Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Political Risk And Institutional Quality Difference Across Countries: Impacts On Fdi By Multinational Firms, Pao Li Chang, Chia-Hui Lu

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

We Are The Champions, Nirmalya Kumar, Jan-Benedict E. M. Steenkamp

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

From China Mobile to Coal India, state-supported firms are on the march. The authors map out the route from being a national champion to becoming a global brand.

How Does Childbirth Alter Intrahousehold Resource Allocation?: Evidence From Japan, Tomoki Fujii, Ryuichiro Ishikawa

Research Collection School Of Economics

Exploiting unique panel data that include direct measurements of resource allocation within households, we investigated the impact of childbirth on intrahousehold allocation for married Japanese couples. Based on a collective model of the household, we developed reduced-form and structural-form estimation equations that allow us to focus on private goods to track the changes in intrahousehold resource allocation. We found one additional child is associated with a reduction in the wife's private expenditure share by at least two percentage points. This may be because she substitutes more say in decisions on the children for her own private expenditure share.

Cost-Effective Estimation Of The Population Mean Using Prediction Estimators, Tomoki Fujii, Roy Van Der Weide

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper considers the prediction estimator as an efficient estimator for the population mean. The study may be viewed as an earlier study that proved that the prediction estimator based on the iteratively weighted least squares estimator outperforms the sample mean. The analysis finds that a certain moment condition must hold in general for the prediction estimator based on a Generalized-Method-of-Moment estimator to be at least as efficient as the sample mean. In an application to cost-effective double sampling, the authors show how prediction estimators may be adopted to maximize statistical precision (minimize financial costs) under a budget constraint (statistical …

A Latent Variable Model For Viewpoint Discovery From Threaded Forum Posts, Minghui Qiu, Jing Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Threaded discussion forums provide an important social media platform. Its rich user generated content has served as an important source of public feedback. To automatically discover the viewpoints or stances on hot issues from forum threads is an important and useful task. In this paper, we propose a novel latent variable model for viewpoint discovery from threaded forum posts. Our model is a principled generative latent variable model which captures three important factors: viewpoint specific topic preference, user identity and user interactions. Evaluation results show that our model clearly outperforms a number of baseline models in terms of both clustering …

Oral History Interview With Sim Teow Hong: Growing Smu, Teow Hong Sim

Oral History Collection

The interview covered: first involvement with SMU, finance administration, CFO, government funding, stakeholders, tuition fees, financial crisis, donors, campus development, facilities management, student hostels, parent, risk management, reputation.

Biography: Senior Vice President of Finance & Administration, SMU, 1999–2016

Sim Teow Hong graduated with a Bachelor of Accountancy from the former University of Singapore and worked as an auditor with the Ernst & Young public accounting firm for a few years. He then embarked on a banking career by joining the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan Chase), Singapore. He worked with the Bank for 18 years, fulfilling different roles from …

Parallels Between The U.S. And Asian Property Markets, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

U.S. home prices are on an upswing. What does this mean for the Asian property market?

Dhl And Singapore Management University Launch Green Transformation Lab, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

DHL, the world’s leading logistics company, is partnering with Singapore Management University (SMU) to accelerate the evolution of sustainable logistics across Asia Pacific with the launch of the Green Transformation Lab. This S$2 million initiative, hosted at the SMU School of Information Systems on the University’s city campus, will focus on the creation of innovative solutions to help organizations transform their businesses towards sustainable green growth and drive beneficial change in supply chains across the region. This joint DHL-SMU initiative will fulfill its mission through education, research and best practice development.

Unified Entity Search In Social Media Community, Ting Yao, Yuan Liu, Chong-Wah Ngo, Tao Mei

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The search for entities is the most common search behavior on the Web, especially in social media communities where entities (such as images, videos, people, locations, and tags) are highly heterogeneous and correlated. While previous research usually deals with these social media entities separately, we are investigating in this paper a unified, multilevel, and correlative entity graph to represent the unstructured social media data, through which various applications (e.g., friend suggestion, personalized image search, image tagging, etc.) can be realized more effectively in one single framework. We regard the social media objects equally as “entities” and all of these applications …

Fragmented Social Media: A Look Into Selective Exposure To Political News, Jisun An, Daniele Quercia, Jon Crowcroft

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The hypothesis of selective exposure assumes that people crave like-minded information and eschew information that conflicts with their beliefs, and that has negative consequences on political life. Yet, despite decades of research, this hypothesis remains theoretically promising but empirically difficult to test. We look into news articles shared on Facebook and examine whether selective exposure exists or not in social media. We find a concrete evidence for a tendency that users predominantly share like-minded news articles and avoid conflicting ones, and partisans are more likely to do that. Building tools to counter partisanship on social media would require the ability …

Impact Of Multimedia In Sina Weibo: Popularity And Life Span, Xun Zhao, Feida Zhu, Weining Qian, Aoying Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multimedia contents such as images and videos are widely used in social network sites nowadays. Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging service, is one of the first microblog platforms to incorporate multimedia content sharing features. This work provides statistical analysis on how multimedia contents are produced, consumed, and propagated in Sina Weibo. Based on 230 million tweets and 1.8 million user profiles in Sina Weibo, we study the impact of multimedia contents on the popularity of both users and tweets as well as tweet life span. Our preliminary study shows that multimedia tweets dominant pure text ones in Sina Weibo. Multimedia …

Your Love Is Public Now: Questioning The Use Of Personal Information In Authentication, Payas Gupta, Swapna Gottipati, Jing Jiang, Debin Gao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Most social networking platforms protect user's private information by limiting access to it to a small group of members, typically friends of the user, while allowing (virtually) everyone's access to the user's public data. In this paper, we exploit public data available on Facebook to infer users' undisclosed interests on their profile pages. In particular, we infer their undisclosed interests from the public data fetched using Graph APIs provided by Facebook. We demonstrate that simply liking a Facebook page does not corroborate that the user is interested in the page. Instead, we perform sentiment-oriented mining on various attributes of a …

Her Voice Lingers On And Her Memory Is Strategic: Effects Of Gender On Directed Forgetting, Hwajin Yang, Sujin Yang, Giho Park

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The literature on directed forgetting has employed exclusively visual words. Thus, the potentially interesting aspects of a spoken utterance, which include not only vocal cues (e.g., prosody) but also the speaker and the listener, have been neglected. This study demonstrates that prosody alone does not influence directed-forgetting effects, while the sex of the speaker and the listener significantly modulate directed-forgetting effects for spoken utterances. Specifically, forgetting costs were attenuated for female-spoken items compared to male-spoken items, and forgetting benefits were eliminated among female listeners but not among male listeners. These results suggest that information conveyed in a female …

Fast Tracks: A Comparison Of High Speed Rail In China, Europe And The United States, Junfeng Jiao, Jenna Harbin, Yuan Li

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

High speed rail systems have blossomed in technological advances since their debut in the 1960’s with the Japanese Shinkansen line. As miles upon miles of tracks increase around the world, bringing added mobility to travelers while decreasing emissions, various technologies are leading the way to a faster tomorrow. This article explores the differences in what countries around the world are using to supply the next generation of travel modes. This paper details the differences in technological implementations from Asia, Europe, and North America. High speed rail systems are far more developed in other countries, especially China, and have required substantial …

Let Us Not Centralise Town Council Services, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

With the Government accepting the findings and recommendations of the Ministry of National Development (MND) Town Council Review Report, the focus has now shifted to a “strategic and comprehensive review of town councils (TCs)”. SMU Assistant Professor of Law Eugene Tan was of the opinion that such a move is timely and needed. He said that Singapore should not revert to the pre-1989 situation in which the management and maintenance of public housing estates was HDB’s sole responsibility. Apart from commenting on suggestions raised in the reviews, he also added what he thought should be included in this comprehensive review …

Are Tournaments Optimal Over Piece Rates Under Limited Liability For The Principal?, Kosmas Marinakis, Theofanis Tsoulouhas

Research Collection School Of Economics

A highly acclaimed result is that tournaments are superior to piece rates when the agents are risk averse and their production activities are subject to a relatively large common shock. The reason is that tournaments allow the principal to trade insurance for lower income to the agents. Our analysis shows that this celebrated result does not carry over to the case when a limited liability (bankruptcy) constraint limits the payments the principal can make, provided that the liquidation value of the firm is sufficiently small. This finding has important implications for the vast number of limited liability firms. Even though …

Lm Tests Of Spatial Dependence Based On Bootstrap Critical Values, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

To test the existence of spatial dependence in an econometric model, a convenient test is the Lagrange Multiplier (LM) test. However, evidence shows that, in finite samples, the LM test referring to asymptotic critical values may suffer from the problems of size distortion and low power, which become worse with a denser spatial weight matrix. In this paper, residual-based bootstrap methods are introduced for asymptotically refined approximations to the finite sample critical values of the LM statistics. Conditions for their validity are clearly laid out and formal justifications are given in general, and in details under several popular spatial LM …

Do Singaporeans Spend Too Much On Housing?, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

According to a 2011 IMF study, Singapore's level of government intervention in housing finance is the highest in the developed world (Slide 3). This level of intervention in housing finance has correspondingly produced the highest level of homeownership amongst advanced countries. This housing outcome is the result of our very unique HDB-CPF housing framework – an institutional framework that was established in the 1960s during the formative period of our country?s history (Slides 4 and 5). Singapore was, at that particular point in time, faced with a situation of chronic housing shortage, low homeownership rates and an underdeveloped housing mortgage …

Nonparametric Dynamic Panel Data Models With Interactive Fixed Effects: Sieve Estimation And Specification Testing, Liangjun Su, Yonghui Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we analyze nonparametric dynamic panel data models with interactive fixed effects, where the predetermined regressors enter the models nonparametrically and the common factors enter the models linearly but with individual specific factor loadings. We consider the issues of estimation and specification testing when both the cross-sectional dimension and the time dimension are large. We propose sieve estimation for the nonparametric function by extending Bai’s (2009) principal component analysis (PCA) to our nonparametric framework. Based on the asymptotic expansion of the Gaussian quasi-log-likelihood function, we derive the convergence rate for the sieve estimator and establish its asymptotic normality. …

On Domains That Admit Well-Behaved Strategy-Proof Social Choice Functions, Shurojit Chatterji, Rezmi Sanver, Arunava Sen

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we investigate domains that admit “well-behaved” strategy-proof social choice functions. We show that if the number of voters is even, then every domain that satisfies a richness condition and admits an anonymous, tops-only, unanimous and strategy-proof social choice function, must be semi-single-peaked. Conversely every semi-single-peaked domain admits an anonymous, tops-only, unanimous and strategy-proof social choice function. Semi-single-peaked domains are generalizations of single-peaked domains on a tree introduced by Demange (1982).

A Nonparametric Poolability Test For Panel Data Models With Cross Section Dependence, Sainan Jin, Liangjun Su

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this article we propose a nonparametric test for poolability in large dimensional semiparametric panel data models with cross-section dependence based on the sieve estimation technique. To construct the test statistic, we only need to estimate the model under the alternative. We establish the asymptotic normal distributions of our test statistic under the null hypothesis of poolability and a sequence of local alternatives, and prove the consistency of our test. We also suggest a bootstrap method as an alternative way to obtain the critical values. A small set of Monte Carlo simulations indicate the test performs reasonably well in finite …

Retweeting: An Act Of Viral Users, Susceptible Users, Or Viral Topics?, Tuan-Anh Hoang, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

When a user retweets, there are three behavioral factors that cause the actions. They are the topic virality, user virality and user susceptibility. Topic virality captures the degree to which a topic attracts retweets by users. For each topic, user virality and susceptibility refer to the likelihood that a user attracts retweets and performs retweeting respectively. To model a set of observed retweet data as a result of these three topic specific factors, we first represent the retweets as a three-dimensional tensor of the tweet authors, their followers, and the tweets themselves. We then propose the V 2S model, a …

Oral History Interview With Annie Koh: Growing Smu, Annie Koh

Oral History Collection

The interview covered: first involvement with SMU, risks of joining a new university, roles and responsibilities, financial markets and institutions course, executive and professional education, collaboration, Wharton School, business cases, International Trading Institute, commodities trading, Masters in Wealth Management, Office of Business Development and External Relations.

Biography: Vice President for Business Development and External Relations, SMU, 2000–present

Annie Koh is Vice President for Business Development and External Relations at the Singapore Management University (SMU). An Associate Professor of Finance, Annie also holds the position Academic Director of The Financial Training Institute (FTI), Center for Professional Studies (CPS), International Trading Institute …

On Sen On Comparative Justice, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Against scepticism from thinkers including John Rawls and Thomas Nagel about the appropriateness of justice as the concept through which global ethical concerns should be approached, Amartya Sen argues that the problem lies not with the idea of justice, but with a particular approach to thinking of justice, namely a transcendental approach. In its stead Sen is determined to offer an alternative systematic theory of justice, namely a comparative approach, as a more promising foundation for a theory of ‘global justice.’ But in the end Sen offers no such thing. He does not develop a theory of justice and this …

Are Women Ready To Lead?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

In a world where Sheryl Sandberg and Hilary Clinton regularly steal headlines, it’s easy to think that the world has become a more egalitarian place for women. Not so, says Marina Mahathir, who goes on to speak about lack of opportunities for women in politics.

When I'M 64: The Aging Of Southeast Asia, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Family structures in Southeast Asia are changing, presaging a need for sound policies to cover its rapidly aging citizenry.

Using Digital Storytelling To Engage Student Learning, Themin Suwardy, Gary Pan, Poh Sun Seow

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No one really knows what the first story ever told in human history was, but storytelling is an art that spans many civilizations and cultures, and continues to be a major part of our modern lives. More recently, storytelling has gone digital with advances in technology and connectivity. Educators have also rediscovered how storytelling can be an effective teaching pedagogy for engaged student learning. A digital story can engage students' visual and auditory senses in a way that the written word alone cannot. This article describes such an effort. The Movie-Door-2-Door.com (MD2D) is a digital story spanning 12 episodes. The …

Twicube: A Real-Time Twitter Online Community Analysis Tool, Juan Du, Wei Xie, Cheng Li, Feida Zhu, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As a micro-blogging service, Twitter differs from other social network services in two ways: 1) the absence of mutual consent in establishing follow links and 2) being a mixture of news media and social network. A key question to ask in better understanding Twitter user behavior is which part of a user’s Twitter network reflects one’s real-life social network. TwiCube is an online tool that employs a novel algorithm capable of identifying a user’s real-life social community, which we call the user’s off-line community, purely from examining the link structure among the user’s followers and followees. Based on the identified …

Dynamic Label Propagation In Social Networks, Juan Du, Feida Zhu, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Label propagation has been studied for many years, starting from a set of nodes with labels and then propagating to those without labels. In social networks, building complete user profiles like interests and affiliations contributes to the systems like link prediction, personalized feeding, etc. Since the labels for each user are mostly not filled, we often employ some people to label these users. And therefore, the cost of human labeling is high if the data set is large. To reduce the expense, we need to select the optimal data set for labeling, which produces the best propagation result. In this …

Military Service, Exposure To Trauma, And Health In Older Adulthood: An Analysis Of Northern Vietnamese Older Adults, Kim Korinek, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The long-term, indirect effects of war on older adult health are poorly understood, especially in less developed societies where armed conflict concentrates. In this paper we analyse the determinants of self-reported health, chronic conditions, somatoform symptoms and depressive symptoms in a sample of northern Vietnamese ages 55 and older, who encountered mass mobilization for war and widespread exposure to war traumas in early adulthood. Results of multivariate models indicate that service in combat roles predicts poor self-reported health, health complaints and chronic illness in late adulthood. No such relationship is observed for depressive symptoms, a pattern consistent with previous research …