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Detecting Bubbles In Hong Kong Residential Property Market, Matthew S. Yiu, Jun Yu, Lu Jin Oct 2013

Detecting Bubbles In Hong Kong Residential Property Market, Matthew S. Yiu, Jun Yu, Lu Jin

Research Collection School Of Economics

This study uses a newly developed bubble detection method (Phillips, Shi, and Yu, 2011) to identify real estate bubbles in the Hong Kong residential property market. Our empirical results reveal several positive bubbles in the Hong Kong residential property market, including one in 1995, a stronger one in 1997, yet another one in 2004, and a more recent one in 2008. In addition, the method identifies two negative bubbles in the data, one in 2000 and the other one in 2001. These empirical results continue to be valid for the mass segment and the luxury segment. However, this method has …

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An Exploratory Study On The Adoption And Use Of Ict In Myanmar, Sim Kim Lau, Graham K. Winley, Sim Yee Lau, Kim Song Tan Oct 2013

An Exploratory Study On The Adoption And Use Of Ict In Myanmar, Sim Kim Lau, Graham K. Winley, Sim Yee Lau, Kim Song Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This exploratory study investigates the adoption and use of information and communication technologies in Myanmar by examining the nature and structure of the information technology profession. The investigation is based on a theoretical framework consisting of three components: domains of information technology professional expertise; the scope of the information technology professional’s knowledge, skills and experience; and specific knowledge and skills associated with the domains of professional expertise. The findings show that specialist skills in systems development, database, network and communications are important. This paper also provides insights that are not found in current literature which investigates information technology skills in …

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Minimum Wage In A Deflationary Economy: The Japanese Experience, 1994-2003, Ryo Kambayashi, Daiji Kawaguchi, Ken Yamada Oct 2013

Minimum Wage In A Deflationary Economy: The Japanese Experience, 1994-2003, Ryo Kambayashi, Daiji Kawaguchi, Ken Yamada

Research Collection School Of Economics

The statutory minimum wage in Japan has increased continuously for a few decades until the early 2000s even during a period of deflation. This paper examines the impact of the minimum wage on wage and employment outcomes under this unusual circumstance. We find that the minimum-wage increase resulted in the compression of the lower tail of the wage distribution among women and that the wage compression is only partially attributable to the loss of employment. The continuous increase in the minimum wage accounts for one half of the reduction in lower-tail inequality that occurred among women during the period between …

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Affordable Fares, Sustainable Public Transport: The Fare Review Mechanism Committee Report, Sock Yong Phang Sep 2013

Affordable Fares, Sustainable Public Transport: The Fare Review Mechanism Committee Report, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The public transport system in Singapore is the main mode of transport for the majority of the population. It is important that public transport remains generally affordable and accessible, with measures to help various commuter groups through fare assistance schemes. Household surveys show that public transport has become more affordable as a proportion of monthly household income over the years. Public transport fares have increased, but at a much lower rate than increases in income. At the same time, increasing fuel costs and other changes in the public transport landscape since 2005 mean that the public transport industry faces declining …

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Geographic Decomposition Of Inequality In Health And Wealth: Evidence From Cambodia, Tomoki Fujii Sep 2013

Geographic Decomposition Of Inequality In Health And Wealth: Evidence From Cambodia, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Applying the small-area estimation methods to Cambodia data, we decompose the total inequality in wealth (consumption) and health (child undernutrition) indicators into within-location and between-location components. Because the knowledge of the pattern of spatial disparity in poverty and undernutrition is important for the geographic targeting of resources, we conduct a geographic decomposition of the variance of the Foster-Greere-Thorbecke index in addition to the standard decomposition exercise based on the generalized entropy measures. We find that a sizable proportion of wealth inequality is due to between-location inequality, whereas health inequality is mainly due to within-location inequality.

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Housing Policies In Singapore: Evaluation Of Recent Proposals And Recommendations For Reform, Sock Yong Phang, David Kuo Chuen Lee, Alan Cheong, Kok Fai Phoon, Karol Wee Aug 2013

Housing Policies In Singapore: Evaluation Of Recent Proposals And Recommendations For Reform, Sock Yong Phang, David Kuo Chuen Lee, Alan Cheong, Kok Fai Phoon, Karol Wee

Research Collection School Of Economics

The Singapore housing market is unusual in its high homeownership rate, the dominance of HDB housing, and the extensive intervention of the government in regulating housing supply and demand in both the HDB and private housing sectors. Recent rapid population increases in a low interest rate and high global liquidity environment has resulted in accelerated house prices increases in Singapore. Earlier this year, the government launched “Our Singapore Conversation” of which discussion on housing policies constitutes one major component. This “conversation” comes in the wake of several consecutive rounds of measures to stabilize housing prices using various instruments. This paper …

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Is The Renminbi East Asia’S Dominant Reference Currency? A Reconsideration, Hwee Kwan Chow Jul 2013

Is The Renminbi East Asia’S Dominant Reference Currency? A Reconsideration, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

Recent empirical studies show that the Chinese currency renminbi is either becoming or has become a dominant reference currency in East Asia. This paper reviews the evidence with daily exchange rate data from seven East Asian economies namely, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan. We consider the likely problems and pitfalls associated with the application of Frankel-Wei regressions to determine the weights of the US dollar and the renminbi in the implicit currency baskets. We show empirically the estimation of currency weights using non-orthogonalised renminbi movements could suffer from imprecision and/or inconsistency. To circumvent the simultaneity bias …

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Policy Responses In An Unstable Globalized Economy: Multi-Stressed Low-Earning Families In Singapore, Irene Y. H. Ng, Kong Weng Ho Jul 2013

Policy Responses In An Unstable Globalized Economy: Multi-Stressed Low-Earning Families In Singapore, Irene Y. H. Ng, Kong Weng Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

The Singapore government responded swiftly to the 2008 global recession, doling out a range of policies in aid of all levels of wage earners. This paper explores the impacts of economic trends and government policies on low-wage earners. Using a theoretical model and empirical data from a pilot study of recipients of a government Work Support Program, it demonstrates the effects of socioeconomic factors on multi-stressed low-earning families. It discusses the adequacy of current policies in addressing the multiple stressors experienced by low-wage earners.

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How Does Childbirth Alter Intrahousehold Resource Allocation?: Evidence From Japan, Tomoki Fujii, Ryuichiro Ishikawa Jun 2013

How Does Childbirth Alter Intrahousehold Resource Allocation?: Evidence From Japan, Tomoki Fujii, Ryuichiro Ishikawa

Research Collection School Of Economics

Exploiting unique panel data that include direct measurements of resource allocation within households, we investigated the impact of childbirth on intrahousehold allocation for married Japanese couples. Based on a collective model of the household, we developed reduced-form and structural-form estimation equations that allow us to focus on private goods to track the changes in intrahousehold resource allocation. We found one additional child is associated with a reduction in the wife's private expenditure share by at least two percentage points. This may be because she substitutes more say in decisions on the children for her own private expenditure share.

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Do Singaporeans Spend Too Much On Housing?, Sock Yong Phang May 2013

Do Singaporeans Spend Too Much On Housing?, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

According to a 2011 IMF study, Singapore's level of government intervention in housing finance is the highest in the developed world (Slide 3). This level of intervention in housing finance has correspondingly produced the highest level of homeownership amongst advanced countries. This housing outcome is the result of our very unique HDB-CPF housing framework – an institutional framework that was established in the 1960s during the formative period of our country?s history (Slides 4 and 5). Singapore was, at that particular point in time, faced with a situation of chronic housing shortage, low homeownership rates and an underdeveloped housing mortgage …

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Impact Of Food Inflation On Poverty In The Philippines, Tomoki Fujii Apr 2013

Impact Of Food Inflation On Poverty In The Philippines, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

We simulate the impact of food inflation between June 2006 and June 2008 on poverty across different areas and between agricultural and non-agricultural households. We explicitly treat the spatial heterogeneity in food inflation and the differences in consumption and production patterns across households by merging household expenditure survey and price datasets at the provincial level or lower. Although some of the poor agricultural households may have escaped poverty, the poorest of the poor, whether they are in an agricultural household or not, are severely and adversely affected by the food inflation.

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Decomposing The Changes Of The Divisia Price Index: Application To Inflation In The Philippines, Tomoki Fujii Mar 2013

Decomposing The Changes Of The Divisia Price Index: Application To Inflation In The Philippines, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

We decompose the logarithmic change in the Divisia price index into the pure price, substitution, and preference effects, although the latter two effects are hard to distinguish in practice. This decomposition allows us to identify the incidence and contributing factors of inflation. In the Philippines, we find that the preference effect is much smaller than the pure price effect in all provinces. We also find that rich deciles have experienced a higher inflation than poor deciles between 1988 and 2006. However, the gap in the standards of living has actually widened because poor deciles lagged behind in consumption growth.

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Schemes Work Hand In Hand To Boost Wages, Hian Teck Hoon Feb 2013

Schemes Work Hand In Hand To Boost Wages, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

Professor Hoon Hian Teck discussed how this year's Budget helps both workers and companies push for higher productivity. The Workfare Income Supplement (WIS) scheme in 2007 provided one answer to boost the earnings of low-wage workers. The Wage Credit Scheme (WCS) introduced in Budget 2013 is another innovative policy instrument that works in tandem with the Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) scheme to help SMEs on their journey to becoming more productive. Under WCS, the Government covers 40 per cent of the wage increase from increased productivity (obtained through the PIC scheme), leaving the firm with a higher profit. Since …

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The Future Of Wages In Singapore, Hian Teck Hoon Feb 2013

The Future Of Wages In Singapore, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

Prof Hoon discussed the future of wages in Singapore and identified major trends affecting Singapore's labour market over the past decade. He noted that in the future, SMEs that are unable to raise workers' productivity to match the higher labour costs will exit the industry, thus leading to job destruction. Also, for there to be a steady supply of jobs with good pay for Singaporeans, the country would need to continue to attract MNCs by harnessing its relative strength in institutional quality and the availability of a highly skilled workforce. Success in helping SMEs to raise their productivity levels and …

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Impact Of Sovereign Debt Restructuring On Financial Flows: The Case Of Indonesia, Hwee Kwan Chow, C. Adams Jan 2013

Impact Of Sovereign Debt Restructuring On Financial Flows: The Case Of Indonesia, Hwee Kwan Chow, C. Adams

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

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Can A Financial Conditions Index Guide Monetary Policy? The Case Of Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow Jan 2013

Can A Financial Conditions Index Guide Monetary Policy? The Case Of Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this study, we explore the issue of whether a financial conditions index can serve as a useful guide to monetary policy in the context of Singapore. To this end, we construct an index that comprises not only the usual monetary variables like interest rates, exchange rates and credit expansions but also asset prices such as stock prices and house prices. The choice of these constituent series is motivated by the role they play in the monetary transmission mechanism with consideration given to the key role leverage plays in modern business cycles and the risk-taking channel magnified by the prolonged …

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Monetary Regime Choice In Singapore: Would A Tayor Rule Outperform Exchange-Rate Management?, Hwee Kwan Chow, G.C. Lim, P. Mcnelis Jan 2013

Monetary Regime Choice In Singapore: Would A Tayor Rule Outperform Exchange-Rate Management?, Hwee Kwan Chow, G.C. Lim, P. Mcnelis

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper adopts a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium-vector autorgressive (DSGE-VAR) approach to examine the managed exchange-rate system at work in Singapore. We examine if the country has any reason to fear floating the exchange rate and adopting a Taylor rule. Our results show that, in terms of overall inflation volatility, the exchange rate rule has a comparative advantage over the Taylor rule when export price shocks are the major sources of real volatility, while a Taylor rule dominates when domestic productivity shocks drive real volatility. The exchange-rate rule also dominates the Taylor rule for reducing inflation persistence.

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Singapore Inflation Expectations: Expecting The Unexpected, Aurobindo Ghosh, Jun Yu Dec 2012

Singapore Inflation Expectations: Expecting The Unexpected, Aurobindo Ghosh, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

The study of inflation expectations of Singapore house-holds is a multi-disciplinary industry-relevant research that comes out of a partnership between Singapore Management University (SMU) and MasterCard. The research team for this MasterCard-SKBI Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (SInDEx) project applied rigorous methods using current internet-based marketing survey tools for data-collection and advanced econometric techniques to analyse the data. The updates from the quarterly waves are keenly followed by policymakers, market watchers and the media because of the enormous importance of cost of living to individuals and businesses alike.

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Dynamic Poverty Decomposition Analysis: An Application To The Philippines, Tomoki Fujii Nov 2012

Dynamic Poverty Decomposition Analysis: An Application To The Philippines, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we propose a new method of poverty decomposition. Our method remedies the shortcomings of existing methods and has some desirable properties such as time-reversion consistency and subperiod additivity. It integrates the existing methods of growth-redistribution decomposition and sector-based decomposition, because it allows us to decompose poverty change into growth and redistribution components for each group (e.g. regions or sectors) in the economy. We extend our method to have six components and provide an empirical application to the Philippines for the period 1985-2009.

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Detecting Bubbles In Hong Kong Residential Property Market, Matthew S. Yiu, Jun Yu, Lu Jin Aug 2012

Detecting Bubbles In Hong Kong Residential Property Market, Matthew S. Yiu, Jun Yu, Lu Jin

Research Collection School Of Economics

This study uses a newly developed bubble detection method (Phillips, Shi and Yu, 2011) to identify real estate bubbles in the Hong Kong residential property market. Our empirical results reveal several positive bubbles in the Hong Kong residential property market, including one in 1995, a stronger one in 1997, another one in 2004, and a more recent one in 2008. In addition, the method identifies two negative bubbles in the data, one in 2000 and the other one in 2001. These empirical results continue to be valid for the mass segment and the luxury segment. However, the method finds a …

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Why Smes Should Aim At Becoming Exporters, Hian Teck Hoon Jul 2012

Why Smes Should Aim At Becoming Exporters, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

In the fortnightly series entitled 'Engage SMU profs', Professor Hoon Hian Teck, Associate Dean of the School of Economics, answers the questions: Should SMEs aim to become exporters rather than serve only the domestic market? What are the benefits to SMEs in doing so? Does the smallness in size limit their productivity growth? Are there any channels for SMEs to get assistance from the authorities, and what are these? He commented that if more of our local SMEs look towards the international marketplace and sell to foreign markets, not only will Singapore's GDP be boosted, local businessmen will also get …

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Growth And Inequality In Singapore, Kong Weng Ho Jul 2012

Growth And Inequality In Singapore, Kong Weng Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

While the strategy of openness had earned Singapore rapid economic growth, upward social mobility, and possibly decreasing inequality in the early years of development, the more recent years saw increasing inequality and with it an underlying possibly diminished upward intergenerational mobility due to skill-biased growth processes, skill-biased parental influence, liberalization in the education industry, and structural changes in the society which hurt the human capital accumulation of children in families under economic and intra-household stresses. In particular, the paternal influence on educational aspiration and attainment is more pronounced than the mother’s. Non-Chinese and youths from disrupted families are worse off …

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Changing Unchanged Inequality: Higher Education, Youth Population, And The Japanese Seniority Wage System, Ken Yamada, Daiji Kawaguchi May 2012

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.

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Love And Money By Parental Match-Making: Evidence From Urban Couples In China, Fali Huang, Ginger Jin, Lixin Collin Xu May 2012

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.

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Designing And Implementing An Evaluation Of A National Work Support Program, Kong Weng Ho, Irene Y. H. Ng, Thartmalingam Nesamani, Alex Lee, Tee Liang Ngiam Feb 2012

Designing And Implementing An Evaluation Of A National Work Support Program, Kong Weng Ho, Irene Y. H. Ng, Thartmalingam Nesamani, Alex Lee, Tee Liang Ngiam

Research Collection School Of Economics

Welfare reforms in the 1990s have shifted governments around the world towards financial assistance conditional on work. While large-scale rigorous research on welfare-to-work programs has demonstrated effectiveness towards employment in other countries, no such micro-level evaluation of a policy has ever been conducted in Singapore. This article describes the process of developing a large experimental evaluation of the Work Support Program, which the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports started in 2006. The lessons learned from planning and implementing the research can be helpful to future researchers in negotiating long-term rigorous evaluations in an environment where collaborators lack sufficient …

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Public Housing: Appreciating Assets?, Sock Yong Phang Jan 2012

Public Housing: Appreciating Assets?, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The topic of HDB housing is one that is close to the hearts and minds of the majority of Singaporeans. The first part of the presentation will provide a brief overview of price trends in Singapore’s housing sector. The second part delves into the market and policy factors behind the rapid increase in HDB housing prices since 2006. The monograph “Reflections on Housing a Nation” published by the Ministry of National Development in February 2011, contains numerous statements on the goals of housing policy. Briefly, the government is committed to affordable home ownership as a major pillar of Singapore’s public …

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Singapore Consumer’S Inflation Expectations And Creation Of Singapore Index Of Inflation Expectations, Aurobindo Ghosh, Jun Yu Dec 2011

Singapore Consumer’S Inflation Expectations And Creation Of Singapore Index Of Inflation Expectations, Aurobindo Ghosh, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

The aim of this report is to highlight a broad spectrum of issues that brings about the measurement of the disagreement and the uncertainity and the formation of inflation expectations among economic agents in Singapore.

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One Mandarin Benefits The Whole Clan: Hometown Infrastructure And Nepotism In An Autocracy, Kieu-Trang Nguyen, Quoc-Anh Do, Anh Tran Dec 2011

One Mandarin Benefits The Whole Clan: Hometown Infrastructure And Nepotism In An Autocracy, Kieu-Trang Nguyen, Quoc-Anh Do, Anh Tran

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies nepotism by government officials in an authoritarian regime. We collect a unique dataset of political promotions of officials in Vietnam and estimate their impact on public infrastructure in their hometowns. We find strong positive effects on several outcomes, some with lags, including roads to villages, marketplaces, clean water access, preschools, irrigation, and local radio broadcasters, as well as the hometown’s propensity to benefit from the State’s “poor commune support program”. Nepotism is not limited to only top-level officials, pervasive even among those without direct authority over hometown budgets, stronger when the hometown chairperson’s and promoted official’s ages …

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Impact Of Food Inflation On Poverty In The Philippines, Tomoki Fujii Nov 2011

Impact Of Food Inflation On Poverty In The Philippines, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

We simulate the impact of actual food price increase between June 2006 and June 2008 on poverty across different areas and whether the household’s main income source is agricultural activities. We explicitly treat heterogeneity in food price changes and the patterns of consumption and production by merging a expenditure survey dataset and a price dataset at the provincial level or lower. While the increase of head count index is larger for non-agricultural households than agricultural households, the opposite is true for the poverty gap and poverty severity measures, because poor agricultural households are particularly vulnerable to food inflation.

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Mncs And The Labour Crunch: Local Jobs May Suffer If Foreign Supply Is Curbed, Hian Teck Hoon Nov 2011

Mncs And The Labour Crunch: Local Jobs May Suffer If Foreign Supply Is Curbed, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

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