Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2009

Singapore Management University

Discipline
Keyword
Publication
Publication Type

Articles 1 - 30 of 208

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

How Valued-Added Is Your Library Instruction? Research Librarians Work With Faculty To Conduct In-Class Training, Charlotte Gill, Rajendra Munoo, Priyanka Sharma Dec 2009

How Valued-Added Is Your Library Instruction? Research Librarians Work With Faculty To Conduct In-Class Training, Charlotte Gill, Rajendra Munoo, Priyanka Sharma

Research Collection Library

This training ws developed as a helpful follow-up for the future business decision-makers to be introduced to the process of thinking through the legal implications of business services and products, with a view to giving cogent instructions to legal counsel.

Go to article

Mediating The Media: A Journalist-Centric Model In Managing The Media By Corporate Communication Practitioners, Augustine Pang Dec 2009

Mediating The Media: A Journalist-Centric Model In Managing The Media By Corporate Communication Practitioners, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose: The prevailing challenge faced by practitioners is to conduct effective media relations, especially with the proliferation of diverse media platforms both online and offline. For such a predominant and critical function, a systematic approach needs to be offered. This paper aims to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach: A new model is developed, drawing on insights from corporate communications and journalism literature. Findings: This model identifies two sets of influences that practitioners should seek to understand. The internal influences include journalist mindsets, journalist routines, and newsroom routines. The external influences include extra-media forces and media ideology. Research limitations/implications: At this juncture, …

Go to article

Dialogic Cosmopolitanism And Global Justice, Eduard Jordaan Dec 2009

Dialogic Cosmopolitanism And Global Justice, Eduard Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although the term “cosmopolitan-communitarian debate” never really caught on, a national-global fault line remains prominent in debates about global justice. “Dialogic cosmopolitanism” holds the promise of bridging this alleged fault line by accepting many of the communitarian criticisms against cosmopolitanism and following what can be described as a communitarian path to cosmopolitanism. This article identifies and describes four key elements that distinguish dialogic cosmopolitanism: a respect for difference; a commitment to genuine dialogue; an open, hesitant and self-problematising attitude on the part of the moral subject; and an undertaking to expand the boundaries of moral concern to the point of …

Go to article

An Entity Sui Generis In The Wto: Taiwan's Wto Membership And Its Trade Law Regime, Han-Wei Liu Dec 2009

An Entity Sui Generis In The Wto: Taiwan's Wto Membership And Its Trade Law Regime, Han-Wei Liu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As one of the founding members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Taiwan (the Republic of China or ROC) - the 17th largest economy, was granted accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in November 2001 after its observer status of eleven years. Taiwan, classified by most commentators as an "unrecognized state" or an "entity sui generis", has been excluded from most of the major international organizations. Taiwan's accession to the WTO, therefore, is considered to be an important breakthrough in diplomacy for the past decades. Notwithstanding its WTO membership, the Taiwanese Government has employed numerous trade …

Go to article

China’S Strategy For Free Trade Agreements: Political Battle In The Name Of Trade, Shuchao Henry Gao Dec 2009

China’S Strategy For Free Trade Agreements: Political Battle In The Name Of Trade, Shuchao Henry Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Compared with Europe and America, East Asia is a latecomer in the new gold-rush of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). In this process, China has played a significant role. This is not only due to the growing economic clout of China, but also because China has taken a conscious strategy to push for economic integration in the region. Thus, for the benefits of the countries in the region, it is very important to understand China’s FTA strategy. This article starts with the evolving picture of China’s FTA web, then discusses the key components of China’s FTA strategy, and concludes by noting …

Go to article

Well-Being On Planet Earth, Ed Diener, William Tov Dec 2009

Well-Being On Planet Earth, Ed Diener, William Tov

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Gallup World Poll allows a look at how humanity is flourishing, based on the answers of survey respondents sampled from across the globe. Several conclusions are clear. First, how people are doing depends enormously on the society in which they live, and nations vary from doing very well to extremely poorly. In terms of subjective well-being, nations vary greatly, in both judgments of overall life and in positive and negative emotions. The best predictors of global life judgments were income and ownership of modern conveniences, whereas the best predictors of emotions were social factors such as the control of …

Go to article

The Hard Embodiment Of Culture, Dov Cohen, Angela K. Y. Leung Dec 2009

The Hard Embodiment Of Culture, Dov Cohen, Angela K. Y. Leung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The way humans move and comport their bodies is one way they (literally) carry their culture. In pre-wired embodiments, body comportment triggers basic, evolutionarily prepared affective and cognitive reactions that subsequently prime more complex representations. Culture suffuses this process, because (1) cultural artifacts, affordances, and practices make certain body comportments more likely, (2) cultural practices, rituals, schemas, and rules promote the learning of an otherwise underspecified connection between a given body comportment and a particular basic reaction, and (3) cultural meaning systems elaborate basic affective and cognitive reactions into more complex representations. These points are illustrated with three experiments that …

Go to article

Culture, Psyche, And Body Make Each Other Up, Dov Cohen, Angela K. Y. Leung, Hans Ijzerman Dec 2009

Culture, Psyche, And Body Make Each Other Up, Dov Cohen, Angela K. Y. Leung, Hans Ijzerman

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The commentaries make important points, including ones about the purposeful uses of embodiment effects. Research examining such effects needs to look at how such effects play themselves out in people's everyday lives. Research might usefully integrate work on embodiment with work on attribution and work in other disciplines concerned with body–psyche connections (e.g., research on somaticizing versus “psychologizing” illnesses and hypercognizing versus hypocognizing emotions). Such work may help us understand the way positive and negative feedback loops operate as culture, psyche, and body make each other up.

Go to article

Poetry And The Politics Of History: Revisiting Ee Tiang Hong, Kirpal Singh Dec 2009

Poetry And The Politics Of History: Revisiting Ee Tiang Hong, Kirpal Singh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Malaysian poet Ee Tiang Hong was troubled by the fundamental changes being introduced by the leaders to ensure that Malaysia (which Ee always referred to as Malaya) became centrally a Malay nation. Not only was Ee trying his best to dissociate himself from what he termed the “mimicry of foreign birds” (i.e. the language of the colonial masters) but he was more critically searching for a new idiom which would give freshness to the rendition of the Malayan experience. While this struggle was in process, the tragedy of May 13 (1969) struck: here was a blatant illustration of the …

Go to article

Who Governs Energy? The Challenges Facing Global Energy Governance, Ann Florini, Benjamin K. Sovacool Dec 2009

Who Governs Energy? The Challenges Facing Global Energy Governance, Ann Florini, Benjamin K. Sovacool

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article conceptualizes the energy problems facing society from a global governance perspective. It argues that a notion of "global energy governance," taken to mean international collective action efforts undertaken to manage and distribute energy resources and provide energy services, offers a meaningful and useful framework for assessing energy-related challenges. The article begins by exploring the concepts of governance, global governance, and global energy governance. It then examines some of the existing institutions in place to establish and carry out rules and norms governing global energy problems and describes the range of institutional design options available to policymakers. It briefly …

Go to article

Empirical Likelihood In Missing Data Problems, Jing Qin, Biao Zhang, Denis H. Y. Leung Dec 2009

Empirical Likelihood In Missing Data Problems, Jing Qin, Biao Zhang, Denis H. Y. Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

Missing data is a ubiquitous problem in medical and social sciences. It is well known that inferences based only on the complete data may not only lose efficiency, but may also lead to biased results if the data is not missing completely at random (MCAR). The inverse-probability weighting method proposed by Horvitz and Thompson (1952) is a popular alternative when the data is not MCAR. The Horvitz–Thompson method, however, is sensitive to the inverse weights and may suffer from loss of efficiency. In this paper, we propose a unified empirical likelihood approach to missing data problems and explore the use …

Go to article

Impact Of Culture On ‘Partner Selection Criteria’ In East Asian International Joint Ventures, Ravinder K. Zutshi, Wee Liang Tan Dec 2009

Impact Of Culture On ‘Partner Selection Criteria’ In East Asian International Joint Ventures, Ravinder K. Zutshi, Wee Liang Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Selecting the right partner is important for the success of alliances and joint ventures. For international joint ventures (IJVs) from diverse cultures the partner selection process can become complicated. Prior studies have investigated the alliances and joint ventures to develop a set of objective criteria for evaluating potential partners. This paper reports the study of IJVs formed by Singapore firms in Peoples Republic of China and India. The intent was to develop a methodology for identifying partner selection criteria in a cross-cultural setting. The findings reveal that the partner selection process follows a different logic in Confucian societies. Trust has …

Go to article

Tea Leaves Of The Economy: General Elections In 2010?, Tan K. B. Eugene Dec 2009

Tea Leaves Of The Economy: General Elections In 2010?, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Incumbent governments with good economic track records would typically capitalise on economic downturns to seize a political advantage by calling for early elections. Will the ruling People's Action Party do so nect year in view of the strong economic perormances in recent months?

Go to article

Dialogic Cosmopolitanism And Global Justice, Eduard Christiaan Jordaan Dec 2009

Dialogic Cosmopolitanism And Global Justice, Eduard Christiaan Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although the term “cosmopolitan-communitarian debate” never really caught on, a national-global fault line remains prominent in debates about global justice. “Dialogic cosmopolitanism” holds the promise of bridging this alleged fault line by accepting many of the communitarian criticisms against cosmopolitanism and following what can be described as a communitarian path to cosmopolitanism. This article identifies and describes four key elements that distinguish dialogic cosmopolitanism: a respect for difference; a commitment to genuine dialogue; an open, hesitant and self-problematising attitude on the part of the moral subject; and an undertaking to expand the boundaries of moral concern to the point of …

Go to article

Freedom Of Speech And Contempt By Scandalizing The Court In Singapore, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee Nov 2009

Freedom Of Speech And Contempt By Scandalizing The Court In Singapore, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The offence of scandalizing the court, a form of contempt of court, is regarded as obsolete in the United Kingdom. However, it continues to be imposed in other Commonwealth nations and remains very much alive in Singapore, having been applied in a crop of cases between 2006 and 2009. This short commentary examines one of these cases, Attorney-General v Hertzberg and others [2009] 1 Singapore Law Reports 1103, which has generated worldwide interest as it arose out of articles published in the Wall Street Journal Asia. In Hertzberg, the High Court of Singapore held that utterances by an alleged contemnor …

Go to article

Tunneling Through Intercorporate Loans: The China Experience, Guohua Jiang, Charles M. C. Lee, Heng Yue Nov 2009

Tunneling Through Intercorporate Loans: The China Experience, Guohua Jiang, Charles M. C. Lee, Heng Yue

Research Collection School of Accountancy

This study investigates a particularly brazen form of corporate abuse, in which controlling shareholders use intercorporate loans to siphon billions of RMB from hundreds of Chinese listed companies during the 1996 to 2006 period. We document the nature and extent of these transactions, evaluate their economic consequences, examine factors that affect their cross-sectional severity, and report on the mitigating roles of auditors, institutional investors, and regulators. Collectively, our findings shed light on the severity of the minority shareholder expropriation problem in China, as well as the relative efficacy of various legal and extra-legal governance mechanisms in that country.

Go to article

Dating The Timeline Of Financial Bubbles During The Subprime Crisis, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu Nov 2009

Dating The Timeline Of Financial Bubbles During The Subprime Crisis, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

A new recursive regression methodology is introduced to analyze the bubble characteristics of various financial time series during the subprime crisis. The methods modify a technique proposed in Phillips, Wu, and Yu (2011) and provide a technology for identifying bubble behavior with consistent dating of their origination and collapse. The tests serve as an early warning diagnostic of bubble activity and a new procedure is introduced for testing bubble migration across markets. Three relevant financial series are investigated, including a financial asset price (a house price index), a commodity price (the crude oil price), and one bond price (the spread …

Go to article

Reaching Out And Beyond: A Review Of Southeast Asian Writing In English [Book Review], Kirpal Singh Nov 2009

Reaching Out And Beyond: A Review Of Southeast Asian Writing In English [Book Review], Kirpal Singh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Go to article

Modeling Change Over Time: Conceptualization, Measurement, Analysis, And Interpretation, David Chan Nov 2009

Modeling Change Over Time: Conceptualization, Measurement, Analysis, And Interpretation, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The objective of this research report is to provide a state-of-the art review of the issues and methods relating to the modeling of change over time. The focus is on the quantitative assessment of the concept of change of time, which includes issues of conceptualization, measurement, data analysis, and interpretation. The rationale and motivation for this research originated from the author?s observations (specifically in the past decade in the capacities of journal editor, reviewer, symposium discussant, and workshop leader) on the need for a comprehensive and relatively non-technical reference on and integration of various issues in the modeling of change …

Go to article

Econometric Analysis Of Continuous Time Models: A Survey Of Peter Philip’S Work And Some New Results, Jun Yu Nov 2009

Econometric Analysis Of Continuous Time Models: A Survey Of Peter Philip’S Work And Some New Results, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Econometric analysis of continuous time models has drawn the attention of Peter Phillips for nearly 40 years, resulting in many important publications by him. In these publications he has dealt with a wide range of continuous time models and econometric problems, from univariate equations to systems of equations, from asymptotic theory to nite sample issues, from parametric models to nonparametric models, from identication problems to estimation and inference problems, from stationary models to nonstationary and nearly nonstationary models. This paper provides an overview of Peter Phillips' contributions in the continuous time econometrics literature. We review the problems that have been …

Go to article

Directed Altruism And Enforced Reciprocity In Social Networks, Stephen Leider, Markus M. Mobius, Tanya Rosenblat, Quoc-Anh Do Nov 2009

Directed Altruism And Enforced Reciprocity In Social Networks, Stephen Leider, Markus M. Mobius, Tanya Rosenblat, Quoc-Anh Do

Research Collection School Of Economics

We conducted online field experiments in large real-world social networks in order to decompose prosocial giving into three components: (1) baseline altruism toward randomly selected strangers, (2) directed altruism that favors friends over random strangers, and (3) giving motivated by the prospect of future interaction. Directed altruism increases giving to friends by 52% relative to random strangers, whereas future interaction effects increase giving by an additional 24% when giving is socially efficient. This finding suggests that future interaction affects giving through a repeated game mechanism where agents can be rewarded for granting efficiency-enhancing favors. We also find that subjects with …

Go to article

Bias In The Estimation Of The Mean Reversion Parameter In Continuous Time Models, Jun Yu Nov 2009

Bias In The Estimation Of The Mean Reversion Parameter In Continuous Time Models, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

It is well known that for continuous time models with a linear drift standard estimation methods yield biased estimators for the mean reversion parameter both in nite discrete samples and in large in-…ll samples. In this paper, we obtain two expressions to approximate the bias of the least squares/maximum likelihood estimator of the mean reversion parameter in the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process with a known long run mean when discretely sampled data are available. The first expression mimics the bias formula of Marriott and Pope (1954) for the discrete time model. Simulations show that this expression does not work satisfactorily when the …

Go to article

Stimulated Maximum Likelihood Estimation Of Continuous Time Stochastic Volatility Models, Tore Selland Kleppe, Jun Yu, Hans J. Skaug Nov 2009

Stimulated Maximum Likelihood Estimation Of Continuous Time Stochastic Volatility Models, Tore Selland Kleppe, Jun Yu, Hans J. Skaug

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we develop and implement a method for maximum simulated likelihood estimation of the continuous time stochastic volatility model with the constant elasticity of volatility. The approach do not require observations on option prices nor volatility. To integrate out latent volatility from the joint density of return and volatility, a modified efficient importance sampling technique is used after the continuous time model is approximated using the Euler-Maruyama scheme. The Monte Carlo studies show that the method works well and the empirical applications illustrate usefulness of the method. Empirical results provide strong evidence against the Heston model.

Go to article

Brokerage Industry Self-Regulation: The Case Of Analysts’ Background Disclosures, Lawrence Brown, Artur Hugon, Hai Lu Nov 2009

Brokerage Industry Self-Regulation: The Case Of Analysts’ Background Disclosures, Lawrence Brown, Artur Hugon, Hai Lu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We evaluate an industry disclosure initiative designed to inform investors, the practice of providing information regarding investment professionals’ backgrounds. Implicit in the motivation for this initiative is the presumed relevance of background information to investors seeking investment professionals’ guidance. We find that analysts with disclosure incidents forecast less accurately than a matched sample of analysts without such disclosures, and that the market views disclosed analysts’ earnings forecasts as less credible than those of the matched sample. Our evidence is consistent with disclosures signaling a persistent analyst characteristic. We conclude that analyst backgrounds are informative regarding both the accuracy and credibility …

Go to article

Social Networks, Personal Values, And Creativity: Evidence For Curvilinear And Interaction Effects, Jing Zhou, Shung Jae Shin, Daniel J. Brass, Jaepil Choi, Zhi-Xue Zhang Nov 2009

Social Networks, Personal Values, And Creativity: Evidence For Curvilinear And Interaction Effects, Jing Zhou, Shung Jae Shin, Daniel J. Brass, Jaepil Choi, Zhi-Xue Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Taking an interactional perspective on creativity, the authors examined the influence of social networks and conformity value on employees' creativity. They theorized and found a curvilinear relationship between number of weak ties and creativity such that employees exhibited greater creativity when their number of weak ties was at intermediate levels rather than at lower or higher levels. In addition, employees' conformity value moderated the curvilinear relationship between number of weak ties and creativity such that employees exhibited greater creativity at intermediate levels of number of weak ties when conformity was low than when it was high. A proper match between …

Go to article

Affordable Homeownership Policy: Implications For Housing Markets, Sock Yong Phang Nov 2009

Affordable Homeownership Policy: Implications For Housing Markets, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Affordable homeownership is a policy that is often accorded a great deal of policy attention by governments of many countries. In this paper, we examine the market implications of setting a housing price to income ratio target for a market segment by the government. The policy requires active intervention by the government with regard to the targeted sector. We use a simple model of the housing market with a homeownership affordability target to derive the market implications of such targets. In the presence of uncertainty and resource constraints, the objective of homeownership affordability is achieved for the targeted group at …

Go to article

Compassion: Why It Is Better To Eat Fish, Knowledge@Smu Nov 2009

Compassion: Why It Is Better To Eat Fish, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Compassion was probably the farthest notion from Colonel Sanders’ mind when he became the global poster boy for delicious fried chicken. He had started his business in the early twentieth century – a period marked by the great depression and two world wars. Prejudices festered under the hostile global climate then, where little consideration was given to the suffering of human beings, much less animals. However, with the progress of time, scientific advancements have urged us, increasingly, to be kinder to fellow humans, animals, the environment… and that we really ought to be munching on fried fish instead.

Go to article

Trade, Growth And Increasing Returns To Infrastructure: The Role Of The Sophisticated Monopolist, Ashok S. Guha, Brishti Guha Nov 2009

Trade, Growth And Increasing Returns To Infrastructure: The Role Of The Sophisticated Monopolist, Ashok S. Guha, Brishti Guha

Research Collection School Of Economics

Equilibrium in international trade with increasing returns in infrastructure depends on whether the infrastructure provider is “naïve” or sophisticated. A monopolist produces infrastructure under decreasing cost using fixed equipment. Unlike similar work, we derive a unique closed-economy equilibrium. In a small open economy, with “naïve” infrastructure provider(s), multiple equilibria obtain. The industrial export potential of the economy depends on unexhausted economies of scale, and equilibria are possible where manufactures are exported despite an autarky price higher than the world price. With a sophisticated infrastructure provider, even an open economy has a unique equilibrium, which, at least as long as economies …

Go to article

Automated Likelihood Based Inference For Stochastic Volatility Models, H. Skaug, Jun Yu Nov 2009

Automated Likelihood Based Inference For Stochastic Volatility Models, H. Skaug, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

The Laplace approximation is used to perform maximum likelihood estimation of univariate and multivariate stochastic volatility (SV) models. It is shown that the implementation of the Laplace approximation is greatly simplified by the use of a numerical technique known as automatic differentiation (AD). Several algorithms are proposed and compared with some existing maximum likelihood methods using both simulated data and actual data. It is found that the new methods match the statistical efficiency of the existing methods while significantly reducing the coding effort. Also proposed are simple methods for obtaining the filtered, smoothed and predictive values for the latent variable. …

Go to article

Bayesian Analysis Of Structural Credit Risk Models With Microstructure Noises, Shirley J. Huang, Jun Yu Nov 2009

Bayesian Analysis Of Structural Credit Risk Models With Microstructure Noises, Shirley J. Huang, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique is developed for the Bayesian analysis of structural credit risk models with microstructure noises. The technique is based on the general Bayesian approach with posterior computations performed by Gibbs sampling. Simulations from the Markov chain, whose stationary distribution converges to the posterior distribution, enable exact ¯nite sample inferences of model parameters. The exact inferences can easily be extended to latent state variables and any nonlinear transformation of state variables and parameters, facilitating practical credit risk applications. In addition, the comparison of alternative models can be based on deviance information criterion …

Go to article

Next Last