International and Area Studies Commons^™

Inauguration Of Smu-Tcs Icity Laboratory, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

The Singapore Management University (SMU) and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a leading IT services, business solutions and consulting firm, inaugurated the SMU-TCS Intelligent City Laboratory (“iCity Lab”) on 9 May 2012 (Wednesday). The inauguration ceremony was held at the iCity Lab Experience Centre located at the SMU School of Information Systems (SIS). Equipped with interactive technology, this Experience Centre will serve as a venue for city managers and urban planners to experience the new ideas and technologies which the Lab will be developing. This collaboration initiative was announced on 5 August 2011, which aimed to develop, as well as establish …

In Search Of A Different Accounting Graduate: Entry-Point Determinants Of Students’ Performance In An Undergraduate Accountancy Degree Programme In Singapore, Poh Sun Seow, Gary Pan, Joanne Tay

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study investigates the association of prior academic achievement, admission interview, critical thinking, mathematical aptitude, gender and age with successful academic performance in an undergraduate accountancy degree programme at a Singapore university. The purpose of revisiting the determinants of academic performance is twofold: firstly, university accounting education in Singapore has changed greatly since Koh and Koh’s earlier study (1999), so this study examines if determinants previously identified as significant continue to be so in the new setting; secondly, the study tests the usefulness of admission interview in identifying applicants who achieve subsequent academic success. All the data on students’ performance …

Delayed Marriage And Ultra Low Fertility - The Confounding Challenges To Social Stability, Paulin Tay Straughan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Much of Singapore’s recent problems with social acceptance and integration of foreigners is attributed to the city-state's sustained ultra-low fertility. To augment labour shortage, state policies on immigrant were eased to facilitate an inflow of guest workers. The backlash on rapid globalisation of the workforce was felt acutely when the non-resident segment rose to account for over 20% of the almost 5.2 million population. To ease social tension between locals and foreigners, the city-state has to curb reliance on foreign labour through ensuring a steady growth of the local population. This paper discusses the social, cultural and structural barriers to …

Both Sides Will Need To Raise Their Game, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Now that the Hougang by-election is over, the Workers' Party (WP) and the People's Action Party (PAP) will conduct their post-mortems. SMU Assistant Professor Eugene Tan wrote that ?Among the key questions would be how they campaigned and how they can deal with the issues that the hustings threw up. For the WP, how can it keep Hougang in its fold and grow the famed "Hougang Spirit"? How can it be less reliant on its charismatic leader Low Thia Khiang? For the PAP, how can it make significant gains and be more competitive in Hougang?? He concludes that what the …

Asia In The Middle East: The Internationalization Of Singapore Private Firms Into The Gcc, Caroline Yeoh, Wilfred How, Sharmaine Si Min Neo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

Contract Modifications: Reflections On Two Commonwealth Cases, Pey Woan Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The common law rule that a promise to perform a pre-existing obligation is no consideration is said to have done the most in giving the doctrine of consideration a bad name. While the English innovation of 'practical benefits' in Williams v Roffey has effectively enervated this rule, general discontentment with the conceptual difficulties residing in this approach has often led to calls for the abolition of consideration in the context of contract modifications. This article examines two Commonwealth cases that took this step and warns against an overly optimistic view of such a development. It argues, instead, that the post-Williams …

Inward Fdi In Singapore And Its Policy Context, Locknie Hsu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) has long been an important feature of the Singapore economy, and Singapore remains an attractive host to FDI. Apart from a brief decline in 2002, FDI inflows have generally been strong in the decade 2000-2010. They reached a peak in 2007 at US$ 37 billion, just before the global financial and economic crisis of 2008-2009. In 2008, inflows declined sharply to US$ 8.6 billion, before rapidly rebounding to reach US$ 38 billion in 2010. Singapore has moved from an economy primarily involved in manufacturing consumer goods in labor-intensive industries in the 1960s, to one producing …

Introducing A ‘Presumption Of Adr’ For Civil Matters In The Subordinate Courts, Joyce Low, Dorcas Quek Anderson

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article traces the development of court ADR programmes in the SubordinateCourts for civil disputes. It also discusses the implications of a recent PracticeDirection introducing a “Presumption of ADR”.

Battle For Undecided Voters In Hougang, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

SMU Assistant Professor and NMP Eugene Tan commented on the battle for undecided voters in Hougang prior to the by-election this Saturday. He wrote that the political stakes are not so high in this by-election. Although the WP has more to lose this round, the stakes are calibrated differently in their first head-to-head contest since GE2011, and the parties must remember that this by-election is but a "battle" only. Instead, the PAP and WP would do well to stay focused on acquitting themselves well in the long haul before the next General Election. The priority for both parties is to …

Changing Unchanged Inequality: Higher Education, Youth Population, And The Japanese Seniority Wage System, Ken Yamada, Daiji Kawaguchi

Research Collection School Of Economics

Wage inequality declined in the 1990s and rose after 2000 among full-time male workers in Japan. Narrowing wage inequality in the 1990s can be accounted for by a decline in between-group inequality resulting from a stable return to education and decreased returns to experience and tenure. Widening wage inequality after 2000 can be accounted for by a rise in within-group inequality resulting from a relative increase in educated and experienced workers, as well as changes in heterogeneous returns to human capital.

Internationalization Into The Gcc: Singapore In Retrospect, Caroline Yeoh, Wilfred Pow Ngee How, Hong Hao Chong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As internationalization becomes, increasingly, the chosen method of (ironically) competing for competitiveness among firms, new and rich frontiers for business come into ever-expanding demand. Among the foremost of these frontiers, the countries of the GCC represent both fertile ground and uncharted waters for internationalizing firms, with cultures as rich as their markets and sometimes byzantine yet fascinating socio-political forces presenting a plethora of challenges to erstwhile investing firms. As a culmination of our research into this region over past years, then, we examine in this paper, as a case study of sorts, the experiences of Singapore firms in the various …

Love And Money By Parental Match-Making: Evidence From Urban Couples In China, Fali Huang, Ginger Jin, Lixin Collin Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Parental involvement in marriage matchmaking may distort the optimal spouse choice because parents are willing to substitute love for money. The rationale is that the joint income of married children can be shared among extended family members more easily than mutual attraction felt by the couple themselves, and as a result, the best spouse candidate in the parents' eyes can differ from what is optimal to the individual, even though parents are altruistic and care dearly about their children's welfare. We find supporting evidence for this prediction using a unique sample of urban couples in China in the early 1990s.

Reforming The Right To Legal Counsel In Singapore, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This is an opinion prepared for the Criminal Law Committee of the Law Society of Singapore on an arrested person’s right to legal counsel in Singapore. Specifically, it deals with the following: (1) it summarizes pertinent aspects of the law relating to the right to legal counsel in Singapore; (2) it surveys a number of ASEAN and Commonwealth jurisdictions to determine how long after apprehension the right to counsel is generally accorded to arrested persons, and compares the legal position in these jurisdictions to the situation in Singapore; and (3) it examines two rights ancillary to the right to legal …

The Interpretation Of Gats Disciplines On Economic Integration: Gats Commitments As A Threshold?, Heng Wang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The interpretation of GATS Article V, which deals with economic integration, is of crucial importance to the growing number of economic integration agreements (EIAs) in services, in terms of dispute settlement, services negotiations, the WTO review of EIAs, the coordination between multilateralism and EIAs, and best practices in drawing up EIAs. However, the Article has received insufficient study and remains vague.This paper takes China's eight EIAs as test cases for interpreting GATS Article V and argues that GATS commitments may be an appropriate threshold for interpreting the Article, in particular the substantial sectoral coverage and elimination of discrimination requirements, which …

Tradition And Change In Marriage Payments In Vietnam, 1963-2000, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, John Knodel

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study analyses data from the Vietnam Study of Family Change to document trends and determinants of marriage payments in Vietnam from 1963 to 2000. We investigate the extent to which structural and policy transformations influenced the practice of payments, and estimate how societal changes indirectly impacted payments via their effects on population characteristics. Results indicate that marriage payments surged following market reform, but also reveal nuanced trends during earlier years. While the socialist attempts to eradicate brideprice appear to have been successful in the North before economic renovation, they were unsuccessful in the South. Structural and policy change explained …

South Africa, Multilateralism And The Global Politics Of Development, Eduard Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

South Africa was recently included as a member of the BRICS grouping. South Africa's formal association with the powerful original members suggests that it possesses some international clout. Although South Africa pursues an active foreign policy, for example, as a region organizer, notably through New Partnership for Africa's Development, and as an issue leader championing development-related concerns, the normative direction of South Africa's international involvement has been unclear and often contradictory. This article illustrates how South Africa adheres to and departs from liberal principles when involved in the global politics of development. Middlepowership and domestic politics are identified as two …

Contractual And Procedural Effects Of Non-Exclusive Jurisdiction Agreements, Darius Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In Orchard Capital I Ltd v Ravindra Kumar Jhunjhunwala, a respondent’s attempt to stay Singaporean proceedings on forum non conveniens grounds in favour of a non-exclusive jurisdiction (Hong Kong) was denied. In doing so, the Singapore Court of Appeal set out important principles concerning the legal effects of a non-exclusive jurisdiction agreement. This note makes a comparative analysis of the decision with English case law. It will be seen that the decision has taken a bold and firm step in a direction where English case law had previously tiptoed but still not fully embarked.

What Could Derail The India Express? Economists Speak Out, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

For the investors and businesses still swooning over India's red-hot growth, a pair of economists delivered a splash of cold water to their faces on February 23 during a talk organized by the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Advanced Study of India.

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2011: Full Year Overview, Institute Of Service Excellence, Smu

Research Collection Institute of Service Excellence (2007-2024)

The Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) computes customer satisfaction scores at the national, sector, sub-sector, and company levels. The CSISG serves as a quantitative benchmark of the quality of goods and services produced by the Singapore economy over time and across countries with 2011 marking its fifth year of measurement.

Civil Society And Local Activism In South Korea's Local Democratization, Yooil Bae, Sunhyuk Kim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Recent studies on causes of intergovernmental transformation in old and new democracies have found that decentralization is often the outcome of negotiations between national and local political interests. South Korea is commonly believed to be an exception because local elections and institutions introduced in the early 1990s were, by and large, the product of negotiations among political elites at the centre, without significant inclusion of local actors. However, this article attempts to explicate a hitherto ignored aspect of decentralization reform in Korea: the role of civil society and local activism in the politics of decentralization. In the 2000s, several ‘triggering …

Avoiding Russia's Path In Myanmar, Bridget Welsh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The political reforms that have occurred from August 2011 in Myanmar have captured international attention due in part to the overwhelming desire for the pariah of ASEAN to move toward better governance and greater political liberalization. The unexpected changes began in August 2011 when the current president Thein Sein rallied reformers in his Cabinet and sat down with the country’s de facto opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to move the country toward national reconciliation. Over the last seven months, Myanmar’s military leadership has begun a process of liberalization that is unprecedented.

Product Suitability, Due Diligence And Management Responsibility: The New Regime Of Regulation 18b Of The Financial Advisers Regulations, Kee Yang Low

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In response to the structured products crisis of 2008, many changes were made to the Singapore regulatory landscape over the past three years. More recently, in July 2011, the Financial Advisers Regulations (Cap 110, Rg 2, 2004 Rev Ed) was amended and an important new provision – reg 18B – was added. Regulation 18B requires a financial adviser and its senior management to conduct a comprehensive due diligence exercise before selling a new product. This comment considers reg 18B’s overall scheme, its interpretational difficulties, the demands of the diligence requirements, its interrelation with s 27 of the Financial Advisers Act …

Asian Religions Aren't That Exotic, Justin K. H. Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Toronto filmmaker Quentin Lee's The People I've Slept With (2009) may seem like a sex-comedy at odds with Asian Canadian religious values. The story is set in California - but the movie is classed as Canadian because of Lee's Torontonian roots - and revolves around the love lives of Angela Yang and her gay best friend Gabriel.

Improbable Art: The Creative Economy And Sustainable Cluster Development In A Hong Kong Industrial District, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A noted Singapore-based cultural geographer and specialist on Asia analyzes the emergence and functioning of a unique artistic cluster in Hong Kong's Fotan light industrial district. The objective of the research is to understand how artistic work in the cluster, despite some challenges, has thus far proven sustainable in cultural, social, and economic terms. The findings of this case study permit further clarification of several dimensions of an emerging theory of cultural/creative clusters, which should be considered as distinct from business and industrial clusters. Selective comparisons between the Fotan cluster and the Moganshan Lu cluster in Shanghai demonstrate that cultural/creative …

Structured Notes Fiasco In The Courts: A Study Of Relevant Judgments In Taiwan Between 2009 And 2010, Christopher Chao-Hung Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The purpose of this article is to analyse relevant judicial decisions in Taiwan regarding structured notes sold to retail investors. Regarding pre-sale disputes, one issue was that investors failed to read contractual documents properly before signing contracts, so there was a question whether they could later claim a bank’s violation of its duty to explain. This article favours the view that an investor’s signature may exempt a bank’s duty, provided that investors are made aware of relevant warnings. In addition, for suitability assessment, relevant judgments show that customers were too easily classified as active investors based on a simple questionnaire. …

Policy Positioning In The European Parliament, Kenneth Benoit, Kenneth Benoit

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Party politics in the European Parliament (EP) consists of competition between transnational party groups, each consisting of multiple national member parties from the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). Identifying the policy space that these parties inhabit and their ideological positions is both practically and conceptually challenging. In this article we characterize this policy competition by tracking EP political groups from three separate, original expert surveys taken in 2004, 2007 and 2010. We look at the relative positioning of the groups on multiple dimensions of policy, as well as changes in party group policy since 2004. Additionally, we …

A Comparative Analysis Of A Game-Based Mobile Learning Model In Low-Socioeconomic Communities Of India, Paul Kim, Elizabeth Buckner, Hyunkyung Kim, Tamas Makany, Neha Taleja, Vallabhi Parikh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study explores the effectiveness of a game-based mobile learning model for children living in underdeveloped regions with significant contextual variations. Data for this study came from a total of 210 children between the ages of 6-14 years old from six marginalized communities in India. The findings reveal that children with little or no previous exposure to technology were able to not only figure out the given mobile learning technology, but also solve a series of incrementally challenging problems by playing math games without specific intervention or instruction by adults. The study also found that various factors, including gender and …

Oral History Interview With John Niland: Conceptualising Smu, John Niland

Oral History Collection

The interview covered: first involvement with SMU, SMU's Board of Trustees, early priorities of the Board of Trustees, the Academic Affairs Committee, the tenure process at SMU, Finance and Remuneration Committee, admissions criteria, early days at SMU, the role of QAFU, the role of the International Academic Advisory Panel, looking ahead, Singapore's public policy in guiding universities, personal impact, advice for students.

Biography:

Deputy Chairman, SMU Board of Trustees (2000-2012)

Professor John Niland joined SMU Board of Trustees in 2000 and has been closely involved with SMU's growth and development since then. He served as the Chair of the Finance …

The Worth And Values Of Education, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Singapore’s education minister Heng Swee Keat surprised parents and educators when he indicated last September at his first major policy address a desire for education in Singapore – which has come under criticisms for its emphasis on grades- to return to the basics of moulding students’ characters.

Sino-Speak: Chinese Exceptionalism And The Politics Of History, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article examines how recent books by academics and public intellectuals reshaping the discourse of the rise of China. While earlier trends argued th China was being socialized into the norms of international society, many text now proclaim that due to its unique civilization, China will follow its own path to modernity. Such books thus look to the past - Chinas imperial history- for clues to not only Chinas future, but also the worlds future. This discourse which could be called " Sino-speak," presents an essentialized Chinese civilizati that is culturally determined to rule Asia, if not the world. The …