Architectures And The Robustness Of Hierarchies And Polyarchies, Winston T. H. Koh
Optimal Sequential Decision Architectures And The Robustness Of Hierarchies And Polyarchies, Winston T. H. Koh
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper studies collective decision making in the context of a project selection model. We derive the optimal decision architecture in the presence of marginal decision costs, and investigate the circumstances under which the hierarchy and polyarchy emerge as optimal sequential architectures. Our analysis extends previous results on optimal organizational decision-making to a sequential setting, and further demonstrates the fragility of the hierarchy and polyarchy as optimal architectures.
Trade, Capital Accumulation And Structural Unemployment: An Empirical Study Of The Singapore Economy, Hiau Looi Kee, Hian Teck Hoon
Trade, Capital Accumulation And Structural Unemployment: An Empirical Study Of The Singapore Economy, Hiau Looi Kee, Hian Teck Hoon
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper studies the factors responsible for the secular decline of Singapore's unemployment rate over the period 1966-2000 in an environment of low and stable inflation rates. We introduce wage bargaining and unions into a specific-factors, two-sector economy with an export sector and a non-tradable sector to obtain an endogenous natural unemployment rate. Increases in the relative export price and capital stock in the export sector are predicted to reduce structural unemployment. These hypotheses could not be rejected based on structural estimations and co-integration regressions. Empirically, capital accumulation in the export sector explains most of the decline in Singapore's unemployment …
Non-Market Leadership Experience And Labor Market Success: Evidence From Military Rank, Myoung-Jae Lee, Chun Seng Yip
Non-Market Leadership Experience And Labor Market Success: Evidence From Military Rank, Myoung-Jae Lee, Chun Seng Yip
Research Collection School Of Economics
There has been much recent interest in the effects of pre and non-market skills on future labor market outcomes. This paper examines one such effect: the effect on future wages of military leadership experience among Vietnam generation American men. We study rank, not just veteran status. We argue that rank is a good measure of pre-market leadership skills because of the clear military hierarchy and the primarily youth experience of Vietnam service. Two sources of selection bias are accounted for: non-random military entry and eventual rank attained. We apply a modified 2-stage parametric sample selection method. The rank premia on …
Household Demand, Network Externality Effects And Intertemporal Price Discrimination, Winston T. H. Koh
Household Demand, Network Externality Effects And Intertemporal Price Discrimination, Winston T. H. Koh
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper examines the optimality of intertemporal price discrimination when network externality effects are present in the consumption of a durable good. We conduct our study in two settings. In a model with two household types, utilities are dependent on the cumulative proportion of households that have purchased the durable good. Next, in a model with a continuum of household types, we extend the analysis to the case where households consume both a durable good and a stream of non-durable goods. We show that in both settings, the presence of network externalities facilitates a sales strategy with intertemporal price discrimination.
Sustainable External Debt Levels: Estimates For Selected Asian Countries, Roberto S. Mariano, Delano Villanueva
Sustainable External Debt Levels: Estimates For Selected Asian Countries, Roberto S. Mariano, Delano Villanueva
Research Collection School Of Economics
High ratios of external debt to GDP in selected Asian countries have contributed to the initiation, propagation, and severity of the financial and economic crises in recent years, reflecting runaway fiscal deficits and excessive foreign borrowing by the private sector. Applying the formal framework proposed by Villanueva (2003) to a selected group of Asian countries, the research estimates the external debt thresholds beyond which further debt accumulation will have negative effects on growth and will become unsustainable. The framework is an extension of the standard neoclassical growth model that incorporates global capital markets. ‘Sustainability’ is measured in terms of the …
Competing At The Frontier: The Changing Role Of Technology Policy In Singapore's Economic Strategy, Winston T. H. Koh, Poh Kam Wong
Competing At The Frontier: The Changing Role Of Technology Policy In Singapore's Economic Strategy, Winston T. H. Koh, Poh Kam Wong
Research Collection School Of Economics
For an economy competing at the global frontier, an innovation-based growth strategy requires a well-developed technological infrastructure, a set of capabilities-focused technology policies, as well as an institutional environment that stimulates innovation and entrepreneurship. This paper examines the role played by science and technology policy in an economy's transition to an innovation-based growth strategy. We discuss the challenges governments face as they restructure economic institutions to deepen R&D capabilities and encourage technology creation. We review Singapore's experience in this regard and assess its ongoing efforts to remake itself to compete at the global frontier.