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Articles 2311 - 2340 of 2456

Full-Text Articles in Economics

Service Links And Wage Inequality, Kong Weng Ho, Hian Teck Hoon Feb 2003

Service Links And Wage Inequality, Kong Weng Ho, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

In our general equilibrium model, the variety of specialized service links affects international production fragmentation in manufacturing. Decreases in cost of education or fixed cost of service links raise the relative supply of skilled workers, increase service specialization, and decrease the price of aggregate services. Consequently, the market for service- and skill-intensive component manufacturing enlarges, raising relative demand for skilled workers. Empirically, endogenous change in international outsourcing rather than skill-biased technological progress is the main reason for a modest decline in wage gap despite the rapid rise in relative supply of skilled workers in Singapore from 1978 to 2000.

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External Debt And Worsening Business Cycles In Less Developed Countries, Hing-Man Leung Jan 2003

External Debt And Worsening Business Cycles In Less Developed Countries, Hing-Man Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

Less developed countries (LDCs) have seen considerable business cycles in recent decades. At the same time they have significantly increased their external-debt-to-GDP ratios. It seems natural to suspect that increased indebtedness and the amplified cycles are linked. The paper presents a simple macroeconomic model to formalize this connection. External debt is the novelty of this model. The paper's main contribution is to calibrate the dynamic parameter using the World Development Indicator. It is found that the LDC dynamic behavior is generally non-oscillatory. Alarmingly though, the dynamic convergent system in the 1970s has been replaced by one of divergence.

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Strategic Development Of Airport And Rail Infrastructure: The Case Of Singapore, Sock-Yong Phang Jan 2003

Strategic Development Of Airport And Rail Infrastructure: The Case Of Singapore, Sock-Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This article recounts how a number of strategic infrastructure investment decisions in airport and rail development taken by the Singapore government were at variance with recommendations emerging from cost-benefit analysis, but were considered necessary to support external competitiveness. This link between infrastructure provision and economic development may require decision makers to assess the trade-off between prudent macro-economic planning and efficient micro-economic management for major projects. In the case of airport hubs, the most difficult assessment might be the game consideration of how much, and how far ahead, excess capacity is needed to ensure the dominance of the hub.

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Low-Wage Employment Subsidies In A Labor-Turnover Model Of The `Natural Rate, Hian Teck Hoon, Edmund S. Phelps Jan 2003

Low-Wage Employment Subsidies In A Labor-Turnover Model Of The `Natural Rate, Hian Teck Hoon, Edmund S. Phelps

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

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Education, Technological Progress And Economic Growth, Winston T. H. Koh, Hing-Man Leung Jan 2003

Education, Technological Progress And Economic Growth, Winston T. H. Koh, Hing-Man Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

An important role of education – and the resultant accumulation of human capital – for a less-developed economy is to facilitate technology diffusion in order for it to catch up with developed economies. This paper presents a model linking education, the accumulation of physical capital and technological progress. In the model, investment in education and the accumulation of physical capital are complementary, and intertwine with the technology progress through related effects on technology diffusion and the expansion of the technology frontier. The allocation of effort to education, the optimal savings rate and the technology gap are endogenously determined in the …

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Competitiveness And Price Convergence On The Internet: Evidence From The Online Dvd Market, Xiaolin Xing, Fang Fang Tang, Zhenlin Yang Jan 2003

Competitiveness And Price Convergence On The Internet: Evidence From The Online Dvd Market, Xiaolin Xing, Fang Fang Tang, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We compare the pricing behavior between online branches of traditional retailers (MCR) and pure Internet retailers (Dotcom) in the DVD market. Based on a set of panel data from July 5, 2000 to June 11, 2001, we find that the average price of the MCRs is about 11.2% higher than that of the Dotcoms. Further statistical analyses on the market dynamics of price trends show that the prices of the Dotcoms went up with time much faster than the prices of the MCRs, which points to a possibility that eventually both types of retailers may charge similar prices on average. …

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Incentive Compatibility In Multi-Unit Auctions, Sushil Bikhchandani, Shurojit Chatterji, Arunava Sen Jan 2003

Incentive Compatibility In Multi-Unit Auctions, Sushil Bikhchandani, Shurojit Chatterji, Arunava Sen

Research Collection School Of Economics

We characterize incentive compatibility in multi-unit auctions with multi-dimensional types. An allocation mechanism is incentive compatible if and only if it is nondecreasing in marginal utilities (NDMU). The notion of incentive compatibility we adopt is dominant strategy in private value models and ex post incentive compatibility in models with interdependent values. NDMU is the following requirement: if changing one buyer’s type, while keeping everyone else’s types the same, changes this buyer’s allocation then the new allocation must be relatively more attractive (or relatively less unattractive) to this buyer. We also establish a price characterization of incentive compatible mechanisms.

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Exclusion Bias In Sample-Selection Model Estimators, Myoung-Jae Lee Jan 2003

Exclusion Bias In Sample-Selection Model Estimators, Myoung-Jae Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

Exclusion restrictions are routinely used in sample-selection models with selection and outcome equations. A false restriction, however, can cause an exclusion bias for the outcome equation estimator. In this paper, the specific form of the exclusion bias is derived for various sample-selection model estimators. Furthermore, it is shown that the outcome equation parameters for regressors with zero coefficients in the selection equation are immune to exclusion bias if only one regressor is excluded. Exclusion bias, or a lack thereof, is verified through a simulation study with the regressors taken from Mroz (1987). JEL Classification Numbers: C24, C34. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The Elasticity Of Substitution And Endogenous Growth, Hing-Man Leung Jan 2003

The Elasticity Of Substitution And Endogenous Growth, Hing-Man Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

The endogenous growth literature focuses exclusively on Cobb-Douglas. Elasticities other than unity are ignored. A recent paper by Klump and Grandville (2000) examined other elasticities but assumed an exogenous saving rate. By contrast, this paper studies elasticity and endogenous growth. Endogeneity is important since elasticity preserves capital’s productivity and encourages saving. Two models are presented. The first assumes exogenous technological change. We find elasticity to have a positive level effect on income. No rate of growth effect is found. The second model allows learning by doing from capital accumulation. In addition to the level effect, rate of growth effects are …

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Effects Of Electronic Trading On The Hang Seng Index Futures Market, Joseph Fung, Donald Lien, Yiuman Tse, Yiu Kuen Tse Jan 2003

Effects Of Electronic Trading On The Hang Seng Index Futures Market, Joseph Fung, Donald Lien, Yiuman Tse, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the effects of the migration of the Hang Seng Index futures from open-outcry trading to electronic trading. Using trade data over a window of six months we find evidence that, after the migration, the bid-ask spread of the futures contract decreases and the contribution of the futures price in information transmission increases. Furthermore, the asymmetry in volatility spillover reduces and the open interests of the futures market become smaller. These results suggest that the anonymity in trading and the higher speed of order execution in the electronic trading system attract informed traders to the futures market and …

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Is Ricardo's Essay On Profits A Precursor Of The New Trade Theory?, Hian Teck Hoon Dec 2002

Is Ricardo's Essay On Profits A Precursor Of The New Trade Theory?, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper carefully analyzes a passage of Ricardo’s Essay on Profits ([1815] 1923), which suggests that he clearly understood the effects of both interindustry as well as intraindustry trade. In the context of the Essay model, Ricardo argues that free interindustry trade involving an exchange of manufactures for agricultural good (from England’s point of view) raises the rate of profit through lowering the relative price of the agricultural good. On the other hand, where trade involves simply an exchange of manufactures for manufactures, these being produced under conditions of economies of scale (division of labour in manufactures (pg. 25 of …

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Residual-Based Diagnostics For Conditional Heteroscedasticity Models, Yiu Kuen Tse Dec 2002

Residual-Based Diagnostics For Conditional Heteroscedasticity Models, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine the residual–based diagnostics for univariate and multivariate conditional heteroscedasticity models. The tests are based on the parameter estimates of an autoregression with the squared standardized residuals or the cross products of the standardized residuals as dependent variables. As the regression involves estimated regressors the standard distribution theories of the ordinary least squares estimates do not apply. We provide the asymptotic variance of the regression estimates. Diagnostic statistics, which are asymptotically distributed as ?[sup 2], are constructed. A Monte Carlo experiment is conducted to investigate the finite–sample properties of the residual–based tests for both univariate and multivariate models. The …

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A Model Of Industrialization And International Wage Convergence Based On Multi-Plant Foreign Direct Investment, Hian Teck Hoon, Irene Ng Dec 2002

A Model Of Industrialization And International Wage Convergence Based On Multi-Plant Foreign Direct Investment, Hian Teck Hoon, Irene Ng

Research Collection School Of Economics

We show that for industrialization and international wage convergence through multi-plant foreign direct investment (FDI) to occur, the measure of the quality of the social infrastructure in the South relative to that in the North must be at least as large as the South-North wage ratio. We also show that if profitable FDI flows already take place from the North to the most productive economy in the South, then less productive Southern economies can also become recipients of FDI, provided that they are integrated into the world trading system, and there are no impediments to the decline of their wage …

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Tax Cuts, Employment And Asset Prices: A Real Intertemporal Model, Hian Teck Hoon, Edmund S. Phelps Nov 2002

Tax Cuts, Employment And Asset Prices: A Real Intertemporal Model, Hian Teck Hoon, Edmund S. Phelps

Research Collection School Of Economics

We determine the effects of a delayed or immediate tax cut with or without a sunset feature in a real customer-market, nonRicardian economy. Our model incorporates both the supply-sider channel, through which reduced wage income taxes stimulate work effort, as well as the Feldstein-Rubin-Summers channel, through which cuts in income tax, in widening the deficit and thus driving up future short real interest rates, has a chilling effect on present and future investment, so reducing growth and employment on that account. After establishing conditions under which fiscal policy is sustainable, we first show that a delayed tax cut may depress …

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Venture Capital And Economic Growth: An Industry Overview And Singapore's Experience, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh Nov 2002

Venture Capital And Economic Growth: An Industry Overview And Singapore's Experience, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper provides an overview of the venture capital industry, and its development in Asia and Singapore. Venture capital plays an important role in innovation and economic growth. Indeed, the resurgence of the United States as a technology leader is intimately linked to the success of Silicon Valley. As Singapore enters the next phase of economic development, the creation of internal engines of growth is an urgent task. The Singapore government has done much to provide an environment for entrepreneurship to thrive. Its success at replicating the Silicon Valley culture will be important for Singapore’s future economic success.

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A Corrected Plug-In Method For The Quantile Confidence Interval Of A Transformed Regression, Zhenlin Yang, Yiu Kuen Tse Nov 2002

A Corrected Plug-In Method For The Quantile Confidence Interval Of A Transformed Regression, Zhenlin Yang, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we propose an analytically corrected plug-in method for constructing confidence intervals of the conditional quantiles of a response variable with data transformation. The method can be applied to (i) a general conditional regression quantile, (ii) a general monotonic transformation, and (iii) a transformation model with heteroscedastic errors. Our results extend those in Yang (2002a), in which the median of a response variable under the Box-Cox transformation with homoscedastic errors was considered. A Monte Carlo experiment is conducted to compare the performance of the corrected plug-in method, the plug-in method and the delta method. The corrected plug-in method …

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Venture Capital And Economic Growth: An Industry Overview And Singapore's Experience, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh Nov 2002

Venture Capital And Economic Growth: An Industry Overview And Singapore's Experience, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper provides an overview of the venture capital industry, and its development in Asia and Singapore. Venture capital plays an important role in innovation and economic growth. Indeed, the resurgence of the United States as a technology leader is intimately linked to the success of Silicon Valley. As Singapore enters the next phase of economic development, the creation of internal engines of growth is an urgent task. The Singapore government has done much to provide an environment for entrepreneurship to thrive. Its success at replicating the Silicon Valley culture will be important for Singapore's future economic success.

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On The Performance Of Geometric Chart With Estimated Control Limits, Zhenlin Yang, Min Xie, Vellaisamy Kuralmani, Kwok-Leung Tsui Oct 2002

On The Performance Of Geometric Chart With Estimated Control Limits, Zhenlin Yang, Min Xie, Vellaisamy Kuralmani, Kwok-Leung Tsui

Research Collection School Of Economics

The control chart based on the geometric distribution (geometric chart) has been shown to be competitive with p- or np-charts for monitoring the proportion nonconforming, especially for applications in high quality manufacturing environments. However, implementing a geometric chart is often based on the assumption that the in-control proportion nonconforming is known or accurately estimated for a high quality process, an accurate parameter estimate may require a very large sample size that is seldom available. In this paper we investigate the sample size effect when the proportion nonconforming is estimated. An analytical approximation is derived to compute shift detection probabilities and …

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Market Segmentation And Information Values Of Earnings Announcements: Some Empirical Evidence From An Event Study On The Chinese Stock Market, Yu Gao, Yiu Kuen Tse Oct 2002

Market Segmentation And Information Values Of Earnings Announcements: Some Empirical Evidence From An Event Study On The Chinese Stock Market, Yu Gao, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the trading activities of two distinct classes of shareholders, namely, the Chinese domestic investors and the foreign investors in the segmented Chinese A-share and B-share markets, respectively. We conduct an event study on the annual earnings announcements based on two different accounting standards: IAS and PRC GAAP. The earnings announcements based on IAS and PRC GAAP are value relevant. The investors in the B-share market react to both the IAS and PRC GAAP earnings announcements, while the investors in the A-share market pay more attention to the PRC GAAP earnings reports. In the B-share market, positive abnormal …

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Bulgaria Poverty Assessment (Report No. 24516-Bul), Dena Ringold, Gero Carletto, Tomoki Fujii, Et Al Oct 2002

Bulgaria Poverty Assessment (Report No. 24516-Bul), Dena Ringold, Gero Carletto, Tomoki Fujii, Et Al

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

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The Kpss Test With Seasonal Dummies, Sainan Jin, Sainan Jin Oct 2002

The Kpss Test With Seasonal Dummies, Sainan Jin, Sainan Jin

Research Collection School Of Economics

It is shown that the KPSS test for stationarity may be applied without change to regressions with seasonal dummies. In particular, the limit distribution of the KPSS statistic is the same under both the null and alternative hypotheses whether or not seasonal dummies are used.

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Estimation Of Hyperbolic Diffusion Using Mcmc Method, Yiu Kuen Tse, Jun Yu, X. B. Chang Sep 2002

Estimation Of Hyperbolic Diffusion Using Mcmc Method, Yiu Kuen Tse, Jun Yu, X. B. Chang

Research Collection School of Economics

In this paper we propose a Bayesian method for estimating hyperbolic diffusion models. The approach is based on the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method after discretization via the Milstein scheme. Our simulation study shows that the hyperbolic diffusion exhibits many of the stylized facts about asset returns documented in the financial econometrics literature, such as a slowly declining autocorrelation function of absolute returns. We demonstrate that the MCMC method provides a useful tool to analyze hyperbolic diffusions. In particular, quantities of posterior distributions obtained from MCMC outputs can be used for statistical inferences

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The General Dominance Of Lottery Over Waiting-Line Auction, Winston T. H. Koh, Zhenlin Yang, Lijing Zhu Sep 2002

The General Dominance Of Lottery Over Waiting-Line Auction, Winston T. H. Koh, Zhenlin Yang, Lijing Zhu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper examines the allocative efficiency of two popular non-price allocation mechanisms — the lottery (random allocation) and the waiting-line auction (queue system) — for the cases where consumers possess identical time costs (the homogeneous case), and where time costs are correlated with time valuations (the heterogeneous case). We show that the relative efficiency of the two mechanisms depends critically on the scarcity factor (measured by the ratio of the number of objects available for allocation over the number of participants) and on the shape of the distribution of valuations. We obtain a set of analytical results showing that the …

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The Evolution And Utilization Of The Gatt/Wto Dispute Settlement Mechanism, Pao Li Chang Aug 2002

The Evolution And Utilization Of The Gatt/Wto Dispute Settlement Mechanism, Pao Li Chang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper attempts to study the usage of the GATT/WTO dispute settlement mechanism and to explain its patterns across different regimes and decades, using a unified theoretical model. This study first explores the role of the degree of legal controversy over a panel ruling in determining countries’ incentives to block/appeal a panel report under the GATT/WTO regime. The model is able to explain the surge in blocking incidence during the 1980s over the preceding GATT years and the immense frequency at which the new appellate procedure under the WTO is invoked. Furthermore, a two-sided asymmetric information framework is used to …

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Endogenous Tariff Formation With Intra-Industry Trade, Pao-Li Chang Aug 2002

Endogenous Tariff Formation With Intra-Industry Trade, Pao-Li Chang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Previous theoretical contributions on endogenous tariff formation have focused on trade models with homogeneous goods and constant returns to scale. This paper investigates the political equilibrium of trade policy when economic structure is instead characterized by differentiated products and increasing returns to scale and there exists intra-industry trade. The result shows that endogenous tariffs are positive for all industries with non-negligible shares of world production. However, the level of protection is less than the optimal tariff that would otherwise be imposed by a benevolent government in an unorganized industry, and higher in an organized industry. The protection provided to all …

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A Misspecification-Robust Impulse Response Estimator, Pao Li Chang, Shinichi Sakata Aug 2002

A Misspecification-Robust Impulse Response Estimator, Pao Li Chang, Shinichi Sakata

Research Collection School Of Economics

Impulse response analysis is typically conducted by fitting an autoregression model to a time series and calculating the moving average coefficients implied by the estimated autoregression model. The possible shape and persistence of the impulse response function implied by a parsimonious autoregression specification are very limited. This paper proposes an alternative approach to estimating impulse response function, which is asymptotically valid yet is less sensitive to model misspecifications in small samples. The small sample advantages of the proposed impulse response estimator over the conventional approach is demonstrated by Monte Carlo studies. The large sample validity of the proposed estimator is …

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Exchange-Rate Systems And Interest-Rate Behavior: The Experience Of Hong Kong And Singapore, Yiu Kuen Tse, Paul S. L. Yip Jul 2002

Exchange-Rate Systems And Interest-Rate Behavior: The Experience Of Hong Kong And Singapore, Yiu Kuen Tse, Paul S. L. Yip

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we consider the implications of the two different exchange-rate systems in Hong Kong (HK) and Singapore (SP) on the economic performance of these two economies. While HK has a pegged exchange-rate regime under a currency board system (CBS), SP has a managed-float system with monitoring band. We examine whether the managed-float system of SP provides an advantage over the rigid CBS of HK in mitigating the recession caused by the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC), and the implications of the differences in the exchange-rate systems on interest-rate behaviour. Our empirical results show that the monitoring band system in …

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The Implications Of Technology Networks On Diffusion And Economic Growth, Hing-Man Leung Jul 2002

The Implications Of Technology Networks On Diffusion And Economic Growth, Hing-Man Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

After the record-breaking run of high-speed growth in the United States during the late 1990s, a pressing question is Has anything fundamental changed in our growth engine? This paper examines an IT-led endogenous growth model driven by technology diffusion. Diffusion is in turn driven by network effect embodied in new technologies. The equilibrium long-term growth rate is however found to be independent of such technology networks. A novelty in our model is that innovation is discontinuous and it is separated by periods of diffusion. This (IT) network-diffusion is shown to be Sigmoid, and diffusion speed is slower than socially optimal.

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A Modified Family Of Power Transformations, Zhenlin Yang Jul 2002

A Modified Family Of Power Transformations, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

A modified family of power transformation, called the Dual Power Transformation, is proposed, which overcomes the truncation problem of the Box-Cox power transformation. The new transformation possesses properties similar to those of the Box-Cox power transformation. It generates a rich family of distributions that is seen to be very useful in modeling and analysis of economic durations and medical/engineering event-times. Further, it gives rise to transformed (regression) models such that all the standard asymptotic results of the maximum likelihood theory apply. Empirical results presented are more favorable to the new transformation than to the Box-Cox power transformation in terms of …

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Optimal Organizational Design In A Dichotomous-Choice Project Selection Model, Winston T. H. Koh Jul 2002

Optimal Organizational Design In A Dichotomous-Choice Project Selection Model, Winston T. H. Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies collective decision making in the context of a project selection model. We derive the optimal decision architecture when marginal decision costs are present, and investigate the circumstances under which the hierarchy and polyarchy exist as optimal sequential architectures. Our analysis extends previous results on optimal committee decision-making to a sequential setting, and further demonstrates the fragility of the hierarchy and polyarchy as optimal architectures.

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