Business Commons^™

I Don't Want To Go Back: Examining The Return To Physical Workspaces During Covid-19, Zihan Liu, Drake Van Egdom, Rhona Flin, Christiane Spitzmueller, Omolola Adepoju, Ramanan Krishnamoorti

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Objective: We study employee perspectives on return to physical workspaces to ultimately inform employers' and policy makers' decision making around the return to work during COVID-19. Methods: We tested the three-component conceptual model using survey data collected in the United States in May 2020 from samples of energy workers (N = 333). Results: Women, non-Caucasians, and employees living in multi-generational households were less willing to return. Concerns about childcare were negatively related to willingness to return, whereas organizational strategies for mitigating COVID-19 transmission at work were positively related to willingness to return. COVID-19 infections in an employees' network were also …

Disaster Relief, Inc., Hao Liang, Cara Vansteenkiste

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the motivations and value implications of corporate philanthropy by exploiting a global sample of publicly listed firms from 45 countries that provide disaster-relief grants to affected communities. We argue that, while in general corporate philanthropy entails agency concerns, the saliency of large, attention-grabbing natural disasters amplifies the strategic benefits of donating. We find that the returns from donating increase with disaster severity and become positive for firms that rely more on reputation and social image. Returns are also higher for countries with low government relief support, for medium-sized donations, and for in-kind donations. Overall, our results highlight the …

How Should We Understand The Digital Economy In Asia? Critical Assessment And Research Agenda, Kai Li, Dan J. Kim, Karl R. Lang, Robert J. Kauffman, Maurizio Naldi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

By Asian digital economy, we refer to high-tech developments, business and social transformations, and information-driven changes in the region's growth. We discuss its background and foundations, significance in Asia and contribution to removal of historical barriers in traditional business. We assess how new value chains are transforming country-level involvement in worldwide manufacturing and note "smiling curve theory" predictions about the global value chain in Asia for high-tech firms and their economies. The takeaway is that the digital economy in Asian nations involves revamping business processes through technology innovation, government policies for growth, and digital entrepreneurship. We analyze the "digital economy …

Empowering Singapore’S Smes: Fintech P2p Lending — A Lifeline For Smes’ Survival?, Grace Lee, Alan Megargel

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The COVID-19 pandemic has sent shock waves throughout the world, pushed countries into lockdown, and wreaked havoc on the world’s people and the global economy. The damage to economies around the world caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has far exceeded that of the global financial crisis. While all businesses suffered hugely, it would be of grave consequence if the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), an important segment of every country’s economy, are unable to withstand the shock wave and sustain themselves beyond this pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of cash flow or working capital for the viability …

Fostering Creativity At The Workplace, Marko Pitesa, Roy Chua, Smu Office Of Research

Research@SMU Infographics

A study recently conducted by SMU researchers has shown that the environment in which one grew up in may influence the amount of creativity he/she displays at the workplace. Managers and parents alike can intervene to enhance the individuals' creativity.

Frm Financial Risk Meter, Andrija Mihoci, Michael Althof, Cathy Yi-Hsuan Chen, Wolfgang Karl Hardle

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

A systemic risk measure is proposed accounting for links and mutual dependencies between financial institutions utilizing tail event information. Financial Risk Meter (FRM) is based on least absolute shrinkage and selection operator quantile regression designed to capture tail event co-movements. The FRM focus lies on understanding active set data characteristics and the presentation of interdependencies in a network topology. Two FRM indices are presented, namely, FRM@Americas and FRM@Europe. The FRM indices detect systemic risk at selected areas and identify risk factors. In practice, FRM is applied to the return time series of selected financial institutions …

Teres: Tail Event Risk Expectile Shortfall, Andrija Mihoci, Wolfgang Karl Hardle, Cathy Yi-Hsuan Chen

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

We propose a generalized risk measure for expectile-based expected shortfall estimation. The generalization is designed with a mixture of Gaussian and Laplace densities. Our plug-in estimator is derived from an analytic relationship between expectiles and expected shortfall. We investigate the sensitivity and robustness of the expected shortfall to the underlying mixture parameter specification and the risk level. Empirical results from the US, German and UK stock markets and for selected NASDAQ blue chip companies indicate that expected shortfall can be successfully estimated using the proposed method on a monthly, weekly, daily and intra-day basis using a 1-year or 1-day time …

Applying Visual Analytics To Fraud Detection Using Benford's Law, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Benford's law has been examined as a useful tool for detecting potential accounting fraud. In this article, I provide an introduction to Benford's law and examine how the first digit, second digit, and first-two digits tests in Benford's law can be employed to detect potential accounting fraud. In addition, I also highlight, through a worked example, how Tableau, a visual analytics tool, can be used to perform Benford's law's first-digit test to detect potential fraud.

International Standards: Catalyst Or Barrier For Innovative Entrepreneurship In Singapore?, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This research, under the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore inaugural Research Grant 2018, considers whether and how international standards, specifically those of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), can function as a catalyst or barrier to innovative entrepreneurship in Singapore. It also interrogates how private (and quasi-public regulation) affect competition and whether such barriers are anti-competitive. In essence, while innovation and entrepreneurship are necessary, they may not be sufficient in ensuring that a product or service is competitive and able to access export markets. The growing movement towards and the expectation of businesses engaging in responsible behaviour has led …

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), …

A Taxonomy Of Non-Dictatorial Domains, Shurojit Chatterji, Huaxia Zeng

Research Collection School Of Economics

We provide an exhaustive classification of all preference domains that allow the design of unanimous social choice functions (henceforth, rules) that are non-dictatorial and strategy-proof. This taxonomy is based on a richness assumption and employs a simple property of two-voter rules called invariance. The preference domains that form the classification are semi-single-peaked domains (introduced by Chatterji et al. (2013)) and semi-hybrid domains (introduced here) which are two appropriate weakenings of the single-peaked domains, and which, more importantly, are shown to allow strategy-proof rules to depend on non-peak information of voters’ preferences. As a refinement of the classification, single-peaked domains and …

Tax Considerations For Funds Structuring In Asia, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Tax considerations play a major role in the decisions of fund managers of where to base their funds. The highly mobile nature of capital has resulted in tax competition, leading to several host jurisdictions for funds in Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Labuan, and the BVI) having very similar tax characteristics in terms of low effective corporate income tax rates; no capital gains taxes; no exit taxes; a single tier of taxation; and generally no withholding taxes. Other ways in which jurisdictions have attempted to distinguish themselves include a strong Double Tax Agreement network, certainty on the taxation of the carried …

European Floating Strike Lookback Options: Alpha Prediction And Generation Using Unsupervised Learning, Tristan Lim, Aldy Gunawan, Chin Sin Ong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This research utilized the intrinsic quality of European floating strike lookback call options, alongside selected return and volatility parameters, in a K-means clustering environment, to recommend an alpha generative trading strategy. The result is an elegant easy-to-use alpha strategy based on the option mechanisms which identifies investment assets with high degree of significance. In an upward trending market, the research had identified European floating strike lookback call option as an evaluative criterion and investable asset, which would both allow investors to predict and profit from alpha opportunities. The findings will be useful for (i) buy-side investors seeking alpha generation and/or …

The Effect Of Green Announcements On Stock Returns Of New Zealand Listed Companies, David K. Ding

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corporate green announcements on the stock performance of listed companies in New Zealand. We find that the market has a positive, though not significant, reaction to the announcements. New Zealand companies are largely viewed to be already quite green at the onset and the market is not very much surprised by such announcements but expect them to continue being green. Our results are consistent with the view that to be green is costly, especially so in a developed economy where the cost of doing business is high. Our findings …

The Future Of Work Now: Ai-Driven Transaction Surveillance At Dbs Bank, Thomas H. Davenport, Steven M. Miller

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One of the most frequently-used phrases at business events these days is “the future of work.” It’s increasingly clear that artificial intelligence and other new technologies will bring substantial changes in work tasks and business processes. But while these changes are predicted for the future, they’re already present in many organizations for many different jobs. The job and incumbents described below are an example of this phenomenon. Steve Miller of Singapore Management University and I co-authored the story.

Stakeholder Preservation Or Appropriation? The Influence Of Target Csr On Market Reactions To Acquisition Announcements, Li Tong, Heli Wang, Jun Xia

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines how target corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the economic gains for acquirers, as reflected in market reaction to acquisition announcement, from two distinct perspectives: stakeholder preservation versus stakeholder appropriation. The stakeholder preservation perspective suggests that positive market reaction to an acquisition stems from potential new value creation by honoring implicit contracts and maintaining good relationships with target stakeholders. By contrast, the stakeholder appropriation perspective posits that positive market reaction is primarily derived through wealth transfer to acquirers by defaulting on implicit contracts with target stakeholders. Using a dataset of acquisitions in the US, we find that target …

Algorithmic Trading And Market Quality: International Evidence, Ekkehart Boehmer, Kingsley Fong, Juan Julie Wu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the effect of algorithmic trading (AT) on market quality between 2001 and 2011 in 42 equity markets around the world. We use an exchange colocation service that increases AT as an exogenous instrument to draw causal inferences about AT on market quality. On average, AT improves liquidity and informational efficiency but increases short-term volatility. Importantly, AT also lowers execution shortfalls for buy-side institutional investors. Our results are surprisingly consistent across markets and thus across a wide range of AT environments. We further document that the beneficial effect of AT is stronger in large stocks than in small stocks.

Oil At Risk: Political Violence And Accelerated Carbon Extraction In The Middle East And North Africa, Ryan Knowles Merrill, Anthony W. Orlando

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

What effect does the threat of expropriation have on resource extraction? Much of the economic literature suggests that uncertainty reduces investment, but the theory of risk-induced extraction suggests the opposite. In this paper, we test this theory in the context of political violence, which poses a real threat of state destabilization and violent expropriation of property rights. Facing this uncertainty, we find that oil producers in the Middle East and North Africa increase oil production in response to political violence. This finding has important negative consequences for the world in terms of climate change and demonstrates a previously untested mechanism …

Will Ceos With Banking Experience Lower Default Risks? Evidence From P2p Lending Platforms In China, Qiang Gong, Chong Liu, Qianni Peng, Luying Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using a novel dataset of 121 Chinese P2P lending platforms, we investigate the impact of CEOs' banking experience on default risk. The empirical results indicate that CEOs with prior banking experience manage default risk better. Moreover, CEOs' banking experience has a stronger influence on small platforms and in situations where the platforms' depository banks are city commercial banks. Our results indicate that although fintech provides technology to reduce risks, we cannot ignore the constructive role of professional experience in risk management. Thus, investors and regulators in emerging markets should pay attention to managers' financial qualifications, and especially to CEOs' banking …

The Attractiveness Advantage At Work: A Cross-Disciplinary Integrative Review, Kelly A Nault, Marko Pitesa, Stefan Thau

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Compared with people of average attractiveness, the highly attractive earn roughly 20 percent more and are recommended for promotion more frequently. The dominant view of this “attractiveness advantage” is one of taste-based discrimination, whereby attractive individuals are preferred without justification in economic productivity. We conduct a comprehensive review of research on attractiveness discrimination, finding relatively more evidence that this phenomenon constitutes, to some extent, statistical (as opposed to solely taste-based) discrimination, in which decision makers assume that attractive people are more competent and discriminate based on instrumental motives. We then review research that speaks to whether decision makers might be …

The Future Of Work Now: Automl At 84.51°And Kroger, Thomas H. Davenport, Steven M. Miller

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One of the most frequently-used phrases at business events these days is “the future of work.” It’s increasingly clear that artificial intelligence and other new technologies will bring substantial changes in work tasks and business processes. But while these changes are predicted for the future, they’re already present in many organizations for many different jobs. The job and incumbents described below are an example of this phenomenon.

Opinion-Aware Answer Generation For Review-Driven Question Answering In E-Commerce, Yang Deng, Wenxuan Zhang, Wai Lam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Product-related question answering (QA) is an important but challenging task in E-Commerce. It leads to a great demand on automatic review-driven QA, which aims at providing instant responses towards user-posted questions based on diverse product reviews. Nevertheless, the rich information about personal opinions in product reviews, which is essential to answer those product-specific questions, is underutilized in current generation-based review-driven QA studies. There are two main challenges when exploiting the opinion information from the reviews to facilitate the opinion-aware answer generation: (i) jointly modeling opinionated and interrelated information between the question and reviews to capture important information for answer generation, …

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2020: Q2 Results, Institute Of Service Excellence, Smu

Research Collection Institute of Service Excellence (2007-2024)

The Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) computes customer satisfaction scores at the national, sector, sub-sector, and company levels. The CSISG serves as a quantitative benchmark of the quality of goods and services produced by the Singapore economy over time and across countries. This is the CSISG’s 14th year of measurement.

Entrepreneurial Intention Amongst Scientists And Their Transition To Roles In Research Based Startups, Krishna Kumar Nallur

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The involvement of scientist and their transition to Research based Startup’s (RBSU’s) has been identified as a key factor in their success. This study was undertaken to better understand this transition of the scientist into the RBSU. It followed a two-step process of interviewing 28 researchers, researcher - entrepreneurs and researcher - startup employees followed by a survey with 104 individuals with similar backgrounds in research, entrepreneurship and as startup employees. the survey sought to understand the effects of entrepreneurial training / internships, access to entrepreneurs (network) and the role of events on these individuals and the likelihood of their …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Sustainable Finance: A Review Of The Literature, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to the incorporation of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations into corporate management, financial decision making, and investors’ portfolio decisions. Socially responsible firms are expected to internalize the externalities (e.g. pollution) they create, and are willing to be accountable to shareholders as well as a broader group of stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers, local communities,…). Over the past two decades, various rating agencies developed firm-level measures of ESG performance, which are widely used in the literature. A problem for past and a challenge for future research is that these ratings show inconsistencies, which depend on the …

Do Short Sellers Use Textual Information? Evidence From Annual Reports, Hung Wan Kot, Frank Weikai Li, Ming Liu, K.C. John Wei

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine short-sellers’ use of textual information in annual reports for shorting activities. We find that more uncertainty and negative words in annual reports are associated with greater abnormal shorting volume. Short selling motivated by textual information negatively predicts stock price reaction around the filing date of 10-K reports. We further provide some evidence that textual information used by short-sellers are related to revisions of analysts’ earnings forecasts, changes in firm fundamentals, and increasing crash risk subsequently. Our results suggest that textual information in annual reports forms an important part of short-sellers’ information advantage.

Capital Controls And Macro-Prudential Housing Policies In Small Open Economies, Taojun Xie, Guay C. Lim, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

We evaluate the effects of capital controls and macro-prudential policies in small open economies with a housing sector that is open to foreign ownership. The work is motivated by concerns that foreign investments also respond to housing investment opportunities resulting in potential house price inflation and issues about housing affordability. Our dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model features housing as an internationally traded investment. We also consider macro-prudential policies that are combinations of monetary and fiscal instruments. We investigate whether foreign investments in the housing markets are de-stabilising and whether there are appropriate policy responses to mitigate the negative effects of …

Politically Connected Governments, Christine Cuny, Jungbae Kim, Mihir N. Mehta

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines the consequences of powerful political connections for local governments. We find that governments located within the constituencies of, and thus connected to, powerful congressional members reduce their stewardship over public resources. Using plausibly exogenous declines in the power of congressional representation, we show that the effect is causal. To better understand why connected local governments can reduce stewardship, we study electoral characteristics. Our findings suggest that the increased resources that come with powerful congressional representation allow local‐government officials to reduce stewardship without material adverse effects on their reelection prospects. In sum, we provide evidence of a cost …

The Importance Of Innovation And Entrepreneurship In China’S Social Transformation, Guo Jun Shen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

As world’s second largest economy, China has seen tremendous changes since its 1978 “open door and reform” policy. Different reformations in form of policies were planned and rolled out to release the potential of productivity. At the same time, social development also seen a huge progress. How the reformation been transformed to social development and in what degree? This is the question was answered in this dissertation. I studied four major reformations covering: State owned Enterprises (SoE), land, financial liberalization, and science and technology, and their impacts on the social development. At macro level, I identified mediation effects of entrepreneurship …

Research On The Impact Of Venture Capital On The Operating Performance Of Startups, Ziqiang Sun

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Venture capital can not only realize its own capital appreciation, but also promote the development of startups and boost the development of high-tech industries; therefore, it has obvious positive externalities. With the development of venture capital in China, the impact of venture capital on the operating performance of startups gradually attracts widespread attention.

This paper investigates the impact of venture capital on the operating performance of startups and conducts an in-depth discussion on the problem formulation, empirical relationship, cause and effect analysis, and countermeasure suggestions. The main research contents include:

The first part is the introduction, which analyzes the research …