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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Connected Lives And Embeddedness: Reading Zelizer With Granovetter – A Review And Critique, Deirdre Caputo-Levine, Alwyn Lim, Celine. Wills Oct 2007

Connected Lives And Embeddedness: Reading Zelizer With Granovetter – A Review And Critique, Deirdre Caputo-Levine, Alwyn Lim, Celine. Wills

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Our concern is to read Viviana Zelizer’s Purchase of Intimacy inrelation to Mark Granovetter’s embeddedness framework. We compare Zelizer’s connected-lives approach to the embeddedness literature in orderto tease out the similarities, differences, and improvements in the wayseconomic sociologists examine the intertwining of economic and socialbehavior. We argue that although Zelizer and Granovetter both focus onthis intermeshing of socioeconomic action, their perspectives reflect theirdiffering starting points: economic transactions or intimate relationships.We believe Zelizer’s connected-lives approach gives fresh insight to thenew economic sociology but we have some reservations regarding hertreatment of reciprocity and power in intimate relationships.

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Modeling Country Risks: An Asian Perspective, Swee Liang Tan, G. K. Randolph Tan Sep 2007

Modeling Country Risks: An Asian Perspective, Swee Liang Tan, G. K. Randolph Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the use of the Markov Regime Switching Model (MRSM) as a means to track changes in the levels of investor confidence. It also assesses the probabilities of a country switching between different regimes using the transition probability matrix. A maximum of three possible levels or regimes of risk – low, intermediate and high volatility regimes, is considered. From the smoothed probabilities calculated for different regimes, this paper makes inferences about timings of debt crisis. Comparing Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines and Indonesia in particular, we date the onset and subsequent dissolution of crisis-induced panic. We give interpretations of …

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Social Influences On Organizational Attractiveness: Investigating If And When Word Of Mouth Matters, Greet Van Hoye, Filip Lievens Sep 2007

Social Influences On Organizational Attractiveness: Investigating If And When Word Of Mouth Matters, Greet Van Hoye, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Previous recruitment studies have treated potential applicants as individual decision makers, neglecting informational social influences on organizational attractiveness. The present study investigated if and under what conditions word-of-mouth communication matters as a recruitment source. Results (N = 171) indicated that word of mouth had a strong impact on organizational attractiveness, and negative word of mouth interfered with recruitment advertising effects. Word of mouth from a strong tie was perceived as more credible and had a more positive effect on organizational attractiveness. For potential applicants high in self-monitoring, word of mouth had a stronger effect when presented after recruitment advertising. Finally, …

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Keep The Talk Flowing, M. Thulasidas Sep 2007

Keep The Talk Flowing, M. Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Specialisation is good. It lets us go deep into a specific field of endeavour, but at the expense of a broad overview of everything.

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Financial Development And International Capital Flows, Jürgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang Sep 2007

Financial Development And International Capital Flows, Jürgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a general equilibrium model with nancial frictions in which internal capital (equity capital) and external capital (bank loans) have di erent rates of return. Financial development raises the rate of return on external capital but has a non-monotonic e ect on the rate of return on internal capital. We then show in a two-country model that capital account liberalization leads to out ow of nancial capital from the country with less developed nancial system. However, the direction of foreign direct investment (FDI, henceforth) depends on the exact degrees of nancial development in the two countries as well as …

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Inefficient Worker Turnover, Nicolas L. Jacquet Sep 2007

Inefficient Worker Turnover, Nicolas L. Jacquet

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper considers the efficiency properties of risk-neutral workers’ mobility decisions in an equilibrium model with search frictions, but no search externalities, when the rent accruing to a match is split through bargaining. Matches are ex ante homogeneous and their true productivity is learnt after the match is formed. It is shown that the efficiency of worker turnover depends on contract enforceability, and that in the absence of complete enforceability the equilibrium fails to be efficient. This is because without complete enforceability firms cannot credibly offer workers contracts that will guarantee them the entire future of all potential future matches.

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Un-Balanced Economic Growth, Hing-Man Leung Sep 2007

Un-Balanced Economic Growth, Hing-Man Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

Since the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is not always one, and since technical progress is not always Harrod-neutral, it is desirable to have an endogenous growth model that admits all sizes of the elasticity and all known technology modes. We derive an equation to do just that, fully describing the per capita income growth rate at all times. It shows a typical economy needing hundreds if not thousands of years to reach its long term growth rate, leading to the conclusion that even the short run may be very long indeed.

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The Wto Trade Effect, Pao Li Chang, Myoung-Jae Lee Sep 2007

The Wto Trade Effect, Pao Li Chang, Myoung-Jae Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

Rose (2004) showed that the WTO or its predecessor, the GATT, did not promote trade, based on conventional econometric analysis of gravity-type equations of trade. We argue that conclusions regarding the GATT/WTO trade effect based on gravity-type equations are arbitrary and subject to parametric misspecifications. We propose using nonparametric matching methods to estimate the 'treatment effect' of GATT/WTO membership, and permutation-based inferential procedures for assessing statistical significance of the estimated effects. A sensitivity analysis following Rosenbaum (2002) is then used to evaluate the sensitivity of our estimation results to potential selection biases. Contrary to Rose (2004), we find the effect …

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Building Social Trust: A Human Capital Approach, Fali Huang Sep 2007

Building Social Trust: A Human Capital Approach, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Much evidence suggests individuals differ in their predisposition to cooperate, which is essentially a component of human capital. This paper examines the role of individual cooperative tendencies and their interactions with institutions in generating social trust; it also endogenizes cooperative tendencies using a human-capital investment model. Multiple equilibria and inefficiencies exist due to positive externalities. An innovative finding is that, when institutions are more effective in punishing defecting behaviors, more people invest in cooperative tendencies and hence the endogenous social trust is higher, though the equilibrium cooperative tendencies are lower. This paper provides a plausible explanation for many empirical and …

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On The Segmentation Of Markets, Nicolas Laurent Jacquet, Serene Tan Sep 2007

On The Segmentation Of Markets, Nicolas Laurent Jacquet, Serene Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper endogenizes the market structure of an economy with heterogeneous agents who want to form bilateral matches in the presence of search frictions and when utility is nontransferable. There exist infinitely many marketplaces, and each agent chooses which marketplace to be in: agents get to choose not only whom to match with but also whom they meet with. Perfect segmentation is obtained in equilibrium, where agents match with the first person they meet. All equilibria have the same matching pattern. Although perfect assortative matching is not obtained in equilibrium, the degree of assortativeness is greater than in standard models.

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Employee Screening: Theory And Evidence, Fali Huang, Peter Cappelli Sep 2007

Employee Screening: Theory And Evidence, Fali Huang, Peter Cappelli

Research Collection School Of Economics

Arguably the fundamental problem faced by employers is how to elicit effort from employees. Most models suggest that employers meet this challenge by monitoring employees carefully to prevent shirking. But there is another option that relies on heterogeneity across employees, and that is to screen job candidates to find workers with a stronger work ethic who require less monitoring. This should be especially useful in work systems where monitoring by supervisors is more difficult, such as teamwork systems. We analyze the relationship between screening and monitoring in the context of a principal-agent model and test the theoretical results using a …

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Dynamic Treatment Effect Analysis Of Tv Effects On Child Cognitive Development, Fali Huang Sep 2007

Dynamic Treatment Effect Analysis Of Tv Effects On Child Cognitive Development, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate whether TV watching at ages 6-7 and 8-9 affects cognitive development measured by math and reading scores at ages 8-9 using a rich childhood longitudinal sample from NLSY79. Dynamic panel data models are estimated to handle the unobserved child-specific factor, endogeneity of TV watching, and dynamic nature of the causal relation. A special emphasis is put on the last aspect where TV watching affects cognitive development which in turn affects the future TV watching. When this feedback occurs, it is not straightforward to identify and estimate the TV effect. We adopt estimation methods available in the biostatistics literature …

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More Efficient Estimation Of Nonparametric Panel Data Models With Random Effects, Liangjun Su, Aman Ullah Sep 2007

More Efficient Estimation Of Nonparametric Panel Data Models With Random Effects, Liangjun Su, Aman Ullah

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a class of two-step estimators for nonparametric panel data models with random effects that are more efficient than the conventional least squares estimators. We establish asymptotic normality for the proposed estimators and derive the most efficient estimator in the class.

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Forecasting The Car Penetration Rate (Cpr) In China: A Nonparametric Approach, Sainan Jin, Liangjun Su Sep 2007

Forecasting The Car Penetration Rate (Cpr) In China: A Nonparametric Approach, Sainan Jin, Liangjun Su

Research Collection School Of Economics

With strong economic growth, the auto industry has made great breakthroughs in recent years and has become a backbone industry in China, while cars play an increasingly important role, and are now the principal part of the auto industry. Both China's government and academic circles take strong interest in the prediction of CPR (i.e. car penetration rate or cars per thousand people), which will be the main guidance for the future industry policy. We summarize the existing problems in recent research and propose to use nonparametric methods to estimate the CPR and its elasticity with respect to GDP per capita …

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Avoiding Arbitrary Exclusion Restrictions Using Ratios Of Reduced-Form Estimates, Myoung-Jae Lee, Pao-Li Chang Sep 2007

Avoiding Arbitrary Exclusion Restrictions Using Ratios Of Reduced-Form Estimates, Myoung-Jae Lee, Pao-Li Chang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We show how to obtain coherent structural-form (SF) exclusion restrictions using the reduced-form (RF) parameter ratios. It will be shown that an over-identified SF corresponds to a group of regressors sharing the same RF ratio value; those regressors should be excluded jointly from the SF. If there is no group structure, then the SF is just-identified; in this case, however, it is no longer clear which regressor should be excluded. Hence, just-identified SF’s are more arbitrary than over-identified SF’s in terms of exclusion restrictions. This is in stark contrast to the notion that the former is less arbitrary than the …

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Improved Maximum-Likelihood Estimation For The Common Shape Parameter Of Several Weibull Populations, Zhenlin Yang, Dennis K. J. Lin Sep 2007

Improved Maximum-Likelihood Estimation For The Common Shape Parameter Of Several Weibull Populations, Zhenlin Yang, Dennis K. J. Lin

Research Collection School Of Economics

The biasness problem of the maximum-likelihood estimate (MLE) of the common shape parameter of several Weibull populations is examined in detail. A modified MLE (MMLE) approach is proposed. In the case of complete and Type II censored data, the bias of the MLE can be substantial. This is noticeable even when the sample size is large. Such a bias increases rapidly as the degree of censorship increases and as more populations are involved. The proposed MMLE, however, is nearly unbiased and much more efficient than the MLE, irrespective of the degree of censorship, the sample sizes, and the number of …

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Some Empirics On Economic Growth Under Heterogeneous Technology, Peter C. B. Phillips, Donggyu Sul Sep 2007

Some Empirics On Economic Growth Under Heterogeneous Technology, Peter C. B. Phillips, Donggyu Sul

Research Collection School Of Economics

A new econometric approach to testing for economic growth convergence is overviewed. The method is applicable to panel data, involves a simple regression based one-sided t-test, and can be used to form a clustering algorithm to assess the existence of growth convergence clubs. The approach allows for heterogeneous technology, utilizes some new asymptotic theory for nonlinear dynamic factor models, and is easy to implement. Some background growth theory is given which shows the form of augmented Solow regression (ASR) equations in the presence of heterogeneous technology and explains sources of potential misspecification that can arise in conventional formulations of ASR …

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A Hybrid Approach To Case Teaching, Swee Liang Tan, Roy Jin Hou Ng Sep 2007

A Hybrid Approach To Case Teaching, Swee Liang Tan, Roy Jin Hou Ng

Research Collection School Of Economics

We structure case based teaching using a combination of computer-support technology and in-class activities. We create and design an on-line learning tool, Case Study On-line (CSOL) that enables instructor to structure the delivery of teaching resources and set up assignment tasks in the system. The tool enables tasks to be set in a way that they can be completed sequentially, and learning resources can be accessed only when required by students. Upon submission of their assignments, students can promptly receive instructor’s explanations to the tasks. Follow up activities take place in class, with the objective to promote active learning. The …

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Grist For The Sceptic's Mill: Rwanda And The African Peer Review Mechanism, Eduard Jordaan Sep 2007

Grist For The Sceptic's Mill: Rwanda And The African Peer Review Mechanism, Eduard Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The article delves into the impact of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) to Rwanda's achievement of greater democracy and respect for political freedom. It aims to show the improbability that the APRM can influence the country due to its insufficient ability and volition to pressure further democratization and respect for political rights on Rwandan government, the APRM's optimistic view of political governance, and the APR Heads of State Forum's ratification of a program of action discounting the issues of democracy and political freedom. The author stresses that the weaknesses of APRM may be attributed to the existing reduced authorization …

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The Soft Embodiment Of Culture: Camera Angles And Motion Through Time And Space, Angela K. Y. Leung, Dov Cohen Sep 2007

The Soft Embodiment Of Culture: Camera Angles And Motion Through Time And Space, Angela K. Y. Leung, Dov Cohen

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Cultural assumptions about one's relation to others and one's place in the world can be literally embodied in the way one cognitively maps out one's position and motion in time and space. In three experiments, we examined the psychological perspective that Asian American and Euro-American participants embodied as they both comprehended and produced narratives and mapped out metaphors of time and space. In social situations, Euro-American participants were more likely to embody their own perspective and a sense of their own motion (rather than those of a friend), whereas Asian American participants were more likely to embody a friend's perspective …

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Protection For Sale Under Monopolistic Competition: An Empirical Investigation, Pao Li Chang Aug 2007

Protection For Sale Under Monopolistic Competition: An Empirical Investigation, Pao Li Chang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proposes a general empirical framework to estimate the protection-for-sale model, where the protection regime shifts according to a sector's market structure (perfectly or monop-olistically competitive). We base the protection structure on Grossman and Helpman (1994) for the subset of perfectly competitive sectors and on Chang (2005) for the subset of monop- olistically competitive sectors. The two protection regimes are simultaneously estimated with joint constraints. The results of the J-test consistently reject the homogeneous (perfect compe- tition) protection-for-sale model often adopted in previous literature and suggest a direction of improvement toward the proposed heterogeneous protection structure model.

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Change Of Dean At Smu Law School, Singapore Management University Aug 2007

Change Of Dean At Smu Law School, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases

No abstract provided.

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Understanding Chinese Business Behaviour: A Historical Perspective, Taieb Hafsi, Li Yan Aug 2007

Understanding Chinese Business Behaviour: A Historical Perspective, Taieb Hafsi, Li Yan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The behaviour of Chinese business has been studied by a variety of strategic management scholars (see in particular Hafsi and Tian, 2005; Peng, 2006; Peng and Heat, 1996). Most of these studies rely on traditional data gathering, either in the form of interviews or published data banks. Very little attention has been given to history as a determinant of strategic behaviour. In this paper, we propose that the cognitive orientation of Chinese managers is dominated by their knowledge and understanding of Chinese history. We take the Three Kingdoms historic novel as a proxy to history to derive basic behavioral norms …

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Regression With Slowly Varying Regressors And Nonlinear Trends, Peter C. B. Phillips Aug 2007

Regression With Slowly Varying Regressors And Nonlinear Trends, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

Slowly varying (SV) regressors arise commonly in empirical econometric work, particularly in the form of semilogarithmic regression and log periodogram regression. These regressors are asymptotically collinear. Usual regression formulas for asymptotic standard errors are shown to remain valid, but rates of convergence are affected and the limit distribution of the regression coefficients is shown to be one dimensional. Some asymptotic representations of partial sums of SV functions and central limit theorems with SV weights are given that assist in the development of a regression theory. Multivariate regression and polynomial regression with SV functions are considered and shown to be equivalent, …

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The Coevolution Of Economic And Political Development, Fali Huang Aug 2007

The Coevolution Of Economic And Political Development, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper establishes a simple model of long run economic and political development, which is driven by the inherent technical features of di¤erent production factors and the political con‡icts among factor owners on how to divide the outputs. The main production factor in economy evolves from land to physical capital and then to human capital, which enables their respective owners (landlords, capitalists, and workers) to gain political power in the same sequence, shaping the political development path from monarchy to oligarchy and …nally to democracy with full su¤rage. When it is too costly for any group of factor owners to …

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Does Tv Affect Child Cognitive Development?, Fali Huang, Myoung-Jae Lee Aug 2007

Does Tv Affect Child Cognitive Development?, Fali Huang, Myoung-Jae Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate whether TV watching at ages 6-7 and 8-9 affects cognitive development measured by math and reading scores at ages 8-9 using a rich childhood longitudinal sample from NLSY79. Dynamic panel data models are estimated to handle the unobserved child-specific factor, endogeneity of TV watching, and dynamic nature of the causal relation. A special emphasis is put on the last aspect where TV watching affects cognitive development which in turn affects the future TV watching. When this feedback occurs, it is not straightforward to identify and estimate the TV effect. We adopt estimation methods available in the biostatistics literature …

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A Welfare Analysis Of Capital Account Liberalization, Jürgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang Aug 2007

A Welfare Analysis Of Capital Account Liberalization, Jürgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a model of a small open economy with credit market frictions to analyze the consequences of capital account liberalization. We show that nancial opening facilitates the in ows of cheap foreign funds and improves production e ciency. Reforms increasing labor market exibility can further improve such e ciency gains. However, capital account liberalization also has important distributional consequences. Speci cally, it may be impossible to use public transfers to fully compensate the loss of those negatively a ected by capital account liberalization. This explains why nancial opening often meets erce opposition even though it leads to e ciency …

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On The Segmentation Of Markets, Nicolas L. Jacquet, Serene Tan Aug 2007

On The Segmentation Of Markets, Nicolas L. Jacquet, Serene Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper endogenizes the market structure of an economy with heterogeneous agents who want to form bilateral matches in the presence of search frictions and when utility is nontransferable. There exist infinitely many marketplaces, and each agent chooses which marketplace to be in: agents get to choose not only whom to match with but also whom they meet with. Perfect segmentation is obtained in equilibrium, where agents match with the first person they meet. All equilibria have the same matching pattern. Although perfect assortative matching is not obtained in equilibrium, the degree of assortativeness is greater than in standard models.

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To Trust Or To Monitor: A Dynamic Analysis, Fali Huang Aug 2007

To Trust Or To Monitor: A Dynamic Analysis, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

In a principal-agent framework, principals can mitigate moral hazard problems not only through extrinsic incentives such as monitoring, but also through agents’ intrinsic trustworthiness. Their relative usage, however, changes over time and varies across societies. This paper attempts to explain this phenomenon by endogenizing agent trustworthiness as a response to potential returns. When monitoring becomes relatively cheaper over time, agents acquire lower trustworthiness, which may actually drive up the overall governance cost in society. Across societies, those giving employees lower weights in choosing governance methods tend to have higher monitoring intensities and lower trust. These results are consistent with the …

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Mapping Better Business Strategies With Gis, Tin Seong Kam Aug 2007

Mapping Better Business Strategies With Gis, Tin Seong Kam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The value of location as a business measure is fast becoming an important consideration for organisations. GIS (Geographical Information Systems), with its capability to manage, display, analyse business information spatially, is emerging as a powerful location intelligence tool. In the US, Starbucks, Blockbuster, Hyundai, and thousands of other businesses use census data and GIS software to help them understand what types of people buy their products and services, and how to better market to these consumers. For example, McDonald’s in Japan uses a GIS system to overlay demographic information on maps to help identify promising new store sites. Singapore Management …

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