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Singapore Management University

Productivity

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Customer Capital And Trade Intermediaries: Evidence From China, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu Oct 2023

Customer Capital And Trade Intermediaries: Evidence From China, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using a unique dataset that links the production and sales of Chinese exporting firms, we document that the value of export goods a firm produces often differs from the value of export goods that the firm sells in foreign markets. We show that this empirical pattern reflects that some exporters act as trade intermediaries, which we refer to as producer intermediaries. We further show that firms with higher accumulated marketing expenditures are more likely to become producer intermediaries. To understand the implications of our empirical findings, we develop a theoretical framework in which firms can lend and borrow customer capital …

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Covid-19 And Procrastination: The Struggle To Stay Motivated In A Pandemic, Singapore Management University Jun 2020

Covid-19 And Procrastination: The Struggle To Stay Motivated In A Pandemic, Singapore Management University

Social Space

COVID-19 has led to the cancellation of countless internships, travel plans, summer jobs, music concerts and festivals, graduations, conferences, you name it. Fixed deadlines have become fluid, and both short-term and long-term goals are presently at the mercy of something far beyond our control. In the face of a global pandemic, we may find ourselves wondering, “Why bother planning for anything anyway?" Yet this very mindset is the crux of the coronavirus procrastination problem, says CHARDONNAY NEEDLER.

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Estimating The Benefits And Costs Of Forming Business Partnerships, Jungho Lee Jun 2020

Estimating The Benefits And Costs Of Forming Business Partnerships, Jungho Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

I estimate a matching model of business‐partnership formation to quantify the relative importance of productivity gains, financing gains, and the coordination failure of effort provision (moral hazard) among partners. Productivity gains account for 61% of the gain from the observed partnerships. For partners in the first quartile of the wealth distribution, however, financing accounts for 93% of the gain. The cost of moral hazard corresponds to 42% of the entire gain from partnerships. A loan policy specifically targeting partnerships is less effective in improving welfare than a conventional loan policy that provides loans to individual entrepreneurs.

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Covid-19 And Boredom: A Photoessay, Kylie Cooper Jun 2020

Covid-19 And Boredom: A Photoessay, Kylie Cooper

Social Space

For the second time in my life, I was riding a train alone. I looked around to see what my fellow passengers were up to. A woman wearing a lime green beanie was leaned over, asleep with her mouth open. Nearby, a man was flipping through the pages of a newspaper, pausing every now and then to take a sip of his drink. Why were they on the southbound train on a foggy Saturday morning at 7:30 am?

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Examining The Impact Of It Investment On Insurer Productivity: A Bootstrapped Malmquist Frontier Analysis Approach, Jee Yuen Yew Jun 2020

Examining The Impact Of It Investment On Insurer Productivity: A Bootstrapped Malmquist Frontier Analysis Approach, Jee Yuen Yew

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This paper attempts to examine productivity changes of insurance companies in Singapore as represented by bootstrapped Malmquist indices, generated from a data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based frontier analysis, and attribute these changes to an increasing investment in information technology infrastructure and equipment, and increasing investment in staff enhancement. Through this analysis, the author finds that there has been a general increase in productivity and efficiency from 2011 – 2017, as seen from changes in the kernel density functions of productivity change between the two periods. The author also finds, through running a panel tobit regression model, that there is a positive …

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Living And Learning In A Lockdown: 5 Ways To Stay Productive And Entertained At Home, Ishan Singh May 2020

Living And Learning In A Lockdown: 5 Ways To Stay Productive And Entertained At Home, Ishan Singh

Social Space

If nothing else, the COVID-19 pandemic has taught me that staying at home is tougher than it seems. For introverts like myself, hunkering indoors should come naturally—even pre-coronavirus, I didn't get out a whole lot. Yet the experience has turned out to be very different when hanging out at home becomes less of a pastime and more of national responsibility.

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Nonparametric Regression Estimation With General Parametric Error Covariance: A More Efficient Two-Step Estimator, Liangjun Su, Aman Ullah, Yun Wang Oct 2013

Nonparametric Regression Estimation With General Parametric Error Covariance: A More Efficient Two-Step Estimator, Liangjun Su, Aman Ullah, Yun Wang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Recently Martins-Filho and Yao (J Multivar Anal 100:309–333, 2009) have proposed a two-step estimator of nonparametric regression function with parametric error covariance and demonstrate that it is more efficient than the usual LLE. In the present paper we demonstrate that MY’s estimator can be further improved. First, we extend MY’s estimator to the multivariate case, and also establish the asymptotic theorem for the slope estimators; second, we propose a more efficient two-step estimator for nonparametric regression function with general parametric error covariance, and develop the corresponding asymptotic theorems. Monte Carlo study shows the relative efficiency loss of MY’s estimator in …

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Economic Transition, Higher Education And Worker Productivity In China, Belton Fleisher, Yifan Yu, Haizheng Li, Seonghoon Kim Jan 2011

Economic Transition, Higher Education And Worker Productivity In China, Belton Fleisher, Yifan Yu, Haizheng Li, Seonghoon Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate the role of education on worker productivity and firms' total factor productivity using a panel of firm-level data from China. We estimate the returns to education by calculating the marginal productivity of workers of different education levels based on estimates of the firm-level production function. We also estimate how the education level of workers and CEO contributes to firms' total factor productivity. Estimated marginal products are much higher than wages, and the gap is larger for highly educated workers. Our estimate shows that an additional year of schooling raises marginal product by 30.1%, and that CEO's education increases …

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Are De Jure Labor Laws Absolute? Formal Manufacturing In India, Gurmeet Singh Ghumman Jan 2008

Are De Jure Labor Laws Absolute? Formal Manufacturing In India, Gurmeet Singh Ghumman

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

We investigate the view that de facto labor market conditions are important in evaluating the effects of labor institutions in developing countries where enactment does not necessarily imply enforcement. Using India as a case study we empirically investigate the effects of labor markets on the organized manufacturing sector from 1970 to 1997. Recognizing that the state can intervene in the outcome of labor disputes we construct a measure to proxy the degree of the state legislature's prejudice towards pro-worker causes. We argue that leftist and communist political parties can interfere in the resolution of disputes in favor of workers through …

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