Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Oral History Interview With Ronald Frank: Conceptualising Smu, Ronald Frank

Oral History Collection

The interview covered: first involvement with SMU, President of SMU, Bukit Timah campus, roles and responsibilities, faculty recruitment, advertising campaigns, student feedback, autonomous universities, strategy, law school, higher education landscape, impact.

Biography:

President, SMU, 2001–2004

Board of Trustees, SMU, 2000–2001

Professor Ronald E Frank, or Ron as he affectionately known, joined SMU’s board of trustees in 2000 and assumed his role as SMU’s second president in September 2001. His presidency was a time of rapid growth for the young university. SMU had just admitted its second cohort of undergraduate students in August 2001. During his time as president two schools …

To Succeed In Life And Business, Adapt And Fail Productively, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Most people don't make very much of their bread toasters. These small but hardy metal boxes often come at low prices (from $7) and are not terribly difficult to operate. All in all, this is not the best example of a sophisticated, complicated or inventive home appliance.

Of Ice And Men: Chilling Leadership Tales Of Four Great Explorers, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Following a brief pause after the Age of Exploration, the desire of human beings to reach every corner of their earth, however remote, was revived when expeditions to the two Polar Regions began in the 19^th century. Participants of such harsh expeditions might have been carrying on the mantle of adventure or seeking fame, but they also provide fine examples for some very important lessons, said author Ragnar Kvam.

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2011: Q2 Results, Institute Of Service Excellence, Smu

Research Collection Institute of Service Excellence (2007-2024)

The Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) computes customer satisfaction scores at the nation, sector, sub-sector, and company levels. Currently in its fifth year of measurement, the CSISG serves as a quantitative benchmark of the quality of goods and services produced by the Singapore economy both over time and across countries.

Rethinking The Rural-Urban Divide In China’S New Stratification Order, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I use a Marxist framework centred on the mode of production to conceptually analyze the changing stratification structure in today’s China with a focus on the changing nature of rural-urban inequality. As the state-managed tributary mode of production, once dominant under socialism, is being gradually eclipsed by the reviving petty-commodity mode of production and the newly emerged capitalist mode of production, both of which are market-based and enable the transfer of surplus from labour to capital, a new set of mechanisms are creating and sustaining rural-urban inequality in China. Rural-urban inequality – although still significant in its magnitude – is …

A Road To Smarter Infrastructure In Asia, Curtis S. Chin, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

China's infrastructure building program used to be the envy of the world, and in some respects it still is. Yet economists, investors and now China's own citizens are worried about diminishing returns, while incidents such as last month's Wenzhou high-speed rail crash raise questions about the durability of China's investments.

Let Presidential Hopefuls Have Their Say, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The announcement by the Presidential Elections Committee (PEC) of the prospective candidates who have been issued certificates of eligibility for the 2011 presidential election in Singapore makes interesting reading for what it does and does not say. The Committee’s decision-making process is also fairly opaque. It is submitted the rules governing the PEC’s task should be reviewed before the next election. At least, it is hoped future Committees will adopt as constitutional conventions the practices of granting hearings to applicants, announcing decisions well ahead of nomination day, and issuing full reasons.

Let Political System Be A Connecting Tool, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

An article by Eugene K B Tan, Assistant Professor of Law analysing the Prime Minister's National Day Rally speech. He suggests the PM could have used the speech to highlight how the political system can evolve to generate greater public ownership of the system of governance.

The Elected Presidency In A New Normal, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Asst Prof Eugene Tan shared his views on the outcome of the recently concluded Presidential Election and commented on the need for both the incoming President and the Government to evolve the office of the President in a manner that is in sync with Singaporeans' expectations.

Singapore Management University And Tata Consultancy Services Announce Creation Of Icity Lab, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

No abstract provided.

Grey Market For Indian Ipos: Investor Sentiment And After-Market Performance, Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti, Tiong Yang Thong, Vishwanath Ramanna

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Extant research on developed markets shows that investor sentiment is a prominent feature in IPO grey markets. There is sparse work in the context of emerging markets. We fill this lacuna by studying the working of the Indian IPO market. We consider this work interesting and relevant for the following reasons. First, grey market trading always involves short-selling as securities are not yet available. Since legal and institutional environment is less developed in emerging markets, the functioning of grey markets is of interest to policy makers and financial economists. Second, retail investors participate to a greater extent in IPOs of …

Maritime Trade Evolutions And Port City Developments In Asia, X. J. Yang, Joyce M. W. Low, Loon Ching Tang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Historically, almost all goods transported worldwide have been carried by sea with the current estimate stands at approximately 90 percent by volume and 70 percent by worth. Maritime industry is an important economic sector as it has a direct impact on the prosperity of a region and/or city. This chapter presents a review on maritime trade evolution in Asia from the thirteenth centuries to the post-World War II, followed by an examination on the contemporary development of some major Asia ports. From the extant port literature, a list of factors affecting port competition and development is identified and reviewed. The …

Mr Gandhi’S Terror Sermon, Shubhankar Dam

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

Conceptualizing And Measuring Energy Security: A Synthesized Approach, Benjamin K. Sovacool, Ishani Mukherjee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article provides a synthesized, workable framework for analyzing national energy security policies and performance. Drawn from research interviews, survey results, a focused workshop, and an extensive literature review, this article proposes that energy security ought to be comprised of five dimensions related to availability, affordability, technology development, sustainability, and regulation. We then break these five dimensions down into 20 components related to security of supply and production, dependency, and diversification for availability; price stability, access and equity, decentralization, and low prices for affordability; innovation and research, safety and reliability, resilience, energy efficiency, and investment for technology development; land use, …

The Singapore Town-Hall Meeting, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Professor Eugene Tan forecasts what the Prime Minister might say in his National Day Rally speech. He predicts it will touch on the ecomomy, Presidential election and social cohesion, among other issues.

Simulated Maximum Likelihood Estimation For Latent Diffusion Models, Tore Selland Kleppe, Jun Yu, Hans J. Skaug

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper a method is developed and implemented to provide the simulated maximum likelihood estimation of latent diffusions based on discrete data. The method is applicable to diffusions that either have latent elements in the state vector or are only observed at discrete time with a noise. Latent diffusions are very important in practical applications in financial economics. The proposed approach synthesizes the closed form method of Ait-Sahalia (2008) and the efficient importance sampler of Richard and Zhang (2007). It does not require any infill observations to be introduced and hence is computationally tractable. The Monte Carlo study shows …

Labor Supply Responses To The 1990s Japanese Tax Reforms, Ken Yamada

Research Collection School Of Economics

The consumption-leisure choice model implies that an exogenous change in tax rates will induce a change in labor supply. This implication is expected to be important to labor supplied by secondary earners under a progressive tax system when spousal income alters effective marginal tax rates. This paper examines labor supply responses to the income tax changes associated with Japanese tax reforms during the 1990s. The results indicate that the hours-of-work elasticity with respect to the net-of-tax rate is 0.8 for married women.

Communicating Crisis: How Culture Influences Image Repair In Western And Asian Governments, Yvonne Siew‐Yoong Low, Jeni Varughese, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to seek to understand the differences in image repair strategies adopted by two governments that operate in the Western and Asian societies when faced with similar crises. Design/methodology/approach: Textual analyses are presented of communication of Hurricane Katrina and Typhoon Morakot by the Taiwanese and US governments, respectively. Findings: Faced with similar accusations of slow response, the Asian culture, represented by the Taiwanese Government, used predominantly mortification and corrective action strategies. The Western culture, represented by the US Government, used predominantly bolstering and defeasibility and a mixed bag of other strategies such as shifting …

Risk And The Technology Content Of Fdi: A Dynamic Model, Pao Li Chang, Chia-Hui Lu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper incorporates risk into the FDI decisions of firms. The risk of FDI failure increases with the gap between the South's technology frontier and the technology complexity of a firm's product. This leads to a double-crossing sorting pattern of FDI firms of intermediate technology levels are more likely than others to undertake FDI. It is with the attempt to relax the upper bound of the technology content of FDI, we argue, that many FDI policies are created. The theory's predictions are consistent with the empirical pattern of FDI in China by US and Taiwanese manufacturing firms.

Testing For Multiple Bubbles, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Identifying explosive bubbles that are characterized by periodically collapsing behavior over time has been a major concern in the literature and is of great importance for practitioners. The complexity of the nonlinear structure in multiple bubble phenomena diminishes the discriminatory power of existing tests, as evidenced in early simulations conducted by Evans (1991). Multiple collapsing bubble episodes within the same sample period make bubble diagnosis particularly difficult and complicate attempts at econometric dating. The present paper systematically investigates these issues and develops new procedures for practical implementation and surveillance strategies by central banks. We show how the testing procedure and …

Bayesian Hypothesis Testing In Latent Variable Models, Yong Li, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Hypothesis testing using Bayes factors (BFs) is known not to be well defined under the improper prior. In the context of latent variable models, an additional problem with BFs is that they are difficult to compute. In this paper, a new Bayesian method, based on decision theory and the EM algorithm, is introduced to test a point hypothesis in latent variable models. The new statistic is a by-product of the Bayesian MCMC output and, hence, easy to compute. It is shown that the new statistic is easy to interpret and appropriately defined under improper priors because the method employs a …

The Transformation Of China’S Agriculture System And Its Impact On Southeast Asia, Phoebe Mingxuan Luo, John A. Donaldson, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The increased role for agribusiness and larger scale production in China’s agricultural system is limited by China’s severe lack of arable land. The Household Responsibility System provides farmers a measure of power, hampering agribusiness from acquiring land needed for expansion. Some Chinese companies have sought cheaper and often more accessible land in nearby regions, including Southeast Asia. While such investments have the potential to deliver benefits, including increased productivity, structural constraints such as weak land ownership and environmental laws, highly unequal distribution of land and underdevelopment of peasant organizations prevent many poorer farmers from benefiting from these investments.

Specification Sensitivities In Right-Tailed Unit Root Testing, Shu-Ping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Right-tailed unit root tests have proved promising for detecting exuberance in economic and financial activities. Like left-tailed tests, the limit theory and test performance are sensitive to the null hypothesis and the model specification used in parameter estimation. This paper aims to provide some empirical guidelines for the practical implementation of right-tailed unit root tests, focusing on the sup ADF test of Phillips, Wu and Yu (2011), which implements a right-tailed ADF test repeatedly on a sequence of forward sample recursions. We analyze and compare the limit theory of the sup ADF test under different hypotheses and model specifications. The …

Oral History Interview With David Montgomery: Conceptualising Smu, David Montgomery

Oral History Collection

The interview covered: first involvement with SMU, business school dean, school re-organisation, faculty recruitment, Wharton School, balanced excellence, Centre for Teaching Excellence, first SMU graduates, conferences, future of tertiary education.

Biography:

Dean, Lee Kong Chian School of Business, SMU, 2003–2005

Professor David Montgomery served as the second dean of the Lee Kong Chian School of Business from 2003 to 2005. It was a period of rapid growth for the school—hiring faculty, building a research atmosphere, developing professional degrees, and continuing to make SMU better known in the academic community. Professor Montgomery is known for his use of the phrase 'balanced …

Quenching Thirst Through Policy And Planning, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Water is fundamental to human survival. Yet, for many people in the world, clean water may not necessarily come as easy as simply turning the tap. It is estimated that some 20 percent of the world's population do not have access to water – a reality not perpetuated by a lack of water, but rather, ineffective policies and politicians. Speaking at a SMU Social Sciences seminar, Eduardo Araral shares the story of how a city overcame the odds to supply clean water to its masses.

The State Of Play Of Csr In Singapore, Eugene K. B. Tan

Lien Centre for Social Innovation: Research

Given Singapore’s status as an economic powerhouse in the Asian region, it might be reasonable to assume that the level of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activity would be proportionate. However, in frequent comparisons of CSR across countries, both academically and anecdotally, Singapore seems to fall short.

The understanding of CSR has not kept pace with the expectations and demands placed on business by the various stakeholders, including consumers and governments. It would be worthwhile to understand the reasons why this is so.

The research has three objectives:

- To examine the drivers of and impediments to CSR in Singapore;

- …

Reward, Punishment, And Cooperation: A Meta-Analysis, Daniel Balliet, Laetitia B. Mulder, Paul A. M. Van Lange

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

How effective are rewards (for cooperation) and punishment (for noncooperation) as tools to promote cooperation in social dilemmas or situations when immediate self-interest and longer term collective interest conflict? What variables can promote the impact of these incentives? Although such questions have been examined, social and behavioral scientists provide different answers. To date, there is no theoretical and/or quantitative review of rewards and punishments as incentives for cooperation in social dilemmas. Using a novel interdependence-theoretic framework, we propose that rewards and punishments should both promote cooperation, and we identify 2 variables-cost of incentives and source of incentives-that are predicted to …

The Final Twist In Common Intention? Daniel Vijay S/O Katherasan V. Public Prosecutor, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

It was only in 2008 that the Court of Appeal made a seminal restatement of the law on common intention, particularly with respect to liability in so-called ‘twin crime’ situations. The question posed then was posed again recently in Daniel Vijay: what exactly is the required mens rea for the secondary offender in such situations? In 2008, the Court of Appeal said that the secondary offender had to subjectively know that one in his party might likely commit the collateral offence in furtherance of the common intention of carrying out the primary offence. Now, in Daniel Vijay, the Court …

Interview On Subjective Well-Being, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Multiparty Democracies And Rapid Economic Growth: A Twenty-First Century Breakthrough?, Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay examines whether developing countries with competitive multiparty democracies may be just as capable of sustaining rapid economic growth as single-party states. It begins with a literature review identifying political stability and the ability to mobilize labor and capital production inputs as key factors behind sustained rapid growth. It then develops the hypothesis that under certain conditions, multiparty democracies may be strong in these dimensions, but ceteris paribus, single-party states are likely to have an advantage. I test this hypothesis by exploring historical trends in rapid growth over the last five decades. Statistical regression analysis confirms that most sustained …