Business Commons^™

Financial Literacy And Financial Decision-Making At Older Ages, Joelle H. Fong, Seng Kee Benedict Koh, Olivia S. Mitchell, Susann Rohwedder

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

How well older households manage their wealth holdings is an important determinant of their financial security during retirement, yet little is known about their financial decision-making and how this relates to their financial literacy. Our paper fills this gap by measuring financial literacy among older persons in the Singapore Life Panel and examining its association with timely credit card debt repayment, stock market participation, and age-based investment risk diversification. Most older respondents understand interest compounding and inflation, but fewer than half know about risk diversification. Almost all older credit card holders pay off their balances in a timely manner, but …

Enabling Singapore's Youths To Adapt In An Era Of Climate Change, Thomas Menkhoff, Mark Chong, Benjamin Gan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Nudging them towards more eco-friendly behavioural habits is arguably a feasible approach to build greater climate resilience.

Ecowelvaart: Een Oost-Aziatische Kijk [In Dutch], Arnoud Cyriel Leo De Meyer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a recent opinion piece in De Morgen, 33 Flemish women a call for development of ecologically responsible prosperity. Their statement that prosperity and sustainability are not should form a contradiction, but that they on the other hand, being able to amplify, close close to a growing awareness in East Asia about what is sometimes called 'ecosperity' here. But to achieve eco-prosperity, there will be a huge and coordinated investment are required from all walks of life. How do we handle this? Starting from the relative successful containment of the pandemic and its consequences in East Asia the author formulates …

The Impact Of Covid-19 On Asian Businesses And The Economy, Havovi Joshi

Asian Management Insights

The Covid-19 pandemic will likely end when a vaccine can be made available to everyone, or when we have achieved some measure of herd immunity. Unfortunately, both are as yet nowhere in sight.

Financial Knowledge And Portfolio Complexity In Singapore, Benedict S. K. Koh, Olivia S. Mitchell, Susann Rohwedder

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Financial literacy in Singapore has not been analyzed in much detail, despite the fact that this is one of the world’s most rapidly aging nations. Using the Singapore Life Panel®, we explore older Singaporeans’ levels of financial knowledge and compare them to those observed in the United States. We assess portfolio complexity for these older households, to examine how financial literacy is related to outcomes of interest. We show that older Singaporeans’ levels of financial literacy are comparable overall to those in the United States, even though older Singaporeans score slightly lower on some dimensions (knowledge of interest and inflation), …

Corona Crisis And Inequality: Why Management Research Needs A Societal Turn, Hari Bapuji, Charmi Patel, Gokhan Ertug, David G. Allen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As the world struggles to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, the stark inequalities in our societies have been laid bare, and the interplay between organizations and societies has also become evident yet again. This crisis underscores the need for management scholars to take a societal turn and examine how organizational practices interact with societal economic inequality. To illustrate this approach, we discuss organizational practices – corporate social responsibility, work design, recruitment and selection, and compensation management – that can contribute to the normalization, reinforcement, and reduction of economic inequalities in society. We conclude by calling on scholars of inequality, as …

Restore Your Sense Of Control — Despite The Pandemic, Eric M. Anicich, Trevor A. Foulk, Merrick R. Osborne, Jake Gale, Michael Schaerer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The coronavirus pandemic has wrought unprecedented levels of personal and professional upheaval upon many employees. It may irrevocably transform how we work, communicate, eat, shop, date, and travel. Clearly, these are not “normal” times. And yet, society continues to move forward.

Giving And Receiving: A Study Of Barriers And Enablers In Asian Philanthropy, Dalvin Sidhu, Jinwen Chen

Lien Centre for Social Innovation: Research

This report provides an insight into Asian philanthropy through engaging with philanthropic entities (PEs) in Greater China, India and Indonesia. Issues pertinent to this research include (1) challenges and opportunities for philanthropy in the region, (2) the interest and readiness of PEs to address common regional problems, (3) identifying support and platforms that would effectively help translate giving strategies into impact, (4) the interest and readiness of PEs to explore and engage in innovative ways, and (5) identifying the major areas in which these PEs are involved.

Gender And Beauty In The Financial Analyst Profession: Evidence From The United States And China, Congcong Li, An-Ping Lin, Hai Lu, Kevin Veenstra

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine how gender and beauty affect the likelihood of being voted as an All-Star in the financial analyst profession in both the United States and China. We find that female analysts are more likely to be voted as All-Star analysts in the United States, but good-looking female U.S. analysts are less likely to be voted as All-Stars. The conclusion is the opposite for Chinese analysts. We find that female analysts in China are less likely to be voted as All-Stars, but the likelihood increases with their facial attractiveness. These findings implicate a beauty penalty for female analysts in the …

Place-Making/Management: The Policy And Practice Of Arts-Centred Spatial Interventions In Singapore, Su Fern Hoe

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Singapore has won numerous accolades and garnered global attention for its physical infrastructure and iconic architecture. Despite these achievements, its government has recognized that certain parts of the city still lack a certain human vitality and buzz. Additionally, like other post-industrial cities, the production of a positive urban experience has been identified as that critical competitive advantage that would differentiate Singapore from other cities. Consequently, the Singapore government adopted a strategy called ‘place management’ in 2008 to inject ‘heart and soul’ into the city, and deliver a liveable, globally competitive and amenity-rich urban environment for its increasingly educated and upper …

Do Coaches In The National Basketball Association Actually Display Racial Bias? Replication And Extension, Gokhan Ertug, Massimo Maoret

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We replicate and extend empirical evidence that has been interpreted as an indication of coaches’ racial bias in the National Basketball Association (NBA) by Schroffel and Magee (2012) and Zhang (2017; 2019). After replicating the published results, we extend them by modeling coaches’ decisions of “resting the starters,” a common tactical decision based on players’ quality and not on their race, thus exploring whether this tactic may provide an alternative explanation for associations that might thus far have been taken to indicate racial bias. Our results show that, after empirically accounting for “resting the starters,” the magnitude of associations that …

Strengthening Social Fabric And Quality Of Life, Singapore Management University

Research Collection Office of Research

In this booklet, read about our research in the area of “Strengthening Social Fabric and Quality of Life”.

Contents:

Well-being of People, Groups, Organisations, Societies

• Serving the Underserved
• Does Family Background Affect Socioeconomic Mobility?
• Becoming a Happy Analyst
• Effective Childcare Subsidies
• Birds of a Feather Flock Together

Successful Ageing of People, of Populations

• Economic and Social Aspects of Ageing Successfully
• Exploring the Effectiveness of Smart Technologies in Eldercare
• Keeping our Silver Edge Sharp
• Sleep Quality & Dementia

Social Inclusion, Exclusion, Inequality

• The Helping Hand of Diversity
• Protecting Vulnerable Adults
• Finding the Path to an Inclusive Society
• Well-being of Singapore Youth …

Bettr Barista For Better Lives, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

How a social enterprise used coffee to help lift those from challenging backgrounds

The Confucian Merchant, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Profits and virtue are not opposites, and businessmen can become gentlemen by observing Confucian values

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

Research Collection School Of Economics

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

Making Ethnic Tourism Good For The Poor, Jean Junying Lor, Shelly Kwa, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

How can ethnic tourism alleviate rural poverty? Due to the difficulty of simultaneously expanding tourism while promoting pro-poor tourism, most villages traverse one of two developmental pathways: 1) ensuring an inclusive structure before expanding, or 2) expanding before building an inclusive structure. This study compares four comparable cases in Southwestern China to understand the politics behind the decision to choose different pathways, and the impact each pathways has on local residents. While the first pathway requires a careful balance to maintain a pro-poor structure as tourism volume expands, the second pathway presents apparently insurmountable barriers to poverty reduction due to …

Research On Extreme Poverty Governance Based On Social Network Analysis, Wenyong Lei

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In this dissertation, the author goes inside some of China's most remote and poorest villages and tries to reveal the determinants, correlates and strategies to address the gap of existing poverty governance system and the complexity and diversity of poor population. He offers in-depth insights into what the poor people think about poverty with two major indicators, identifies evidence on the feasibility of duel-network embedding strategy to reduce poverty, and explains how diverse groups hit by extreme poverty could develop entrepreneurship relationship with diversified market and available social economic resources. Drawing on examples that take place in Xide County, a …

Enabling Models Of Inclusive Growth: Addressing The Need For Financial And Social Inclusion, Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

While poverty is falling, the gap between the rich and poor is getting wider and more and more people are being excluded from the means to better themselves. Yuwa Hedrick-Wong and Howard Thomas look at ways to include them.

Labour Research Conference 2018: Upskilling Of Mature Workers, Stephen Hoskins, Luca Facchinello

Research Collection School Of Economics

Many developed countries are approaching an era of ageing population due to an increase in longevity and decrease in fertility rates. Singapore is no exception, having one of the fastest ageing populations in Asia, which is driven by low fertility rates and the third longest life expectancy in the world. The number of elderly citizens, defined as those aged 65 and above, is expected to triple to 900,000 by 2030, making up about 28% of the total population in Singapore (Population SG, 2016). This changing population age profile, combined with a competitive labour market, means it makes business sense to …

Build Your Own Nest: Singapore's First Study On Matched Savings Schemes For Lower Income, Older Women, David Chan, Benedict S. K. Koh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Matched Savings Scheme is a research study, commissioned by the International Longevity Centre – Singapore (ILC – Singapore) of the Tsao Foundation and funded by the Tote Board, found that a monthly matched savings scheme is effective in sustaining the retirement savings behaviour among a group of 377 elderly women from low-income households over the study period of 18 months. The research, conducted by principal investigator psychology professor David Chan and co-investigator finance professor Benedict Koh, used an experimental design and longitudinal tracking to examine the effects that different factors of a matched savings scheme have on the participants’ decision …

The Making Of A Construct: Lessons From 30 Years Of The Kogut And Singh Cultural Distance Index, Ilya R. P. Cuypers, Gokhan Ertug, Pursey Pmar M.A.R. Heugens, Bruce Kogut, Tengjian Zou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The 30-year anniversary of Kogut and Singh’s (1988) groundbreaking study that introduced the concept of cultural distance and its accompanying measure provides the opportunity to take stock of what makes for a good construct. We organize our discussion around the issues of concept, algorithm, and data to clarify and gauge their contribution, before highlighting the impact of their work more generally. Many of the challenges raised by critical observers focus on one of these three dimensions. As there is value in looking systematically at the construct from concept to data, we set out the argument of the index and discuss …

The Human Penguin Project: Climate, Social Integration, And Core Body Temperature, H. Ijzerman, S. Lindenberg, I. Dalgar, S.S.C. Weissgerber, R.C. Vergara, A.H. Cairo, M.V. Colic, P. Dursun, N. Frankowska, R. Hadi, C.J. Hall, Y. Hong, C.P. Hu, J. Joy-Gaba, Sim Su-Hsien, Samantha

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Social thermoregulation theory posits that modern human relationships are pleisiomorphically organized around body temperature regulation. In two studies (N = 1755) designed to test the principles from this theory, we used supervised machine learning to identify social and non-social factors that relate to core body temperature. This data-driven analysis found that complex social integration (CSI), defined as the number of high-contact roles one engages in, is a critical predictor of core body temperature. We further used a cross-validation approach to show that colder climates relate to higher levels of CSI, which in turn relates to higher CBT (when climates get …

Addressing Social Needs Through Remote Based Design Thinking, Hoe-Chin Goi, Wee Liang Tan, Yuki Hara, Shuichi Takao

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

With ageing as the coming and increasing phenomenon in Japan, there is a need for innovative solutions for seniors to lead active lives in their residing communities. Little research has been conducted on the use of design thinking as a means to develop social innovations, especially with the designers not being present on-site from a distance. This paper reports the study on the effectiveness of employing a remote based design thinking in a university course with the goal for participants to develop social innovations that elderly, as stakeholders, would be engage to adopt and implement. The study involved two cohorts …

The Relevance Of Sleep And Circadian Misalignment For Procrastination Among Shift Workers, Jana Kuhnel, Sabine Sonnentag, Ronald Bledow, Klaus G. Melchers

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This daily diary study contributes to current research uncovering the role of sleep for employees' effective self-regulation at work. We focus on shift workers' effective self-regulation in terms of their general and day-specific inclination to procrastinate, that is, their tendency to delay the initiation or completion of work activities. We hypothesized that transitory sleep characteristics (day-specific sleep quality and sleep duration) and chronic sleep characteristics in terms of circadian misalignment are relevant for procrastination. Sixty-six shift workers completed two daily questionnaires over the course of one work week, resulting in 332 days ofanalysis. Results of multilevel regression analyses showed that …

Perceived Entitlement Causes Discrimination Against Attractive Job Candidates In The Domain Of Relatively Less Desirable Jobs, Margaret Lee, Marko Pitesa, Madan M. Pillutla, Stefan Thau

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

People generally hold positive stereotypes of physically attractive people and because of those stereotypes often treat them more favorably. However, we propose that some beliefs about attractive people, specifically, the perception that attractive individuals have a greater sense of entitlement than less attractive individuals, can result in negative treatment of attractive people. We examine this in the context of job selection and propose that for relatively less desirable jobs, attractive candidates will be discriminated against. We argue that the ascribed sense of entitlement to good outcomes leads to perceptions that attractive individuals are more likely to be dissatisfied working in …

Technologies For Ageing-In-Place: The Singapore Context, Nadee Goonawardene, Pius Lee, Hwee Xian Tan, Alvin C. Valera, Hwee-Pink Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The number of elderly citizens aged 65 and above in Singapore, is expected to double from 440,000in 2015, to 900,000 by 2030. Along with this “Silver Tsunami” is the upward trend of the numberof elderly who are living alone — which is estimated to increase from 35,000 in 2012 to 83,000 by2030. These exclude elderly who are alone at home when their family members are working.Elderly who are staying alone are at higher risk of social isolation and tend to have poorer accessto healthcare. In addition, the general elderly population is typically more susceptible to deteriorating health conditions, which can …

Smart Cities And Urban Management, Singapore Management University

Research Collection Office of Research

In this booklet, read about SMU’s research and initiatives related to smart cities and urban management, and how we strive to make meaningful impact on business, government and society for Singapore and beyond.

Contents:

Liveability and quality of life

• Community participation through mobile crowdsourcing
• Smarter, healthier eating with Food AI
• Data-driven community eldercare platform for sustainable ageing-in-place
• A date with AI
• Smart mobility accessibility for barrier-free access
• Food security

Optimisation and resource management

• Collaborative urban delivery optimisation
• Seat occupancy detection through capacitance sensing
• Large-scale crowd simulation based on real-world data
• Gaining insights through Wi-Fi technology
• Taxi driver guidance system
• Efficiency …

Real-World Large-Scale Iot Systems For Community Eldercare: A Comparative Study On System Dependability, Hwee-Pink Tan, Austin Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The paradigm of aging-in-place — where the elderly live and age in their own homes, independently and safely, with care provided by the community — is compelling, especially in societies that face both shortages in institutionalized eldercare resources, and rapidly-aging populations. Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies, particularly in-home monitoring solutions, are commercially available, and can be a fundamental enabler of smart community eldercare, if they are dependable. In this paper, we present our findings on system performance of solutions from two vendors, which we have deployed at scale for technology-enabled community care. In particular, we highlight the importance of quantifying actual system …

We’Re Less Likely To Collaborate In Bad Economic Times, Nina Sirola

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the fall of 1930, the U.S. economy was on a path to recovery following a contraction that occurred the year before. However, worries about the state of the economy, and the banking system in particular, prompted an increasing number of bank customers to attempt to withdraw their funds, an event known as a bank run. Because banks normally keep only a small proportion of deposits in cash, bank runs create a self-fulfilling prophecy such that initial concerns about banks’ possible insolvency ultimately cause insolvency. The bank run of 1930 resulted in the worst economic downturn in the modern history, …

Motives Of Corporate Political Donations: Industry Regulation, Subjective Judgement And The Origins Of Pragmatic And Ideological Corporations, Nicholas M. Harrigan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

What motivates corporate political action? Are corporations motivated by their own narrow economic self-interest; are they committed to pursuing larger class interests; or are corporations instruments for status groups to pursue their own agendas? Sociologists have been divided over this question for much of the last century. This paper introduces a novel case - that of Australia - and an extensive dataset of over 1,500 corporations and 7,500 directors. The paper attempts to understand the motives of corporate political action by examining patterns of corporate political donations. Using statistical modelling, supported by qualitative evidence, the paper argues that, in the …