Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Estimating Firm-Level Production Functions With Spatial Dependence, Pao-Li Chang, Ryo Makioka, Bo Lin Ng, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proposes a three-stage efficient GMM estimation algorithm for estimating firm-level production functions given spatial dependence across firms due to supplier-customer relationships, sharing of input markets, or knowledge spillover. The procedure builds on Ackerberg, Caves and Frazer (2015) and Wooldridge (2009), but in addition, allows the productivity process to depend on the lagged output levels and lagged input usages of related firms, and spatially correlated productivity shocks across firms, where the set of related firms can differ across the three dimensions of spatial dependence. We establish the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator, and conduct Monte Carlo simulations to …

A Rose Or A Unicorn? Asean’S Mission Under The Spotlight, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In a commentary, SMU President Professor Lily Kong explores the question posed by political scientist Donald Emmerson in 1995 - is Southeast Asia more like a vibrant rose or an elusive unicorn? Against the backdrop of the 44th ASEAN Summit, with the theme "Connectivity and Resilience", Prof Kong highlights ASEAN's efforts in fostering regional connectivity and resilience through economic growth, cultural exchanges, and digital advancements. Despite substantial economic integration and digital connectivity, she points out that ASEAN faces challenges in creating a cohesive regional identity. The piece argues for deeper cultural engagement and a focus on shared values to build …

Motivating Physical Activity With Fitness Tracking And The Interpersonal Context, Sapphire H. Lin, Sonny Rosenthal, Rich Ling

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Many societies have aging populations. Getting older people to exercise can help them achieve a higher quality of life. Fitness tracking and social support can buttress that goal. This study tested the effects of fitness tracking and spousal influence on the physical activity of older adults. In a 2 (blinded vs. feedback) × 2 (individual vs. dyad) between-group experiment, 240 participants received a fitness tracker with a visible or blinded display. They participated in the three-month experiment either individually or with their spouses. Participants who received feedback met daily step counts of 7500 and 10,000 more frequently than those without …

Towards An Extended Resource Theory Of Marital Power: Parental Education And Household Decision-Making In Rural China, Cheng Cheng, Yu Xie

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Existing literature on the resource theory of marital power has focused on the relative resources of spouses and overlooked the resource contributions of spouses’ extended families. We propose an extended resource theory that considers how the comparative resources of a couple’s natal families are directly associated with marital power, net of the comparative resources of the couple. Using data from the China Panel Family Studies, we examine how the relative education of a couple’s respective parents affects the wife’s decision-making power, net of the relative education of the couple. Results suggest that the higher the wife’s parental education relative to …

Does Relationship Conflict Reduce Novel Idea Communication Through Perceived Leader Openness? Power Distance Orientation As A Moderator, Ming-Hong Tsai

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate why followers have low perceptions of leader openness and thus feel reluctant to communicate novel ideas by examining leader–follower relationship conflict (i.e. interpersonal incompatibility) and a follower’s power distance orientation (i.e. an acceptance of uneven power distribution in organizations) as antecedents. Design/methodology/approach: The research administrators conducted a three-wave work behavior survey in Study 1, a laboratory experiment in Study 2, and an online experiment in Study 3. Findings: The results demonstrated that leader–follower relationship conflict reduced followers’ perceptions of leader openness. However, the negative impact of relationship conflict became non-significant when followers have high …

Registered Replication Report: A Large Multilab Cross-Cultural Conceptual Replication Of Turri Et Al. (2015), Braeden Hall, Kathleen Schmidt, Jordan Wagge, Savannah C. Lewis, Sophia C. Weissgerber, Felix Kiunke, ..., Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

According to the justified true belief (JTB) account of knowledge, people can truly know something only if they have a belief that is both justified and true (i.e., knowledge is JTB). This account was challenged by Gettier, who argued that JTB does not explain knowledge attributions in certain situations, later called “Gettier-type cases,” wherein protagonists are justified in believing something to be true, but their belief was correct only because of luck. Laypeople may not attribute knowledge to protagonists with justified but only luckily true beliefs. Although some research has found evidence for these so-called Gettier intuitions, Turri et al. …

Deliberately Making And Correcting Errors In Mathematical Problem-Solving Practice Improves Procedural Transfer To More Complex Problems, Janson Boon Khang Yap, Sarah Shi Hui Wong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

How can students effectively learn and transfer mathematical procedures to solve new problems? Here, we tested the effects of deliberately committing and correcting errors during mathematical problem-solving practice on transfer of the learned procedures. In two experiments, university students were instructed on mathematical algorithms (synthetic division and matrix multiplication) and solved practice problems during open-book study. Learners were then tested on flexibly adapting the algorithms to solve novel problems that were structurally more complex or embedded in “real-life” scenarios (i.e., mathematical word problems). Deliberately committing and correcting procedural errors during problem-solving practice yielded better transfer than errorless repeated practice (Experiment …

Do Women Receive Worse Financial Advice?, Utpal Bhattacharya, Amit Kumar, Sujata Visaria, Jing Zhao

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We arranged for trained undercover men and women to pose as potential clients and visit all 65 local financial advisory firms in Hong Kong. At financial planning firms, but not at securities firms, women were more likely than men to receive advice to buy only individual or only local securities. Female clients who signaled high confidence, high risk tolerance, or a domestic outlook were especially likely to receive this suboptimal advice. Our theoretical model explains these patterns as a result of statis-tical discrimination interacting with advisors’ incentives. Taste-based discrimination is unlikely to explain the results.

China And Global Trade Order Post Ukraine War: From Value Chains To Values Chains, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

China has long been hailed as the biggest success story in economic development through integration into global value chains, especially since its accession to the WTO 20 years ago. However, it is much less well-known how China refitted the global value chain narrative to influence economic analysis and trade governance. At the same time, the value chains analysis also backfired when the U.S. tried to cut China out of its supply chains and pushed for decoupling with China, while China itself started to abuse its role in value chains for political gains. The process was further accelerated by the Ukraine …

What Is Beyond Measurement For Social Cohesion?, Qian Hui Tricia Tok, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

“What gets measured gets managed” has long been a mantra to rally improvement throughout various domains of life. Perhaps this is also the case for existing work on social cohesion, whereby much of its conceptual and operational elements have received interest in both academic and policy research aiming for practical improvement with regard to the cohesiveness of communities and societies. We contend, however, that not everything that matters for social cohesion may be measurable, and not everything that has been measured for social cohesion may matter. This is not to suggest that not measuring any indicators is better than measuring …

Does Ceo Agreeableness Personality Mitigate Real Earnings Management?, Shan Liu, Xingying Wu, Nan Hu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Despite efforts to mitigate aggressive financial reporting, earnings management remains challenging to parties interested in inhibiting its dysfunctional effects. Using linguistic algorithms to assess CEO agreeableness personality from their unscripted texts in conference calls, we find that it is a determinant that mitigates a firm's real earnings management. Furthermore, such an effect is more pronounced when firms confront intensive market competition and financial distress and have weaker managerial entrenchment or when CEOs face stronger internal governance. Our findings persist even after we utilize several alternative real earnings management metrics and control other confounding personalities in prior earnings management studies. The …

Notes And Thoughts On Retrieving Historical Members Of The S&P 500 From Wrds, Lip Hwe Tee

Research Collection Library

Retrieving all historical members or constituents of the S&P 500 can be done using Python coding on the CRSP dataset through an API connection with WRDS (Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS), n.d. -f; WRDS, n.d. -e).

Recasting The Mould – Librarianship Of The Future: Leveraging Automation, Apis, And Ai, Samantha Seah

Research Collection Library

With leaps in artificial intelligence made in recent years redefining the information landscape and introducing new means of information production, librarianship also must evolve to include new literacies. One way librarians can equip and empower ourselves is by understanding the building blocks of how machines and automation work. Perhaps more important than learning specific programming languages, learning computational thinking provides us with more ways to spot and evaluate problems and devise solutions without extensive coding knowledge. My presentation will take the improvement of membership processing as an example using Power Automate, a low-code Microsoft tool mimicking block programming. The tool …

Machine Learning As Arbitrage: Can Economics Help Explain Ai?, Huahao Lu, Matthew Spiegel, Hong Zhang

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

Machine learning algorithms have shown to be remarkably successful tools for predicting asset returns. However, the underlying economic mechanisms behind their performance remain unclear. This paper proposes a model-based dynamic arbitrage trading strategy that combines economic and statistical nonstationarity to demystify this black box. In predicting stock returns based on 153 firm characteristics (anomalies), our strategy ranks anomalies similarly to neural networks in the cross-section. Overall, it accounts for approximately 87.9 bps monthly alphas of the high-minus-low portfolios selected by neural networks in the time series. When unpublished anomalies and microcap stocks are excluded from trading, this strategy can fully …

Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Value Co-Creation On Enterprise Performance: Empirical Evidence From China's Motorsport Culture Industry, Xiaodong Weng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

We are in an era of digital economy and enterprise change management. The application of digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Cloud Computing, and Big Data (collectively known as ABCD technologies) has increased the competition in the value chain and value network between customers and enterprises. Users can now intervene in product design, transaction, and feedback before, during, and after the process, breaking through the limitations of time and space. They leverage their low-cost advantage to draw attention, shifting from a traditional, unidirectional supply logic to a value co-creation logic. This influences both enterprises and customers to produce …

The Importance Of Sampling Frequency For Estimates Of Well-Being Dynamics, Stephen James Hoskins, David W. Johnston, Johannes S. Kunz, Michael A. Shields, Kevin E. Staub

ROSA Journal Articles and Publications

Using a high-frequency panel survey, we examine the sensitivity of estimated self-reported well-being (SWB) dynamics to using monthly, quarterly, and yearly data. This is an important issue if SWB is to be used to evaluate policy. Results from autoregressive models that account for individual-level heterogeneity indicate that the estimated persistence using yearly data is near zero. However, estimated persistence from monthly and quarterly data is substantial. We estimate that persistence to shocks typically lasts around six months and has a net present value of 75–80 per cent of the contemporaneous effect. Estimates are similar for different domains of SWB.

Does Voice Endorsement By Supervisors Enhance Or Constrain Voicer's Personal Initiative? Countervailing Effects Via Feeling Pride And Feeling Envied, Mingyun Huai, Xueqi Wen, Zihan Liu, Xingyu Wang, Wen-Dong Li, Mo Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

While the previous research has examined antecedents of supervisors’ voice endorsement, it has generally overlooked its effects on voicers’ affective and behavioral reactions, probably because of the underlying assumption that supervisors’ voice endorsement is inherently beneficial and likely to encourage more proactive behaviors in the future. In this research, we offer a theoretical model of the double-edged effects of supervisors’ voice endorsement on voicers’ subsequent personal initiative. Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory and related research, we proposed that supervisors’ voice endorsement prompts two different cognitive appraisal processes in voicers that evoke two distinct emotional experiences—feeling pride and feeling envied—with countervailing …

Family Size And Child Migration: Do Daughters Face Greater Trade-Offs Than Sons?, Christine Ho, Yutao Wang, Sharon Xuejing Zuo

Research Collection School Of Economics

We show that, conditional on family size, rural boys and girls are equally likely to migrate with parents in China. Nevertheless, daughters’ migration may still be compromised because they tend to have more siblings in societies with strong son preference, and larger families are more likely to leave all children behind. We find that a one unit increase in sibship size decreases the probability that a daughter migrates by 12.5 percentage points—with stronger effects when migration restrictions are more stringent—but has negligible effects on sons. The results suggest that gender-neutral migration constraints may generate gendered family size trade-offs.

(Trade) War And Peace: How To Impose International Trade Sanctions, Gustavo De Souza, Naiyuan Hu, Haishi Li, Yuan Mei

Research Collection School Of Economics

What is the most cost-efficient way to impose trade sanctions against Russia? We build a quantitative model of international trade with input–output connections. Sanctioning countries choose import tariffs to simultaneously maximize their income and minimize Russia's income, with different weights placed on these objectives. We find, first, that for countries with low willingness to pay for sanctions against Russia, the most cost-efficient sanction is an approximately 20% tariff on all Russian products. Second, if countries are willing to pay at least US$0.70 for each US$1 drop in Russian welfare, an embargo on Russia's mining and energy products is the most …

Quantifying Delay Propagation In Airline Networks, Liyu Dou, Jakub Kastl, John Lazarev

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a framework for quantifying delay propagation in airline networks by integrating structural modeling and machine learning methods to estimate causal effects. Using a comprehensive dataset on actual delays and a model-selection algorithm (elastic net), we estimate a weighted directed graph of delay propagation for each major airline in the United States and establish conditions under which the propagation coefficients are causal. These estimates enable a decomposition of airline performance into "luck" and "ability." Our findings indicate that luck accounts for approximately 38% of the performance difference between Delta and American Airlines in our data. Additionally, we leverage these …

Team Development Through Leader Mindfulness And Authentic Leadership: Leader Mindfulness As An Antecedent To Authentic Leadership And Its Relationship With Team Development As Seen In Actual Turnover, Turnover Intention, Performance, Internal Mobility, And Promotions, Stefan Juerg Wermelinger

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The following research examines leader mindfulness as an antecedent to authentic leadership and its relationship with team development seen in actual turnover, turnover intention, performance, internal mobility, and promotions. The study has a significant advantage as team leaders and team members could be surveyed in a real company, and data from the human resource department could be linked to reconstruct the team settings. In addition, insights into internal mobility, actual turnover, and promotions could be calculated.

The study uses a theoretical framework that builds on leader mindfulness as an antecedent of authentic leadership and authentic leadership as a root concept …

Recruitment Of Cxcr4+Type 1 Innate Lymphoid Cells Distinguishes Sarcoidosis From Other Skin Granulomatous Diseases, S. Sati, J. Huang, A.E. Kersh, P. Jones, O. Ahart, C. Murphy, S.M. Prouty, M.L. Hedberg, V. Jain, S.G. Gregory, Leung, Denis H. Y., J.T. Seykora, M. Rosenbach, T.H. Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

Sarcoidosis is a multiorgan granulomatous disease that lacks diagnostic biomarkers and targeted treatments. Using blood and skin from patients with sarcoid and non-sarcoid skin granulomas, we discovered that skin granulomas from different diseases exhibit unique immune cell recruitment and molecular signatures. Sarcoid skin granulomas were specifically enriched for type 1 innate lymphoid cells (ILC1s) and B cells and exhibited molecular programs associated with formation of mature tertiary lymphoid structures (TLSs), including increased CXCL12/CXCR4 signaling. Lung sarcoidosis granulomas also displayed similar immune cell recruitment. Thus, granuloma formation was not a generic molecular response. In addition to tissue-specific effects, patients with sarcoidosis …

A Comparison Of Four Approaches To Modeling Information Insufficiency, Pengya Ai, Sonny Rosenthal

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Information insufficiency, or the disparity between the level of knowledge needed to confidently judge an issue and the perceived level of current knowledge, is a key motivator of risk information seeking and processing. This study compared 4 approaches to modeling information insufficiency within the planned risk information seeking model. These approaches included the raw difference score, regression approach, partial variance score, and direct measure. Statistical modeling used data from large samples in Singapore (n = 2,124) and the United States (n = 2,125). The results of ordinary least squares regression analysis and structural equation modeling pointed to several issues. First, …

Cultural Tightness In Organizations: Investigating The Impact Of Formal And Informal Cultural Tightness On Employee Creativity, Roy Y. J. Chua, Na Zhao, Meng Han

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper delineates cultural tightness into formal versus informal aspects to depict the strength of norms and the extent of sanctions emanating from both formal and informal norms. Organizations with high formal cultural tightness regulate behaviors through explicit written norms and official sanctions, whereas those with high informal cultural tightness regulate behaviors through uncodified norms, collective beliefs, and informal social sanctions. Through a field study across 14 diverse companies in two countries (Malaysia and the Philippines) and two experiments involving participants from the United States, we found that perceived informal cultural tightness consistently exerts a more significant impact on stifling …

Aligning Human And Computational Coherence Evaluations, Jia Peng Lim, Hady Wirawan Lauw

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Automated coherence metrics constitute an efficient and popular way to evaluate topic models. Previous work presents a mixed picture of their presumed correlation with human judgment. This work proposes a novel sampling approach to mining topic representations at a large scale while seeking to mitigate bias from sampling, enabling the investigation of widely used automated coherence metrics via large corpora. Additionally, this article proposes a novel user study design, an amalgamation of different proxy tasks, to derive a finer insight into the human decision-making processes. This design subsumes the purpose of simple rating and outlier-detection user studies. Similar to the …

Are Corporations Responding To Civil Society Pressure?: A Multilevel Analysis Of Corporate Emissions, Annika Rieger

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Previous research in the world-society tradition associates improvements in nation-level environmental outcomes with greater civil society integration. However, research in the world-systems tradition indicates these improvements depend on a nation’s position in the global political-economic hierarchy. To test whether these patterns are present at the organizational level, I estimate a multilevel model using corporate emissions data from the Carbon Disclosure Project and include interactions between world-system position and three measures of civil society integration: number of NGOs, proportion of corporations with climate-management incentives, and number of corporate UN Global Compact signatories. I find that the relationship between civil society pressure …

Diverse Pathways To Permanent Childlessness In Singapore: A Latent Class Analysis, Yanwen Wang, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Christine Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

The proportions of adults reaching midlife without having children have been rising rapidly across the globe, particularly in Asia. However, little is known about the pathways to permanent childlessness within the region’s childless population. This study utilized latent class analysis (LCA) to typologize pathways to childlessness based on dynamic characteristics of multiple life domains (i.e., partnership, education, and occupation) among 489 childless Singaporeans aged 50 and above from a 2022 nationwide survey. Additionally, we utilized multinomial logistic regressions to examine the sociodemographic correlates of pathway profiles and Shannon’s entropy index to assess the heterogeneity in pathways to childlessness among successive …

Associative Networks In Decision Making, Jiangtao Li, Rui Tang, Mu Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We present a model of associative networks that captures how a decision maker expands her consideration set through mental associations between alternatives. This model serves as a tool to understand the influence of association on decision making. As a proof of concept, we characterize this model within a random attention framework and demonstrate that all the relevant parameters are uniquely identifiable. Notably, in a novel choice domain where not all observable alternatives are available, the presence of unavailable alternatives can affect the choice frequencies of other alternatives through association.

Financial Crises, Bailouts And Monetary Policy In Open Economies, Yang Jiao

Research Collection School Of Economics

I jointly study the optimal bailout policy and monetary policy in open economies that borrow in foreign currency from international lenders. A policy dilemma emerges during financial crises. Policymakers trade off the benefit of more bailouts alleviating firms’ financial constraints against the cost of larger currency devaluation, which tightens firms’ financial constraints. I embed the optimal bailout in an otherwise standard “sudden stop” model with nominal rigidities. The model sheds light on the role of bailouts and currency mismatch in driving the exchange rate dynamics, firms’ balance sheets and economic recovery. Quantitatively, the model matches key business cycle moments. A …

Recruitment Of Cxcr4+ Type 1 Innate Lymphoid Cells Distinguishes Sarcoidosis From Other Skin Granulomatous Diseases, Satish Sati, Jianhe Huang, Anna E. Kersh, Parker Jones, Olivia Ahart, Christina Murphy, Stephen M. Prouty, Matthew L. Hedberg, Vaibhav Jain, Simon G. Gregory, Leung, Denis H. Y., John T. Seykora, Misha Rosenbach, Thomas H. Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

Sarcoidosis is a multiorgan granulomatous disease that lacks diagnostic biomarkers and targeted treatments. Using blood and skin from patients with sarcoid and non-sarcoid skin granulomas, we discovered that skin granulomas from different diseases exhibit unique immune cell recruitment and molecular signatures. Sarcoid skin granulomas were specifically enriched for type 1 innate lymphoid cells (ILC1s) and B cells and exhibited molecular programs associated with formation of mature tertiary lymphoid structures (TLSs), including increased CXCL12/CXCR4 signaling. Lung sarcoidosis granulomas also displayed similar immune cell recruitment. Thus, granuloma formation was not a generic molecular response. In addition to tissue-specific effects, patients with sarcoidosis …