Growth and Development Commons^™

Bank, Stock Market Efficiency And Economic Growth: Panel Data Evidence From Asean-5, Asia-5 And Oecd-7 Countries, Swee Liang Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper estimates bank and stock market efficiency associations with real per capita GDP growth by examining panel-data across three different regions using Beck-Katz Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) regression. It allows heteroskedastic and/or contemporaneously correlated disturbances across panels, with to specify a common first-order autocorrelation within the panel. The results suggest efficiency effects on growth is not unambiguous. The results suggest a threshold beyond which increase in bank overhead cost hurts economic growth, for developing countries. Likewise, there is a threshold beyond which increase in stock market turnover ratio hurts economic growth, for developed countries. One policy implication of the …

Apple And Foxconn: Addressing Power Imbalances In Global Supply Chains, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Global suppliers such as Foxconn can form strong business networks to put pressure on dominant clients such as Apple to address power imbalances in global supply chains

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2022 February, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The latest survey results on the largest five economies (Big5), based on submissions prior to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, imply a more intricate growth, inflation and policy dynamic.

Transitioning To A Circular Economy: A Systematic Review Of Its Drivers And Barriers, Jovan Tan, Fabien Jianwei Tan, Seeram Ramakrishna

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Advancing societal's progress to achieve circularity is imperative as our linear (take, make, waste) economic model is highly unsustainable. It depletes our natural resources and substantially contributes to pollution and global greenhouse gas emissions. Our continued participation in the linear economy will also expose businesses to volatile resource prices and supply disruptions resulting from the scarcity of critical materials and geopolitical factors. Hence, there are compelling reasons for businesses to transit and participate in the circular economy. However, anecdotal evidence suggests limited practical implementations. Therefore, this systematic review aims to determine the most significant drivers and barriers that influence business …

Tapping On Growth Opportunities Through Trade And Investment, Andy Feng, Gerald Foong, Geraldine Lim

Research Collection School Of Economics

As a small and open economy, external developments play a crucial role in shaping Singapore’s growth prospects. In particular, external demand is pivotal in supporting the growth of Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP) beyond the limits afforded by a small domestic market. Furthermore, due to the resource constraints faced by Singapore, its production of goods and services to meet both external and domestic demand requires a substantial use of imported inputs. Apart from trade, Singapore’s openness and outward-orientation also extend to its embrace of inward and outward investments to grow its economy and create jobs for Singaporeans. In view of …

Economic Forecasting In An Epidemic: A Break From The Past?, Hwee Kwan Chow, Keen Meng Choy

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper aims to investigate whether the predictive ability and behaviour of professional forecasters are different during the Covid-19 epidemic as compared with the global financial crisis of 2008 and normal times. To this end, we utilise a survey of professional forecasters in Singapore collated by the central bank to analyse the forecasting record for GDP growth and CPI inflation. We first examine the point forecasts to document the extent of forecast failure in the pandemic crisis and test for behavioural explanations of the possible sources of forecast errors such as leader following and herding behaviour. Using percentile-based summary measures …

Navigating The Pandemic As It Enters Its Second Year, Havovi Joshi

Asian Management Insights

Many countries, enabled by the rapid vaccine rollout, experienced some moments of relief from the Covid-19 pandemic as they embarked on their long and winding transition toward normalcy. However, despite the Herculean effort expended, achieving herd immunity remains a distant goal for many due to the emergence of the highly transmissible and lethal Delta variant and the persistence of vaccine hesitancy. As such, the coronavirus continues to upend lives, businesses, and society, and the playbook for survival will still be a work-in-progress

Urbanization Policy And Economic Development: A Quantitative Analysis Of China's Differential Hukou Reforms, Wen-Tai Hsu, Lin Ma

Research Collection School Of Economics

The household registration system (hukou system) in China has hampered rural-urban migration by posing large migration friction. The system has been gradually relaxed in the past few decades, but the reforms have been differential in city size. We find a striking contrast in migration patterns between years 2005 and 2015; rural people tended to move more to large cities in 2005, but more to small- and medium-sized cities in 2015. We calibrate a spatial quantitative model to the world economy in both years with China divided into rural, mega-city, and other-city regions. We find that alternative urbanization policies that are …

Challenges To Social Mobility In Singapore, Kong Weng Ho, Marcus Kheng Tat Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Singapore had achieved impressive economic growth together with a high level of upward mobility since her independence in 1965. However, the growth process might have become more uneven, in addition to diminishing growth for a matured economy like Singapore, which is also a highly open city state subject to competitive forces from other economies. Singapore has fared well recently,
evident from the 2020 social mobility findings reported by the World Economic Forum and the decline in Gini coefficients for the past decade. We discuss the education system in Singapore and the recently formed National Jobs Council, both important institutions for …

On The Market Failure Of “Missing Pioneers”, Shang-Jin Wei, Ziru Wei, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

An influential hypothesis states that export pioneers are too few relative to social optimum because the first exporter's action creates an informational public good for all subsequent exporters. The hypothesis has been invoked to justify certain types of government interventions. We note, however, that such market failure requires two inequalities to hold simultaneously: the discovery cost is neither too low nor too high. Neither has to hold in the data. We propose a structural estimation framework to evaluate the hypothesis, and estimate the parameters based on the customs data of Chinese electronics exports. Our key finding is that "missing pioneers" …

Doubling Down On Asia, Olivier Lim, Arif P. Rachmat, David Su

Perspectives@SMU

COVID-19 has inflicted major pain on Asian economies but the effects on countries and sectors are not uniform. The tech sector in China could yet present investment opportunities

Squawking About Persistently Higher Inflation?, Thomas Lam

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

All signs point to an uncertain path for inflation in the future. While inflation is set to stay prospectively higher in the US in the near-term, it's unlikely to remain so.

Essays On Economic Development And Environmental Sustainability, Rohan Ray

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The first chapter is a randomized controlled trial study that uses loss framing and information nudges to increase secondary school attendance in Bangladesh. Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have become one of the most common policy interventions to increase school attendance, but the cost-effectiveness of such interventions has not attracted the attention it deserves. Hence, in addition to a standard CCT implementation, our rich unique dataset on daily attendance allows us to experimentally study two potential ways to improve the cost-effectiveness of school attendance interventions: (i) SMS information nudges and (ii) loss framing in CCTs. The former provides school attendance information …

Technology And Sustainability: The New Business Playing Field, Havovi Joshi

Asian Management Insights

Two topics that have consistently cropped up in conversations among business leaders during the pandemic are technology, in the context of the pervasiveness and quickening pace of digital transformation, and sustainability, especially how we should be doing business without harming the environment and society. The collective belief is that both topics will continue to rise on the world’s agenda, reshaping entire industries while creating new ones. They have changed the way of doing business. So what does the new playbook look like?

Two Essays On Innovation And Growth In China, Qiugu He

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation studies China’s economic growth from a perspective of industry dynamics. In chapter 1, I introduce the background and policies relating to China’s economic growth after 1978. In chapter 2, I find that the elasticity of the average R&D expenditure of firms on competition is -0.29 in weak-IPR (intellectual property right) provinces, and -0.06 in strict-IPR provinces. Next, I use the Schumpeterian growth model to explain this finding: When the market becomes more competitive, a firm prefers imitation to innovation to a larger extent, as a means of getting new technology. Due to enforcement of IPR laws, the imitation …

Footprints Of A Winning Idea: Three Decades Of The Human Development Paradigm (1990-2019), Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The rise and fall of international development paradigms has long captured the interest of scholars, but interpreting whether a paradigm is winning or losing depends largely on how we measure its success. In this research note, we contribute to this debate by assessing the influence of development paradigms via comparative bibliometric analysis. Focusing on the human development and capabilities approach (HDCA) promoted by the Human Development Reports (HDRs) of the United Nations, our analysis reveals how the HDCA has emerged to become an influential paradigm of development over the last three decades. As the HDCA has fared impressively well vis-à-vis …

Teaching In The Right Context: Textbook Supply Program, Language, And Vocabulary Ability In Vietnam, Tomoki Fujii, Maki Nakajima, Sijia Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

While past two decades have witnessed a remarkable educational progress in Vietnam, ethnic minority children consistently lagged behind ethnic majority children in academic performance. The government of Vietnam has stepped up efforts to assist ethnic minority students in their learning by lowering the linguistic and cultural barriers they face. Among such efforts is the textbook supply program, and we examine its impact on the learning of children proxied by vocabulary test. We apply difference-in-differences estimation to four rounds of the Young Lives data between 2006 and 2015 in order to investigate how the textbook supply program narrowed the gap between …

Urbanization Policy And Economic Development: A Quantitative Analysis Of China's Differential Hukou Reforms, Wen-Tai Hsu, Lin Ma

Research Collection School Of Economics

The household registration system (hukou system) in China has hampered rural-urban migration by posing large migration friction. The system has been gradually relaxed in the past few decades, but the reforms have been differential in city size and by the coastal-inland divide. We find a striking contrast in the migration patterns between years 2005 and 2015; rural people tended to move more to the coastal urban region in 2005, but more to the inland urban region in 2015. We calibrate a spatial quantitative model to the world economy in both years with China being divided into the rural, coastal urban, …

Mandarins Make Markets: Leadership Rotations And Inter-Provincial Trade In China, Junyan Jiang, Yuan Mei

Research Collection School Of Economics

The careers of many public officials span multiple localities, yet the economic effects of their inter-regional movements are not well understood. This paper focuses on the rotation of provincial leaders in China and studies its impact on regional economic integration. Estimation results using the gravity framework indicate that when a provincial leader is appointed as the party secretary of a new province, the trade volume from the new province to the old province increases, but not vice versa. Additional analyses using two novel datasets that capture the intensity of inter-provincial socioeconomic activities in China corroborate this finding. We then construct …

4 Lessons In Digital Transformation From The Lucrative K-Pop Industry, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

K-pop is set to become one of the most lucrative industries in the world thanks to digital transformation, and this provides important insights and lessons for businesses more broadly, says UNSW Business School's Felix Tan

When Crises Happen: Coronavirus And What We Expect For Global Growth, Waqas Adenwala

Asian Management Insights

An unflinching take on the negative effects on growth from both demand and supply channels.

Consumption, Investment, Integration And Digitalisation Lead Growth In Asia, Piyush Gupta, Havovi Heerjee Joshi

Asian Management Insights

An interview with Piyush Gupta, Chief Executive Officer and Director of DBS Group, about the Asia growth story and the future of banking.

Essays On Heterogeneous Large Panel Data Models, Ke Miao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation consists of three papers which contribute to the estimation and inference theory of the heterogeneous large panel data models. The first chapter studies a panel threshold model with interactive fixed effects. The least-squares estimators in the shrinking-threshold-effect framework are explored. The inference theory on both slope coefficients and the threshold parameter is derived, and a test for the presence of the threshold effect is proposed. The second chapter considers the least-squares estimation of a panel structure threshold regression (PSTR) model, where parameters may exhibit latent group structures. Under some regularity conditions, the latent group structure can be correctly …

Common Power Laws For Cities And Spatial Fractal Structures, Tomoya Mori, Tony E. Smith, Wen-Tai Hsu

Research Collection School Of Economics

City-size distributions are known to be well approximated by power laws across a wide range of countries. But such distributions are also meaningful at other spatial scales, such as within certain regions of a country. Using data from China, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the United States, we first document that large cities are significantly more spaced out than would be expected by chance alone. We next construct spatial hierarchies for countries by first partitioning geographic space using a given number of their largest cities as cell centers and then continuing this partitioning procedure within each cell recursively. We find …

Why Do Businesses Grow Faster In Urban Areas Than In Rural Areas?, Lee, Jungho, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We document that growth of business earnings is mostly observed among young firmsin metro areas. Three explanations are considered: metro areas attract more-productiveentrepreneurs, and reaching the optimal size takes time due to borrowing constraints;metro areas provide better learning opportunities; and high operating costs in metroareas allow only the productive firms to survive. We use a firm-dynamics model with alocation choice to quantify the extent to which the three theories explain the data. Wefind the first two theories largely explain the high growth among metro, young firms. Ourmodel also suggests the distortion in entrepreneurs’ location choice can induce substantialwelfare loss.

The Rising Importance Of Chinese Monetary Policy, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Expert expects the influence of Chinese monetary policy to rise as the country’s share of the global economy increases

The World In 2020, Simon Baptist

Library Events

Simon Baptist, the Chief Economist from The Economist Intelligence Unit, shared the global economic outlook in 2020:

• The outlook for the global economy and prospects for ASEAN in 2020
• The key risks, how they might play out, and what these scenarios mean
• The impact on the business environment

The Future Development Of Reits In China, Jia Sun

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) is a type of trust fund or corporation that pools the funds of a large number of investors by issuing a certificate of income and invest the raised funds in real estate projects that are managed by a specialized investment institution. The real estate investment risk is moderate, and the rent is stable, but the capital threshold is high, and it is difficult for small and medium investors to enter the market. The invention of REITs aims to solve this problem, through the collection of funds, so that small and medium investors can enter the …

Kick-Starting Economic Growth: An Interview With Dr K. V. Subramanian, India's Chief Economic Advisor, K V Subramanian, Havovi Joshi

Asian Management Insights

Dr K. V. Subramanian emphasises the importance of higher investment rates, good quality loans, and structural reforms for boosting India’s economic growth.

Innovation, Growth, And Dynamic Gains From Trade, Wen-Tai Hsu, Raymond G. Riezman, Ping Wang

Research Collection School Of Economics

How large are the welfare gains from trade? Would such gains be significantly amplified in the long run when productivity is endogenously enhanced? To address these questions, we focus on the dynamic effect of trade, in particular, how trade affects the incentives for technological advancement. We construct an innovation-based endogenous growth model of North-South trade. There are two types of innovation: one by the North to upgrade the general purpose technology (GPT) and another by all countries to advance entrepreneurial knowledge for developing differentiated products. We find sizable welfare gains from trade, about 5.3% when compared to autarky. The gains …