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Full-Text Articles in Asian Studies

Economic Impact Of Targeted Government Responses To Covid-19: Evidence From The Large-Scale Cluster In Seoul, Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Jinwook Shin Dec 2021

Economic Impact Of Targeted Government Responses To Covid-19: Evidence From The Large-Scale Cluster In Seoul, Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Jinwook Shin

Research Collection School Of Economics

We estimate the economic impact of South Korea's targeted responses to the first large-scale COVID-19 cluster in Seoul. We find that foot traffic and retail sales decreased only within a 300 meter radius of the cluster and recovered to its pre-outbreak level after four weeks. The reductions appear to be driven by temporary business closures rather than the risk avoidance behavior of the citizens. Our results imply that less intense, but more targeted COVID-19 interventions, such as pin-pointed, temporary closures of businesses, can be a low-cost alternative after lifting strict social distancing measures.


Does Precise Case Disclosure Limit Precautionary Behavior? Evidence From Covid-19 In Singapore, Aljoscha Janssen, Matthew H. Shapiro Dec 2021

Does Precise Case Disclosure Limit Precautionary Behavior? Evidence From Covid-19 In Singapore, Aljoscha Janssen, Matthew H. Shapiro

Research Collection School Of Economics

Limiting the spread of contagious diseases can involve both government-managed and voluntary efforts. Governments have a number of policy options beyond direct intervention that can shape individuals’ responses to a pandemic and its associated costs. During its first wave of COVID-19 cases, Singapore was among a few countries that attempted to adjust behavior through the announcement of detailed case information. Singapore's Ministry of Health maintained and shared precise, daily information detailing local travel behavior and residences of COVID-19 cases. We use this policy along with device-level cellphone data to quantify how local and national COVID-19 case announcements trigger differential behavioral …


Tapping On Growth Opportunities Through Trade And Investment, Andy Feng, Gerald Foong, Geraldine Lim Dec 2021

Tapping On Growth Opportunities Through Trade And Investment, Andy Feng, Gerald Foong, Geraldine Lim

Research Collection School Of Economics

As a small and open economy, external developments play a crucial role in shaping Singapore’s growth prospects. In particular, external demand is pivotal in supporting the growth of Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP) beyond the limits afforded by a small domestic market. Furthermore, due to the resource constraints faced by Singapore, its production of goods and services to meet both external and domestic demand requires a substantial use of imported inputs. Apart from trade, Singapore’s openness and outward-orientation also extend to its embrace of inward and outward investments to grow its economy and create jobs for Singaporeans. In view of …


Urbanization Policy And Economic Development: A Quantitative Analysis Of China's Differential Hukou Reforms, Wen-Tai Hsu, Lin Ma Nov 2021

Urbanization Policy And Economic Development: A Quantitative Analysis Of China's Differential Hukou Reforms, Wen-Tai Hsu, Lin Ma

Research Collection School Of Economics

The household registration system (hukou system) in China has hampered rural-urban migration by posing large migration friction. The system has been gradually relaxed in the past few decades, but the reforms have been differential in city size. We find a striking contrast in migration patterns between years 2005 and 2015; rural people tended to move more to large cities in 2005, but more to small- and medium-sized cities in 2015. We calibrate a spatial quantitative model to the world economy in both years with China divided into rural, mega-city, and other-city regions. We find that alternative urbanization policies that are …


Managing Covid And Complexities In Myanmar, Serge Pun, Chin Tiong Tan Nov 2021

Managing Covid And Complexities In Myanmar, Serge Pun, Chin Tiong Tan

Asian Management Insights

Serge Pun, Executive Chairman, Yoma Strategic Holdings and First Myanmar Investment, talks with Tan Chin Tiong about the opportunities and challenges of doing business in Myanmar.


Decree Power In Parliamentary Systems: Theory And Evidence From India, Madhav Shrihari Aney, Shubhankar Dam Oct 2021

Decree Power In Parliamentary Systems: Theory And Evidence From India, Madhav Shrihari Aney, Shubhankar Dam

Research Collection School Of Economics

Decree powers are common to presidential systems; they are rarely found in parliamentary ones. We analyze decree powers in one such rare setting: India. We show that bicameral minority governments in India systematically use ordinances to circumvent parliament and prosecute their legislative agendas. They promulgate more ordinances, enact less legislation, and often repromulgate lapsed ordinances. These patterns suggest that, with bicameral minority governments, the locus of lawmaking shifts to the executive branch. While both majority and minority governments invoke ordinances, the latter do so systematically to get around their parliamentary deficit. In the hands of minority governments, then, the mechanism …


Social Norms And Fertility, Sunha Myong, Junghae Park, Junjian Yi Oct 2021

Social Norms And Fertility, Sunha Myong, Junghae Park, Junjian Yi

Research Collection School Of Economics

We document three stylized facts on marriage and fertility patterns in East Asian societies: (i) their marriage rates are among the highest in the world, but their total fertility is the lowest; (ii) although they have the lowest total fertility, almost all married women have at least one child; and (iii) almost no single women have any children. As these societies have been influenced by Confucianism over millennia, marriage and fertility decisions are potentially shaped by two social norms: the unequal gender division of childcare and the stigma attached to out-of-wedlock births. We present a model incorporating the two social …


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 Sep 2021

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 …


Challenges To Social Mobility In Singapore, Kong Weng Ho, Marcus Kheng Tat Tan Sep 2021

Challenges To Social Mobility In Singapore, Kong Weng Ho, Marcus Kheng Tat Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Singapore had achieved impressive economic growth together with a high level of upward mobility since her independence in 1965. However, the growth process might have become more uneven, in addition to diminishing growth for a matured economy like Singapore, which is also a highly open city state subject to competitive forces from other economies. Singapore has fared well recently,
evident from the 2020 social mobility findings reported by the World Economic Forum and the decline in Gini coefficients for the past decade. We discuss the education system in Singapore and the recently formed National Jobs Council, both important institutions for …


On The Market Failure Of “Missing Pioneers”, Shang-Jin Wei, Ziru Wei, Jianhuan Xu Sep 2021

On The Market Failure Of “Missing Pioneers”, Shang-Jin Wei, Ziru Wei, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

An influential hypothesis states that export pioneers are too few relative to social optimum because the first exporter's action creates an informational public good for all subsequent exporters. The hypothesis has been invoked to justify certain types of government interventions. We note, however, that such market failure requires two inequalities to hold simultaneously: the discovery cost is neither too low nor too high. Neither has to hold in the data. We propose a structural estimation framework to evaluate the hypothesis, and estimate the parameters based on the customs data of Chinese electronics exports. Our key finding is that "missing pioneers" …


Achieving Price Stability, Hwee Kwan Chow, Taojun Xie Sep 2021

Achieving Price Stability, Hwee Kwan Chow, Taojun Xie

Research Collection School Of Economics

The aim of delivering medium-term price stability is the stated objective of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. To this end, the central bank adopted an unusual exchange rate–based monetary policy framework that has served the economy well over the past decades. However, the shift from the phase of catch-up growth to a mature economy raises the question of whether the current monetary policy framework needs reformulation. Moreover, as global financial integration deepens, surges in cross-border capital flows impact Singapore’s exchange rate and asset prices, which has implications for economic dynamism and inclusion. Since a large and persistent deviation of the …


Singapore In The Global Value Chains, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen Sep 2021

Singapore In The Global Value Chains, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Economics

This chapter analyses the participation of Singapore in the global value chains (GVC): how much of its gross exports are GVC-related trade; how downstream it is; and which countries are its key upstream and downstream trade partners. The analysis is carried out both at the country aggregate level and at the sector level. New formulas are proposed in the gross export decomposition framework of Koopman, Wang and Wei (2014) and Borin and Mancini (2017), to characterise a country/industry’s downstreamness in the GVC and the importance of each trade partner in its backward/forward linkages. Singapore started off with a very high …


Providing Childcare, Christine Ho, Sunha Myong Sep 2021

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. …


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 …


When Running For Office Runs In The Family: Horizontal Dynasties, Policy And Development In The Philippines, Dean C. Dulay Sep 2021

When Running For Office Runs In The Family: Horizontal Dynasties, Policy And Development In The Philippines, Dean C. Dulay

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Political dynasties exist in practically every variant of democracy, but take different forms in different places. Yet the types of dynastic structures have remained unexplored. We argue that horizontal dynasties—multiple members from the same political family holding different political offices concurrently— affect policymaking by replacing potential political rivals, who may oppose an incumbent’s policy choices, with a member of the family. But in developing countries, the policy change that accrues from dynastic status may not lead to higher levels of economic development. We test this argument’s implications in the Philippines. Employing a close elections regression discontinuity design on a sample …


Doubling Down On Asia, Olivier Lim, Arif P. Rachmat, David Su Aug 2021

Doubling Down On Asia, Olivier Lim, Arif P. Rachmat, David Su

Perspectives@SMU

COVID-19 has inflicted major pain on Asian economies but the effects on countries and sectors are not uniform. The tech sector in China could yet present investment opportunities


Jobs For Justice(S): Corruption In The Supreme Court Of India, Madhav S. Aney, Shubhankar Dam, Giovanni Ko Aug 2021

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 …


Financing Singapore’S Smes And The Crowdfunding Industry In Singapore, Swee Liang Tan, Yoke Wang Tok, Chansriniyom Thitipat Aug 2021

Financing Singapore’S Smes And The Crowdfunding Industry In Singapore, Swee Liang Tan, Yoke Wang Tok, Chansriniyom Thitipat

Research Collection School Of Economics

As new digital technologies emerge that make the provision of financial services more efficient, they hold the potential to address barriers that SMEs face in accessing credit. This paper finds empirical evidence that crowdfunding for SMEs improved SMEs’ timeliness to pay debt in Singapore. Anecdotal evidence from growing SMEs suggests that getting crowdfunding loans also induced financing from banks, leading to more efficient allocation of credit. In just four years, Singapore’s crowdfunding volume has grown rapidly making it one of the top crowdfunding hubs in Southeast Asia in 2018. The rapid development of Singapore’s crowdfunding industry can be attributed to …


Monetary Policy Surprises, Stock Returns, And Financial And Liquidity Constraints, In An Exchange Rate Monetary Policy System, John M. Sequeira Aug 2021

Monetary Policy Surprises, Stock Returns, And Financial And Liquidity Constraints, In An Exchange Rate Monetary Policy System, John M. Sequeira

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines the impact of monetary policy surprises on the stock price behaviour of a small developed economy, whose monetary policy is based on the exchange rate. We find that monetary policy surprises associated with all contractionary policy levers and a neutral policy lever, have a consistently significant and negative impact on stock returns. In comparison, only monetary policy surprises associated with a downward re-centering policy lever, has a significantly positive effect on stock returns. Using a recalibrated classification system, we also find that monetary policy surprises differ across sectors of the economy. Our results show how monetary policy …


The Unique Role Of The State Press In The Chinese Economy, Singapore Management University Jul 2021

The Unique Role Of The State Press In The Chinese Economy, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

CUHK research investigates the role played by China’s state-owned media in supplying information vital to the functioning of China’s capital markets


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 …


Connectedness Of Asia Pacific Forex Markets: China's Growing Influence, Hwee Kwan Chow Jul 2021

Connectedness Of Asia Pacific Forex Markets: China's Growing Influence, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the degree of connectedness of Asia Pacific forex markets post global financial crisis and relates it to developments in the renminbi markets. The connectedness measure developed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2014) reveal the strength of linkages across the US dollar currency pairs of twelve currencies, namely offshore renminbi, onshore renminbi, euro, yen, Australian dollar, Indian rupee, Korean won, Malaysian ringgit, New Zealand dollar, Singapore dollar, Thai baht and Taiwan dollar. With the gradual liberalization of China’s exchange rate system, shocks from the renminbi markets contribute more to fluctuations in almost all individual Asia Pacific currency markets vis-a-vis …


High-Frequency Internet Survey Of A Probability Sample Of Older Singaporeans: The Singapore Life Panel, Rhema Vaithianathan, Bryce Hool, Michael D. Hurd, Susann Rohwedder Jun 2021

High-Frequency Internet Survey Of A Probability Sample Of Older Singaporeans: The Singapore Life Panel, Rhema Vaithianathan, Bryce Hool, Michael D. Hurd, Susann Rohwedder

Research Collection School Of Economics

Facing a rapidly ageing population, Singapore is presented with urgent policy challenges. Yet there is very little data on the economic, health and family circumstances of older Singaporeans. In response, the Centre for Research on the Economics of Ageing (CREA) at Singapore Management University has been collecting monthly data on a panel of Singaporeans aged between 50 and 70 years. We detail the methodology by which the Singapore Life Panel® (SLP) was constructed using a population-representative sampling frame from the Singapore Department of Statistics. Contact was made with 25,000 households through postal, phone and in-person canvassing. More than 15,200 respondents …


Japanese Monetary Policy And Its Impact On Stock Market Implied Volatility During Pleasant And Unpleasant Weather, Marinela Adriana Finta Jun 2021

Japanese Monetary Policy And Its Impact On Stock Market Implied Volatility During Pleasant And Unpleasant Weather, Marinela Adriana Finta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the effect of Japan's Monetary Policy Meeting releases on the intraday dynamics of the Nikkei Stock Average Volatility Index and its futures during pleasant and unpleasant weather. We show that at the time of a monetary policy release when the temperature is pleasant, there is a significant decline in Japanese equities' implied volatility and futures, which lasts for about 10 min and 5 min, respectively. This decline is longer and exhibits a greater variation when releases occur during cold days. Finally, we emphasize the achievable economic profits and losses, given the reaction of Nikkei VI futures to the …


The Response Of The Chinese Economy To The U.S.-China Trade War: 2018-2019, Pao-Li Chang, Kefang Yao, Fan Zheng May 2021

The Response Of The Chinese Economy To The U.S.-China Trade War: 2018-2019, Pao-Li Chang, Kefang Yao, Fan Zheng

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we follow the micro-to-macro approach of Fajgelbaum et al. (2020) and analyze the impacts of the 2018–2019 U.S.-China trade war on the Chinese economy. We use highly disaggregated trade and tariff data with monthly frequency to identify the demand/supply elasticities of Chinese imports/exports, combined with a general equilibrium model for the Chinese economy (that takes into account input-output linkages, and regional heterogeneity in employment and sector specialization) to quantify the partial and general equilibrium effects of the tariff war at the product/sector/region/aggregate levels. This complements the studies that focus on the ex post response of the U.S. …


Two Essays On Innovation And Growth In China, Qiugu He May 2021

Two Essays On Innovation And Growth In China, Qiugu He

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation studies China’s economic growth from a perspective of industry dynamics. In chapter 1, I introduce the background and policies relating to China’s economic growth after 1978. In chapter 2, I find that the elasticity of the average R&D expenditure of firms on competition is -0.29 in weak-IPR (intellectual property right) provinces, and -0.06 in strict-IPR provinces. Next, I use the Schumpeterian growth model to explain this finding: When the market becomes more competitive, a firm prefers imitation to innovation to a larger extent, as a means of getting new technology. Due to enforcement of IPR laws, the imitation …


Studying Successful Ageing: A Showcase Of The Singapore Life Panel, Jee Yuen Yew, Jia Wei Gwee, Anirudh Srivathsan May 2021

Studying Successful Ageing: A Showcase Of The Singapore Life Panel, Jee Yuen Yew, Jia Wei Gwee, Anirudh Srivathsan

ROSA Research Briefs

In this special issue of the ROSA Research Brief Series, we showcase two aspects of the work being done at the Centre for Research on Successful Ageing (ROSA). Firstly, we showcase the capabilities of the Singapore Life Panel (SLP) and the data that the SLP is able to obtain and measure on a monthly basis. Secondly, we showcase the amazing work of the SGUnited Traineeship Programme’s Research Assistants at ROSA who have proven themselves to be incredible assets in helping further ROSA’s aims of enabling successful ageing in Singapore. ROSA aims to measure well-being among older adults holistically in order …


Government Management Capacities And The Containment Of Covid-19: A Repeated Cross-Sectional Study Across Chinese Cities, Wenchao Li, Jing Li, Junjian Yi Apr 2021

Government Management Capacities And The Containment Of Covid-19: A Repeated Cross-Sectional Study Across Chinese Cities, Wenchao Li, Jing Li, Junjian Yi

Research Collection School Of Economics

Objectives: Better understanding of the dynamics of the COVID-19 (2019 novel coronavirus disease) pandemic to curb its spread is now a global imperative. While travel restrictions and control measures have been shown to limit the spread of the disease, the effectiveness of the enforcement of those measures should depend on the strength of the government. Whether, and how, the government plays a role in fighting the disease, however, has not been investigated. Here, we show that government management capacities are critical to the containment of the disease. Setting: We conducted a statistical analysis based on cross-city comparisons within China. China …


Teaching In The Right Context: Textbook Supply Program, Language, And Vocabulary Ability In Vietnam, Tomoki Fujii, Maki Nakajima, Sijia Xu Apr 2021

Teaching In The Right Context: Textbook Supply Program, Language, And Vocabulary Ability In Vietnam, Tomoki Fujii, Maki Nakajima, Sijia Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

While past two decades have witnessed a remarkable educational progress in Vietnam, ethnic minority children consistently lagged behind ethnic majority children in academic performance. The government of Vietnam has stepped up efforts to assist ethnic minority students in their learning by lowering the linguistic and cultural barriers they face. Among such efforts is the textbook supply program, and we examine its impact on the learning of children proxied by vocabulary test. We apply difference-in-differences estimation to four rounds of the Young Lives data between 2006 and 2015 in order to investigate how the textbook supply program narrowed the gap between …


Study On The Ideas For Developing M&A Funds In China In The Context Of Economic Transformation, Xiaoming Song Apr 2021

Study On The Ideas For Developing M&A Funds In China In The Context Of Economic Transformation, Xiaoming Song

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

M & A fund is one category of private equity investment fund. In the past 25 years, private equity fund has grown into a considerable asset section. Since 2008, China's economy has experienced the pounding pain of structural transformation multiplied with other challenges, e.g. international economy’s lack of growth momentum, increased trade friction, aging population and so on. The trade friction between China and the United States has further exacerbated. Against this backdrop, from September 2018, there was a significant shift in the domestic central government’s economic policy, particularly the capital market policy, has undergone major changes with the repressed …