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Articles 7051 - 7080 of 9289

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Preface, Nirmalya Kumar Jan 2012

Preface, Nirmalya Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As late as 2001, Indian outward investment was less than US $1 billion. Instead, India, like all developing countries, was actively courting foreign investment into the country. By 2006, India had reached the tipping point. For the first time, Indian outward investment of US $10 billion had outstripped foreign investment into India. The spending spree continued unabated in 2007. Indian companies arranged or concluded US $21 billion in 40 foreign investment deals in January and February of 2007 alone. Moreover, Indian foreign investment in the financial year closing 31 March 2007 exceeded the cumulative total foreign investment by Indian companies …

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What Are Analysts Really Good At?, Ohad Kadan, Leonardo Madureira, Rong Wang, Tzachi. Zach Jan 2012

What Are Analysts Really Good At?, Ohad Kadan, Leonardo Madureira, Rong Wang, Tzachi. Zach

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Sell-side analysts employ different benchmarks when defining their stock recommendations. Forexample, a ‘buy’ for some brokers means the stock is expected to outperform its peers in the same sector(“industry benchmarkers”), while for other brokers it means the stock is expected to outperform themarket (“market benchmarkers”), or just some absolute return (“total benchmarkers”). We use thesebenchmarks to analyze the role of stock picking, industry picking and market timing in contributing to theperformance of stock recommendations. We are able to do so given that different benchmarks suggest theuse of different sets of abilities. Analysis of the relation between analysts’ recommendations and theirlong-term …

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Singapore’S Chinatown: Nation Building And Heritage Tourism In A Multiracial City, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Lily Kong Jan 2012

Singapore’S Chinatown: Nation Building And Heritage Tourism In A Multiracial City, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper focuses on the pivotal role played by the state in refashioning the Chinatown landscape as part of both nation-building and heritage tourism projects, and the ensuing cultural politics. After a brief history of the creation of Singapore’s Chinatown, the paper discusses, first, Chinatown’s place in Singapore’s post-independence nation-building project and, second, the reconfiguration of the Chinatown landscape as a tourism asset. The final section reflects on the changing politics of place as Chinatown gains legitimacy in state discourses on heritage, tourism and multiculturalism, as well as in the popular imagination as an ethnic precinct par excellence.

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Mining Diversity On Social Media Networks, Lu Liu, Feida Zhu, Meng Jiang, Jiawei Han, Lifeng Sun, Shiqiang Yang Jan 2012

Mining Diversity On Social Media Networks, Lu Liu, Feida Zhu, Meng Jiang, Jiawei Han, Lifeng Sun, Shiqiang Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The fast development of multimedia technology and increasing availability of network bandwidth has given rise to an abundance of network data as a result of all the ever-booming social media and social websites in recent years, e.g., Flickr, Youtube, MySpace, Facebook, etc. Social network analysis has therefore become a critical problem attracting enthusiasm from both academia and industry. However, an important measure that captures a participant’s diversity in the network has been largely neglected in previous studies. Namely, diversity characterizes how diverse a given node connects with its peers. In this paper, we give a comprehensive study of this concept. …

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A New One-Level Convex Optimization Approach For Estimating Origin-Destination Demand, Wei Shen, Laura Wynter Jan 2012

A New One-Level Convex Optimization Approach For Estimating Origin-Destination Demand, Wei Shen, Laura Wynter

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Accurately estimating Origin–Destination (OD) trip tables based on traffic data has become crucial in many real-time traffic applications. The problem of OD estimation is traditionally modeled as a bilevel network design problem (NDP), which is challenging to solve in large-scale networks. In this paper, we propose a new one-level convex optimization formulation to reasonably approximate the bilevel structure, thus allowing the development of more efficient solution algorithms. This one-level approach is consistent with user equilibrium conditions, and improves previous one-level relaxed OD estimation formulations in the literature by ‘equilibrating’ path flows using external path cost parameters. Our new formulation can, …

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Asian Treaty-Makers And Investment Treaty Arbitration: Negotiating With A Wary Eye, Locknie Hsu Jan 2012

Asian Treaty-Makers And Investment Treaty Arbitration: Negotiating With A Wary Eye, Locknie Hsu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The recent increase in bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements entered into by Asian states has exposed them to increased commitments to foreign investors and the risk of investor-state arbitration. The rise in such arbitrations elsewhere has led to a considerable body of arbitral case law. This article examines the trend of such increased exposure of Asian states, salient issues that have emerged in arbitration case law and lessons for Asian treaty-makers and their legal advisors.

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Agency And Partnership Law [2011], Pearlie M. C. Koh, Stephen Noel Henry Bull Jan 2012

Agency And Partnership Law [2011], Pearlie M. C. Koh, Stephen Noel Henry Bull

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The laws relating to the creation of an agency, implied authority, holding out and apparent authority, duties of the agent in relation to Agency law are discussed. The laws relating to partnership law and issues such as relationship of partners to third parties, relationships of partners between themselves and capacity to be a partner are highlighted.

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Singapore: Transitioning To A "New Normal" In A Post-Lee Kuan Yew Era, Eugene K. B. Tan Jan 2012

Singapore: Transitioning To A "New Normal" In A Post-Lee Kuan Yew Era, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Politics in Singapore is generally marked by incremental change. When Singapore eventually becomes a two-party or multi-party democracy, the 2011 general election is likely to be regarded as the starting point of the epochal political transition. It was a boisterous year politically where political excitement and consciousness went up several notches due to the 7 May general elections and the 27 August presidential elections, both of which produced keenly contested hustings and outcomes. The aftermath of the general elections also saw the retirement of former Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong from the Cabinet.

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A Look Back At Public Policy, The Legislature, The Courts And The Development Of Copyright Law In Singapore: Twenty-Five Years On, George S. S. Wei Jan 2012

A Look Back At Public Policy, The Legislature, The Courts And The Development Of Copyright Law In Singapore: Twenty-Five Years On, George S. S. Wei

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The purpose of this article is to review the development of copyright law in Singapore over the past 25 years and to examine how public policy considerations have shaped legislative and judicial development of copyright law principles. The article begins with a review of legislative activity and includes a brief survey of the public consultation exercises that have taken place on reform proposals. Included is a discussion of statutory amendments in respect of exhaustion of rights and fair dealing. This is followed by a discussion of some copyright case law, with a view to identifying judicial copyright policy approaches and …

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The Eu Polity And Foreign Policy Coherence, Clara Portela, Kolja Raube Jan 2012

The Eu Polity And Foreign Policy Coherence, Clara Portela, Kolja Raube

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The present article examines the character of the European Union (EU) as a polity by looking at the mechanisms it employs to ensure the coherence of its foreign policies. It first contrasts three ideal polity types. The methods chosen to ensure coherence in foreign policy actions differ according to each of the three polity types. The article then explores how the EU ensures coherence through institutional reform, and subsequently looks in detail at two illustrative policy fields: aid sanctions and civilian crisis-management. The investigation concludes that the organisation of EU foreign policies combines elements from different polity types.

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The Social-Entrepreneurial State And The Equitable Provision Of Urban Essential Goods: A Conceptual Innovation, Qian Forrest Zhang Jan 2012

The Social-Entrepreneurial State And The Equitable Provision Of Urban Essential Goods: A Conceptual Innovation, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

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A Trilogy Of "Difficult And Complex" Arbitration Issues In 2012, Darius Chan Jan 2012

A Trilogy Of "Difficult And Complex" Arbitration Issues In 2012, Darius Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

At the end of 2011, the Singapore High Court in Re David Joseph QC [2011] SGHC 262 (per VK Rajah JA) permitted the admission of an English Queen’s Counsel, David Joseph QC, to represent eight entities of the Astro Group, a Malaysian broadcasting and media entity, in proceedings arising from an arbitration with three subsidiaries of Indonesia’s Lippo Group. Under Singapore’s current statutory scheme, the court may admit QCs on an ad hoc basis if a matter contains issues of fact or law of “sufficient difficulty and complexity”, and if the circumstances of the case warrant it. The High Court …

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Japan’S Love For Derivative Actions: Irrational Behaviour And Non-Economic Motives As Rational Explanations For Shareholder Litigation, Dan W. Puchniak, Masafumi Nakahigashi Jan 2012

Japan’S Love For Derivative Actions: Irrational Behaviour And Non-Economic Motives As Rational Explanations For Shareholder Litigation, Dan W. Puchniak, Masafumi Nakahigashi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Not long ago, there was a consensus in the legal academy that the Japanese were irrational litigants. As the theory went, Japanese people would forgo litigating for financial gain because of a cultural obsession with maintaining social harmony. Based on this theory, it made perfect (but economically irrational) sense that Japanese shareholders let their U.S.-transplanted derivative action lay moribund for almost four post-war decades, while at the same time the derivative action was a staple of shareholder litigation in the United States.The 1980s brought a wave of law and economics to the scholarship of Japanese law, which largely discredited the …

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The Derivative Action In Asia: A Complex Reality, Dan W. Puchniak Jan 2012

The Derivative Action In Asia: A Complex Reality, Dan W. Puchniak

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This Article uses the derivative action in Asia as a lens for re-evaluating the foundational theories of Asian and comparative corporate law. It begins by demonstrating that the cultural theory of “Asian non-litigiousness” provides scant explanatory or predictive value for either the evolution or function of the derivative action in Asia’s leading economies. As such, this Article suggests that the theory of Asian non-litigiousness should be relegated to the dustbin of academic history. Without the black box of Asian culture to erroneously explain away potential differences between “Asian” and “Western” derivative actions, the reality of the derivative action in Asia’s …

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Laws, Institutions And Transboundary Pasture Management In The High Pamir And Pamir-Alai Mountain Ecosystem Of Central Asia, Michelle Mei Ling Lim Jan 2012

Laws, Institutions And Transboundary Pasture Management In The High Pamir And Pamir-Alai Mountain Ecosystem Of Central Asia, Michelle Mei Ling Lim

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Enhanced rangeland governance is a priority for the governments of the post-Soviet Central Asian states of the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan. Major transitional challenges confront the newly independent states of Central Asia. These challenges include the withdrawal of subsidies previously provided by the centralised Soviet government; moves towards privatisation and the conversion of administrative boundaries to international boundaries. In this context transboundary approaches to rangeland management are essential. This paper highlights the challenges for effective pasture management in the Pamir, Pamir-Alai ecosystem; the inadequacies of pasture-related legal instruments and the absence of institutions for the implementation of these instruments. Transboundary …

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Single Peakedness And Giffen Demand, Massimiliano Landi Jan 2012

Single Peakedness And Giffen Demand, Massimiliano Landi

Research Collection School Of Economics

I provide a simple example of a single peaked utility function that generates a Giffen demand. The utility function is smooth, non piecewise defined, strictly concave but not globally increasing. A full characterization of the parameter conditions under which the Giffen demand arises is provided. In addition the properties of the demand function are studied: I find that the inferior commodity with a Giffen demand must be cheaper relatively to a substitute and that Giffen demand arises at relatively low levels of income. However it is not required that the share of income spent on that commodity be large.

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A Spatial Analysis Of The Italian Second Republic, Second Version, Massimiliano Landi, Ricardo Pelizzo Jan 2012

A Spatial Analysis Of The Italian Second Republic, Second Version, Massimiliano Landi, Ricardo Pelizzo

Research Collection School Of Economics

We apply the Optimal Classification method to a newly created dataset to provide a spatial map of the Italian Second Republic (1996-2008). We find a bi-dimensional political space in the XIII Legislature and virtually a one dimensional political space in the XIV and XV Legislatures. In addition, the main dimension is explained along the dimension government opposition rather than on the traditional left and right dimension. During the Second Republic, Italy experienced changes in electoral system and in the format of the parties. We use our data to discuss the implications of either change on the dimensionality space. We find …

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One Mandarin Benefits The Whole Clan: Hometown Infrastructure And Nepotism In An Autocracy, Kieu-Trang Nguyen, Quoc-Anh Do, Anh Tran Jan 2012

One Mandarin Benefits The Whole Clan: Hometown Infrastructure And Nepotism In An Autocracy, Kieu-Trang Nguyen, Quoc-Anh Do, Anh Tran

Research Collection School Of Economics

Duplicate record, see https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/1383. This paper studies nepotism by government officials in an authoritarian regime. We collect a unique dataset of political promotions of officials in Vietnam and estimate their impact on public infrastructure in their hometowns. We find strong positive effects on several outcomes, some with lags, including roads to villages, marketplaces, clean water access, preschools, irrigation, and local radio broadcasters, as well as the hometown’s propensity to benefit from the State’s “poor commune support program”. Nepotism is not limited to only top-level officials, pervasive even among those without direct authority over hometown budgets, stronger when the hometown chairperson’s …

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Pirates And Fishermen: Is Less Patrolling Always Bad?, Brishti Guha Jan 2012

Pirates And Fishermen: Is Less Patrolling Always Bad?, Brishti Guha

Research Collection School Of Economics

Motivated by the Somali fishermen–pirates, I explore the time allocation decision of potential pirates between piracy and an alternative non-violent occupation, fishing, when the returns of both piracy and fishing are sensitive to patrolling intensity. For a range of parameters, the static model yields multiple equilibria, an “efficient” one with no patrolling and low piracy, a less efficient equilibrium with intermediate levels of both piracy and patrolling and a highly inefficient high-patrolling high-piracy equilibrium. Analyzing the dynamic analogue, I obtain the surprising result that sufficiently low patrolling can be a good strategy.

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Quasi-Option Value Under Strategic Interactions, Tomoki Fujii, Ryuichiro Ishikawa Jan 2012

Quasi-Option Value Under Strategic Interactions, Tomoki Fujii, Ryuichiro Ishikawa

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider a simple two-period model of irreversible investment under strategic interactions between two players. In this setup, we show that the quasi-option value may cause some conceptual difficulties. In case of asymmetric information, decentralized investment decisions fail to induce first-best allocations. Therefore a regulator may not be able to exercise the option to delay the decision to develop. We also show that information-induced inefficiency may arise in a game situation and that under certain assumptions inefficiency can be eliminated by sending asymmetric information to the players, even when the regulator faces informational constraints. Our model is potentially applicable to …

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One Mandarin Benefits The Whole Clan: Hometown Infrastructure And Nepotism In An Autocracy, Kieu-Trang Nguyen, Quoc-Anh Do, Anh Tran Jan 2012

One Mandarin Benefits The Whole Clan: Hometown Infrastructure And Nepotism In An Autocracy, Kieu-Trang Nguyen, Quoc-Anh Do, Anh Tran

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies nepotism by government officials in an authoritarian regime. We collect a unique dataset of political promotions of officials in Vietnam and estimate their impact on public infrastructure in their hometowns. We find strong positive effects on several outcomes, some with lags, including roads to villages, marketplaces, clean water access, preschools, irrigation, and local radio broadcasters, as well as the hometown’s propensity to benefit from the State’s “poor commune support program”. Nepotism is not limited to only top-level officials, pervasive even among those without direct authority over hometown budgets, stronger when the hometown chairperson’s and promoted official’s ages …

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Peer Transparency In Teams: Does It Help Or Hinder Incentives?, Parimal Bag, Nona Pepito Jan 2012

Peer Transparency In Teams: Does It Help Or Hinder Incentives?, Parimal Bag, Nona Pepito

Research Collection School Of Economics

In a joint project involving two players of a two-round effort investment game with complementary efforts, transparency, by allowing players to observe each other's efforts, achieves at least as much, and sometimes more, collective and individual efforts relative to a nontransparent environment. Without transparency, multiple equilibria can arise, and transparency elimites the inferior equilibria. When full cooperation arises only under transparency, it occurs gradually: No worker sinks in the maximum amount of effort in the first round, preferring instead to smooth out contributions over time. If the players' efforts are substitutes, transparency makes no difference to equilibrium efforts.

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An Institutional Perspective And The Role Of The State For Chinese Ofdi, Bing Ren, Hao Liang, Ying Zheng Jan 2012

An Institutional Perspective And The Role Of The State For Chinese Ofdi, Bing Ren, Hao Liang, Ying Zheng

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Napoleon called China a ‘sleeping dragon’, but recent economic developments as China enters the twenty-first century show that the dragon is awakening. China has maintained strong economic growth since 1979 and sustained a GDP increase of more than 9 percent over the years. The total volume of economic output increased from 2.8 percent in 1970 to 7.23 percent in 2008, ranking China as the third largest economy in the world (United Nation Statistics Division Statistical Databases). China launched its ‘Go Global’ policy in 1999 to encourage highperforming Chinese firms to invest abroad and upgrade their global competence. Since then, outward …

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Public Housing: Appreciating Assets?, Sock Yong Phang Jan 2012

Public Housing: Appreciating Assets?, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The topic of HDB housing is one that is close to the hearts and minds of the majority of Singaporeans. The first part of the presentation will provide a brief overview of price trends in Singapore’s housing sector. The second part delves into the market and policy factors behind the rapid increase in HDB housing prices since 2006. The monograph “Reflections on Housing a Nation” published by the Ministry of National Development in February 2011, contains numerous statements on the goals of housing policy. Briefly, the government is committed to affordable home ownership as a major pillar of Singapore’s public …

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Building Situational Stimuli In Assessment Center Exercises: Do Specific Exercise Instructions And Role-Player Prompts Increase The Observability Of Behavior?, Eveline Schollaert, Filip Lievens Jan 2012

Building Situational Stimuli In Assessment Center Exercises: Do Specific Exercise Instructions And Role-Player Prompts Increase The Observability Of Behavior?, Eveline Schollaert, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Little is known about how assessment center exercises might be designed to better elicit job-relevant behavior. This study uses trait activation theory as a theoretical lens for increasing the number of behaviors that can be observed in assessment centers. Two standardized exercise stimuli (specific exercise instructions and role-player prompts) are proposed, and their effects on the observability of candidate behavior are examined. Results showed a significant effect of role-player prompts in increasing both the general number of behavioral observations and the number of behavioral observations related to three out of four dimensions. Specific exercise instructions did not have effects on …

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Supply Elasticity Of Housing, Kyunghwan Kim, Sock-Yong Phang, Susan Wachter Jan 2012

Supply Elasticity Of Housing, Kyunghwan Kim, Sock-Yong Phang, Susan Wachter

Research Collection School Of Economics

The supply elasticity of housing determines how quickly house prices respond to economic shocks and this has many real economic consequences. Malpezzi and Maclennan (2001) describes its importance in housing market analysis: „most housing models, and most policy analysis hinge on explicit or implicit estimates of the price elasticity of supply of housing: does the market respond to demand side shocks with more supply or higher prices‟. However, as pointed out by Quigley (1979), there exist real analytical difficulties in modeling the supply of housing. Attempting to measure the flow of housing services provided by the stock of housing is …

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Optimal International Agreement And Treatment Of Domestic Subsidy, Gea M. Lee Jan 2012

Optimal International Agreement And Treatment Of Domestic Subsidy, Gea M. Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate how a domestic subsidy is treated in an international agreement, when a government, having incentive to use its domestic subsidy as a means of import protection, can disguise its protective use of subsidy as a legitimate intervention with which to address a market imperfection. We show that any optimal agreement, as opposed to the conventional message of the targeting principle, restricts the home government’s freedom to select its domestic subsidy in order to increase the market-access level for foreign exporters. Our finding suggests that a proper restriction on domestic subsidy is somewhere between GATT and WTO rules.

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Teaching Public Relations To Students With A Confucian Cultural Background, Jurrien Gregor Halff Jan 2012

Teaching Public Relations To Students With A Confucian Cultural Background, Jurrien Gregor Halff

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper explores how the Confucian cultural background of students influences their perceptions of and reaction to the dominant public relations curriculum from the ‘West’. Using focus groups of Asian students, three heuristics that affect the students’ affinity to learn public relations are identified. Instructors working with students from a Confucian cultural background are advised to incorporate these heuristics when planning their curriculum.

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Folklore Theorems, Implicit Maps, And Indirect Inference, Peter C. B. Phillips Jan 2012

Folklore Theorems, Implicit Maps, And Indirect Inference, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

The delta method and continuous mapping theorem are among the most extensively used tools in asymptotic derivations in econometrics. Extensions of these methods are provided for sequences of functions that are commonly encountered in applications and where the usual methods sometimes fail. Important examples of failure arise in the use of simulation-based estimation methods such as indirect inference. The paper explores the application of these methods to the indirect inference estimator (IIE) in first order autoregressive estimation. The IIE uses a binding function that is sample size dependent. Its limit theory relies on a sequence-based delta method in the stationary …

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Beyond Minority Report: Pre-Crime, Pre-Punishment And Pre-Desert, John N. Williams Jan 2012

Beyond Minority Report: Pre-Crime, Pre-Punishment And Pre-Desert, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Utilitarian ethics are apparently incommensurable with other ethical perspectives. Faced with a choice between maximizing general benefit to society and committing an act of injustice, those of us who reject utility in favor of justice are powerless to change the viewpoint of someone who rejects justice in favor of utility. Since there are no higher ethical principles that overarch both principles of utility and principles of justice, both sides must run out of reasons when deciding which principles should be put first. But the unreasoned decision is ineluctable, because there are possible cases in which the principles conflict.1 This kind …

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