Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Micro-Level Estimation Of Child Malnutrition Indicators And Its Application In Cambodia, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

One of the major limitations in addressing child malnutrition is lack of information that could be used to target resources. By combining demographic and health survey (DHS) and population census data, the author disaggregates the estimates of the prevalence of child malnutrition in Cambodia from currently available 17 DHS strata into 1,594 communes. The methodology is built on the small-area estimation technique developed by Elbers, Lanjouw, and Lanjouw. The author extends it to jointly estimate multiple indicators and to allow for a richer structure of error terms. Average standard errors for the commune-level estimates in this study were about 4 …

An Informatization Of Society Approach To E-Government: Analyzing Singapore’S E-Government Efforts, Calvin M. L. Chan, Yi Meng Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Despite the much publicized benefits of e-government, many countries are experiencing difficulty in yielding success in their e-government initiatives. Studies which adopt the national e-government initiatives as the unit of analysis remain largely rare. This paper aspires to provide an analysis of Singapore’s widely acclaimed success in the e-government effort at the national level to allow other countries to learn and gain from its experience. Using the ‘Conceptual Framework for the Informatization of Society’ in facilitating the data analysis, implications are drawn to offer insights for the considerations of e-government practitioners. Theoretical implications are also derived through positing that the …

Staying Ahead Of The Competition: Insights From Singapore's Manufacturing Enclave In Vietnam, Caroline Yeoh, Di Kun Goh, Wilfred Pow Ngee How

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The apparent success of Singapore-styled industrial parks in attracting foreign investments into the emerging Asian economies to capitalize on cheap and abundant resources has led, pari passu, to a mushrooming of similarly-patterned competitor parks in close proximity to the flagship projects. Many of the competitor parks offer either similar or comparable facilities, lower rates, or, in some cases, both. The ensuing dynamic competitive interactions between the competitor parks and the Singapore-styled parks have forced a re-examination of the viability of the Singapore advantage in navigating the economics of competition, and in sustaining competitive advantage. The Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP), unsurprisingly, …

Evaluating G-Portal For Geography Learning And Teaching, Chew-Hung Chang, John G. Hedberg, Yin-Leng Theng, Ee Peng Lim, Tiong-Sa Teh, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper describes G-Portal, a geospatial digital library of geographical assets, providing an interactive platform to engage students in active manipulation and analysis of information resources and collaborative learning activities. Using a G-Portal application in which students conducted a field study of an environmental problem of beach erosion and sea level rise, we describe a pilot study to evaluate usefulness and usability issues to support the learning of geographical concepts, and in turn teaching.

Learning Outcomes Oriented Assessment Methods In An Active Learning Environment, Arcot Desai Narasimhalu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Singapore Management University uses interactive seminar style teaching in class rooms. Most of its students hail from Singapore and are generally new to active learning and constructive participation in the seminar style classes. This paper reports findings from a freshmen first term course titled IS 101: Seminar for ISM Majors.

Exporting Expertise: Singapore's Gambit In Vietnam Revisited, Caroline Yeoh, Ai Lin Leong, Xun Cai

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Infrastructure can be unreliable and administration subject to corruption in Asia’s rapidly emerging economies. This context presented Singapore with unique opportunities to export its expertise to locations where these attributes are less certain, through the provision of superior infrastructure, the ability to negotiate investment concessions and, where existing, through the links to influential business groups in the investment location. This strategic initiative is further premised on the perception that Singapore’s positive reputation with multinationals, as well as ‘guanxi’, or connections, with Asian business networks, will give the industrial-township projects a marketing advantage. Their progress is a litmus test of Singapore’s …

Trade, Capital Accumulation And Structural Unemployment: An Empirical Study Of The Singapore Economy, Hiau Looi Kee, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the factors responsible for the secular decline of Singapore's unemployment rate over the period 1966-2000 in an environment of low and stable inflation rates. We introduce wage bargaining and unions into a specific-factors, two-sector economy with an export sector and a non-tradable sector to obtain an endogenous natural unemployment rate. Increases in the relative export price and capital stock in the export sector are predicted to reduce structural unemployment. These hypotheses could not be rejected based on structural estimations and co-integration regressions. Empirically, capital accumulation in the export sector explains most of the decline in Singapore's unemployment …

Twentieth Century Economics Of Child-Rearing In Japan, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

In order to explain the falling Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in Japan, it is necessary to look at the social factors affecting women and raising children in Japan. By examining historical factors surrounding women in Japan—their education, their presence in the workforce, and the cultural stigmas attached to their stereotypical representation—I will attempt to describe the deteriorating TFR in Japan as an economic problem with political and social repercussions. In conclusion I will also try to provide a prognosis and a recommendation for a solution.

Asia Country Risk Analysis Cambodia, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Cambodia, as it currently stands, does not make for an attractive or viable investment area. Based on a realistic point of view, Cambodia poses many security risks to potential investors based on their current domestic situation. In order to understand why this is so, this risk analysis will outline Cambodia’s internal domestic situation as it comes out of their tumultuous history. In addition to this the risk analysis will identify Cambodia’s bilateral and multilateral relations and explain how these do not provide strong support for investors looking to do business in Cambodia. In conclusion the risk analysis will provide a …

Constitution Of Afghanistan = Assasi Qanun (1964), Government Of Afghanistan

Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection

The Constitution of the Royal Government of Afghanistan

It's All Right To Be Wrong, Sometimes, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Racist comments made by some youths have spawned many reactions from Singaporeans. This presents another interesting issue: Do these reactions themselves evince the kind of intolerance of a diversity of opinions which they are attacking? When and how can we differ without being intolerant and disrespectful?

Pakistan: Teetering On The Brink Of Islamic Revolution?, Muhammad Ahmad Yunas

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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It's All Right To Be Wrong, Sometimes, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Racist comments made by some youths have spawned many reactions from Singaporeans. This presents another interesting issue: Do these reactions themselves evince the kind of intolerance of a diversity of opinions which they are attacking? When and how can we differ without being intolerant and disrespectful?

Subethnische Dimensionen Des Veraenderungsmanagements In Asiatischen Klein- Und Mittelunternehmen: Trends In Singapur, Ulrike Badibanga, Thomas Menkhoff

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Against the background of a rapidly changing business environment, the article examines the organisational change management behavior of the owner-managers of small and medium-sized enterprises in Singapore. The analysis of survey data is aimed at ascertain whether there are any differences between Chinese and English-educated small (Chinese) businessmen in terms of Change Management (CM), a dichotomy which is of great historical and politico-cultural significance in Singapore. The survey data show that there are indeed differences between the subgroups (e.g. with regard to the initiation of a more participatory people management style) but these variations turned out to be far less …

The Impact Of Ownership Structure On Wage Intensity In Japanese Corporations, Toru Yoshikawa, Phillip H. Phan, Parthiban David

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The authors studied the effect of ownership structure on human capital investments as indicated by wage intensity, defined as the ratio of expenditure on employee wages to sales, in a sample of 996 Japanese manufacturing firms during their economic recession of 1998-2002. They found that domestic shareholders, with interests beyond financial considerations, enhance wage intensity, especially when performance is low, and thereby safeguard human capital investments. Foreign shareholders with sole interest in financial returns have an opposite effect; they reduce wage intensity when firm performance is low.

South Korea, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

An brief introduction and overview to South Korea's economic history touching on reunification attempts with North Korea, chaebols, and product wars with Japan, America, and China.

The Effects Of Ownership And Capital Structure On Board Composition And Strategic Diversification In Japanese Corporations, Toru Yoshikawa, Phillip H. Phan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The board of directors plays an important role in solving the agency problem between shareholders and management. This paper investigates the relationships between ownership and board structure with the diversification strategy of large Japanese firms. The results show that corporate nominee directors are associated with lower levels of product diversification of their investee firms. This suggests that nominee directors in large Japanese corporations see themselves representing specific interests and therefore investors should pay attention to board composition in order to assess the level of protection they can expect to receive. Even without any apparent agency problem with management, there remains …

Evaluating Job Training In Two Chinese Cities, Benu Bidani, Chor-Ching Goh, Niels-Hugo Blunch, Christopher J. O'Leary

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Recent years have seen a surge in the evidence on the impacts of active labor market programs for numerous countries. However, little evidence has been presented on the effectiveness of such programs in China. Recent economic reforms, associated massive lay-offs, and accompanying public retraining programs make China fertile ground for rigorous impact evaluations. This study evaluates retraining programs for laid-off workers in the cities of Shenyang and Wuhan using a comparison group design. To our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of its kind in China. The evidence suggests that retraining helped workers find jobs in Wuhan, but had little …

Corporate Divestitures And Spinoffs In Singapore, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh, Benedict S. K. Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper discusses the different forms of corporate divestitures, the motives for this corporate activity, and the empirical findings about their economic outcomes. A sample of corporate divestitures is also used to identify the main motivations in the Singapore context. We conclude that divestitures are carried out to achieve operational efficiency and gain incremental profitability and liquidity. Using share price data around the event-dates, we show that announcements of divestitures generally lead to significant increases in the returns of the parent company. The positive abnormal returns are related to the relative size of the divestitures and the computed accounting gains. …

The Performance Of Value And Growth Portfolios In East Asia Before The Asian Financial Crisis, David K. Ding, Jia-Leng Chua, Thomas A. Fetherston

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine value and growth portfolios in seven East Asian countries just before the onslaught of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. The value premiums in these countries, except in Indonesia, Taiwan, and Thailand, are found to be mainly positive. After controlling for firm size, risk, liquidity, and growth potential, we find higher returns among value stocks with a small firm size and low growth potential in Hong Kong and Malaysia. In Japan and Singapore, higher returns are found in growth portfolios with a small firm size and low growth potential. Growth stocks in Taiwan with a small firm size, and …

Competing At The Frontier: The Changing Role Of Technology Policy In Singapore's Economic Strategy, Winston T. H. Koh, Poh Kam Wong

Research Collection School Of Economics

For an economy competing at the global frontier, an innovation-based growth strategy requires a well-developed technological infrastructure, a set of capabilities-focused technology policies, as well as an institutional environment that stimulates innovation and entrepreneurship. This paper examines the role played by science and technology policy in an economy's transition to an innovation-based growth strategy. We discuss the challenges governments face as they restructure economic institutions to deepen R&D capabilities and encourage technology creation. We review Singapore's experience in this regard and assess its ongoing efforts to remake itself to compete at the global frontier.

Traditional Tropes And Familial Incest In Banana Yoshimoto’S Kitchen, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Kitchen, written in 1983, by Banana Yoshimoto, contains one novella and one short story. The novella is entitled Kitchen and the short story which follows it is called Moonlight Shadow. In Moonlight Shadow, the structure of a Japanese Noh drama enfolds, wherein the ultimate end of the main character is to live on in a semi-incestuous relationship with her dead boyfriend’s brother. In Kitchen, the images that one is assailed by are those of desire coexisting with food, and love contingent on incest. The idea of food as a comfort conflates into that of a woman as comforting.

These two …

No Vision? Youths Need Role Models, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Much recent talk about the vision (or lack thereof) of our young people has revolved around a search for solutions in the form of programmes that give them an opportunity to broaden their minds and, it is hoped, develop their characters.

No Vision? Youths Need Role Models, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Much recent talk about the vision (or lack thereof) of our young people has revolved around a search for solutions in the form of programmes that give them an opportunity to broaden their minds and, it is hoped, develop their characters.

Analysis Of Labor Participation Behavior Of Korean Women With Dynamic Probit And Conditional Logit, Myoung-Jae Lee, Yoon-Hee Tae

Research Collection School Of Economics

We analyse the dynamic labour participation behaviour of Korean women. State dependence under unobserved heterogeneity is considered, where the heterogeneity may be unrelated, pseudo-related, or arbitrarily related to regressors. Three minor methodological contributions are made: interaction terms with lagged response are allowed in dynamic conditional logit; a three-stage algorithm for dynamic probit is proposed; and treating the initial response as fixed is shown to be ill-advised. The state dependence is about 0.6 × SD(error), higher for the married or junior college-educated, and lower for women in their twenties and thirties. While education increases participation, college education has negative effects for …

Disproportionate Ownership Structure And Ipo Long-Run Performance Of Non-Soes In China, Xiaoming Wang, Jerry Cao, Jinghua Tang, Gary Gang Tian

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the relationship between ownership structures and IPO long-run performance of non-SOEs in China. Although non-SOEs underperform the market in general after IPO but the poor performance is mainly caused by the IPOs with ownership control wedge. Non-SOEs with one share one vote structure outperform those with control-ownership wedge by 30% for three years post-IPO performance in adjusted buy-and-hold returns. Non-SOEs with control-ownership wedge have higher frequency of undertaking value-destroying related party transactions. These findings suggest that non-SOEs need to improve corporate governance such as disproportionate ownership structure to better safeguard the interest of long-run shareholders.

Social And Cultural Geographies Of South-East Asia, Tim Bunnell, Lily Kong, Lisa Law

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The paper is an overview of English language publications that discuss what might be considered 'social' and 'cultural' geographies in Southeast Asia over the past two decades. We have strategically chosen two major themes that help us shape the mass of material into digestible strands: (1) the politics of social and cultural change; and (2) constructing identities. The former addresses various politics: the politics of nationhood; the politics of national development; the politics of cultural sites; the politics of urban change; and the politics of the global-local.

Report Of The Committee On Fare Review Mechanism, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Today, public transport fares are reviewed annually and adjustments, if any, are capped by the “CPI + X” formula, where CPI is the change in the Consumer Price Index over the previous year and X accounts for the net effect of wage changes after deducting productivity gains. For the period from 2001 to 2005, X was determined to be 1.5%. While this mechanism has worked well in keeping public transport fares affordable, the formula lacks transparency and is not easily understood by the general public. Commuters often question the need for the “X” element given that the public transport operators …

Questioning Proximity: East Asian Tv Dramas In Indonesia, Charlotte Setijadi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The study of transnational cultural flows has been of continuing interest among media and communication researchers, with recent studies focusing on cultural flows within geographically and culturally adjacent nations. It is often suggested that the level of “cultural proximity” that exists determines the success of cultural exchange between countries regarded to possess similar cultural traits. This notion, that local audiences will have preference for cultural commodities from countries with which they share cultural ties in recognition of their own culture, has enjoyed much intellectual currency in recent times, especially in relation to analyses of regional media markets. The danger of …

Critical Thinking Straight From The Heart, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The state of the hearts of our young people, specifically whether they have the moral courage to stand up for what they believe in, is in the spotlight again with this newspaper's upcoming Youthink pages intended to showcase their views. The Youthink pages might go some way to show if the concern with our youth is well-founded. An interesting issue is raised: What exactly is critical thinking?