Asian Studies Commons^™

Reaffirmation Of “Ritual Cosmos”: Tibetan Perceptions Of Landscape And Socio-Economic Development In Southwest China, Tyler Denison

Inquiry Journal 2006

No abstract provided.

Singapore's Transition To Innovation-Based Economic Growth: Infrastructure, Institutions And Government's Role, Winston T. H. Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

Technological progress and innovation plays a central role in a country's economic progress. As an economy advances to the global technological frontier and narrows the technological gap, an innovation-based growth strategy that focuses on investments in R&D and technology creation offers the greatest potential for economic growth. In this paper, we discuss the requirements for a successful transition, in terms of changes to the technology infrastructure, economic institutions and the incentives' structure. This paper outlines the efforts made by Singapore to re-make itself as an innovation-based economy, and the challenges faced by the government in transforming the nation's infrastructure and …

The Rise In House Prices In China: Bubbles Or Fundamentals?, Jianying Hu, Liangjun Su, Sainan Jin, Wanjun Jiang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The dramatic rise of house prices in many cities of China has brought huge attention from both the governmental and academic circles. There is a huge debate on whether the increasing house prices are driven by market fundamentals or just by speculation. Like Levin and Wright (1997a, 1997b), we decompose house prices in China into fundamental and non−fundamental components. We also consider potential nonlinear feedback from the historical growth rate of house prices on the current house prices and propose a semiparametric approach to estimate the speculative components in the model. We demonstrate that the non−fundamental part contributes a relatively …

How Well Can We Target Resources With Quick-And-Dirty Data?: Empirical Results From Cambodia, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Proverty reduction is a top priority for international organizations, governments and non-gorvernmental organizations. The aid resources available for poverty reduction are, however, severely constrained in many countries. Minimizing the leakage of aid resources to the non-poor is a key to maximize poverty reduction with the limited amount of resources available. One Way to minimize such leakage to to target resources geographically. That is, policmakers can move resources to the poorest parts of the country. Geographic taregting can quite effective when poverty is unevenly distributed across the country, and this proves to be the case in many countries.

Competition Policy In Indonesia, Malcolm Dowling

Research Collection School Of Economics

The Indonesian economy was dominated by the government in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s through its control of major mining, manufacturing and agricultural activities. Hill (2000) estimates that as much as 40% of non-agricultural GDP was accounted for by government entities in the late 1980s There were still a lot of government corporations up until the late 1980s and early 1990s and governmental control over the banking system was still substantial.

Central Asia's Transition After Fifteen Years: Growth And Policy Choices, Malcolm Dowling, Ganeshan Vignaraja

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper presents a coherent and systematic analysis of the collapse and subsequent revival of the Central Asian Republics (CARs) since 1990. The focus is on the pattern of growth and structural change during the cycle of decline and subsequent revival in the CARs which have been inadequately analyzed in the literature on transition. The paper relates economic performance to initial conditions, country characteristics and policies. Within this framework, it proposes a simple typology of policies (including a new Type III set of policies on regional cooperation and industrial competitiveness) and relates them to the cycle of decline and revival …

Central Asia: Mapping Future Prospects, Malcolm Dowling, Ganeshan Wignaraja

Research Collection School Of Economics

Central Asia has emerged as one of the world’s fastest growing regions since the late 1990s and has shown notable development potential. This is significant for a region comprising largely of small landlocked economies with no access to the sea for trade. Among the advantages, of the region are its high- priced commodities (oil, gas, cotton and gold), reasonable infrastructure and human capital as legacies of Soviet rule; and a strategic location between Asia and Europe. Furthermore, many Central Asian Republics (CARs) have embarked on market-oriented economic reforms to boost economic performance and private sector competitiveness. Central Asia: Mapping Future …

The Subtlety Of Political Risk With Foreign Direct Investment: The Case Of The Vietnamese Sugar Industry, Tom Arnold, Bonnie Buchanan, Janice Lo

Finance Faculty Publications

Political risk entails more than a host country taking advantage of investment from foreign sources. A more subtle form of political risk is attributable to the host government's mismanagement of policies that may be intended to attract foreign direct investment, but may have unintended consequences. A perfect example is the ''One Million Tonne Sugar Program " sponsored by the government of Vietnam during the mid-1990s. What appears to be a very lucrative investment for foreign investors becomes a financial disaster due to the inability of the government to allocate resources efficiently and police its borders from smugglers.

Westernization Of Business Organizations In Japan And China. Continuity And Change, Wai Keung Chung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Examination Of Ipo Underpricing In The Chinese A-Share Market, Ting Yu, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

Research in the literature shows that initial public offerings (IPOs) of common stocks are systematically priced at a discount to their subsequent initial trading price. The large underpricing magnitude in the Chinese IPO market has attracted much attention. We consider three hypotheses that may explain the IPO underpricing in China. These are the winner's curse hypothesis, the ex ante uncertainty hypothesis and the signaling hypothesis. Among these hypotheses, the winner's curse hypothesis has not been tested in the Chinese market. Using IPO data for online fixed-price offerings from November 1995 to December 1998, our results show that the winner's curse …

Commune-Level Estimation Of Poverty Measure And Its Application In Cambodia, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Cambodia is still suffering from the legacy of civil conflict after more than a decade. With over one-third of the population living below the poverty line, poverty remains one of the most serious problems in Cambodia. A number of governmental bodies, local and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and international organizations operating in Cambodia have made eradicating poverty a priority and have established many social programmes to this end. In designing such programmes, the efficient allocation of resources is essential for making poverty alleviation more cost-effective. Targeting is often helpful for this purpose because one can avoid wasting resources on the …

Does Governance Matter? Yes, No Or Maybe Some Evidence From Developing Asia, M. G. Quibria

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper seeks to explore the relationship between economic growth and governance performance in Asian developing economies. This exploration yields some interesting conclusions. First, notwithstanding its tremendous economic achievements, the state of governance in Asia is not stellar by international comparison. Indeed, a majority of these countries seem to suffer from a governance deficit. Second, contrary to our expectation, data do not suggest any strong positive link between governance and growth: paradoxically, countries that exhibit surpluses in governance on average grew much slower than those with deficits. The paper ends with some conjecture about this apparent paradox.

China's Changing Economic Structures And Its Implications For Regional Patterns Of Trade Production And Integration, Kim Song Tan, Hoe Ee Khor

Research Collection School Of Economics

There is tremendous momentum for economic and financial integration in East Asia today. Partly inspired by the formation of the European Union and partly as a response to the 1997/98 Asia financial crisis, many East Asian countries are showing greater commitment to regional economic cooperation. A number of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) have either been concluded or are being negotiated.1 At a less formal level, the ASEAN+3 grouping has brought the whole region together in regular consultations over trade, investment, as well as monetary and exchange rate policy matters.

The State, The Market, Economic Growth And Poverty In China, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The People’s Republic of China is often cited as an unprecedented success story as far as rural poverty is concerned. Despite recent reports of sometimes violent protests in rural areas over illicit land seizures and pollution, since implementing reforms in 1978, China has seen rural poverty rates fall from xxx to yyy, as economic growth increased zzz on average each year, according to World Bank estimates. Some have ascribed liberal policy prescriptions based on open markets and pro-market government policies as are largely responsible, even as they forwent expensive, large-scale mass welfare programs. Starting with their initial round of fundamental …

Micro-Level Estimation Of Child Malnutrition Indicators And Its Application In Cambodia, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

One of the major limitations in addressing child malnutrition is lack of information that could be used to target resources. By combining demographic and health survey (DHS) and population census data, the author disaggregates the estimates of the prevalence of child malnutrition in Cambodia from currently available 17 DHS strata into 1,594 communes. The methodology is built on the small-area estimation technique developed by Elbers, Lanjouw, and Lanjouw. The author extends it to jointly estimate multiple indicators and to allow for a richer structure of error terms. Average standard errors for the commune-level estimates in this study were about 4 …

Trade, Capital Accumulation And Structural Unemployment: An Empirical Study Of The Singapore Economy, Hiau Looi Kee, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the factors responsible for the secular decline of Singapore's unemployment rate over the period 1966-2000 in an environment of low and stable inflation rates. We introduce wage bargaining and unions into a specific-factors, two-sector economy with an export sector and a non-tradable sector to obtain an endogenous natural unemployment rate. Increases in the relative export price and capital stock in the export sector are predicted to reduce structural unemployment. These hypotheses could not be rejected based on structural estimations and co-integration regressions. Empirically, capital accumulation in the export sector explains most of the decline in Singapore's unemployment …

Competing At The Frontier: The Changing Role Of Technology Policy In Singapore's Economic Strategy, Winston T. H. Koh, Poh Kam Wong

Research Collection School Of Economics

For an economy competing at the global frontier, an innovation-based growth strategy requires a well-developed technological infrastructure, a set of capabilities-focused technology policies, as well as an institutional environment that stimulates innovation and entrepreneurship. This paper examines the role played by science and technology policy in an economy's transition to an innovation-based growth strategy. We discuss the challenges governments face as they restructure economic institutions to deepen R&D capabilities and encourage technology creation. We review Singapore's experience in this regard and assess its ongoing efforts to remake itself to compete at the global frontier.

Evaluating Job Training In Two Chinese Cities, Benu Bidani, Chor-Ching Goh, Niels-Hugo Blunch, Christopher J. O'Leary

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Recent years have seen a surge in the evidence on the impacts of active labor market programs for numerous countries. However, little evidence has been presented on the effectiveness of such programs in China. Recent economic reforms, associated massive lay-offs, and accompanying public retraining programs make China fertile ground for rigorous impact evaluations. This study evaluates retraining programs for laid-off workers in the cities of Shenyang and Wuhan using a comparison group design. To our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of its kind in China. The evidence suggests that retraining helped workers find jobs in Wuhan, but had little …

Report Of The Committee On Fare Review Mechanism, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Today, public transport fares are reviewed annually and adjustments, if any, are capped by the “CPI + X” formula, where CPI is the change in the Consumer Price Index over the previous year and X accounts for the net effect of wage changes after deducting productivity gains. For the period from 2001 to 2005, X was determined to be 1.5%. While this mechanism has worked well in keeping public transport fares affordable, the formula lacks transparency and is not easily understood by the general public. Commuters often question the need for the “X” element given that the public transport operators …

Analysis Of Labor Participation Behavior Of Korean Women With Dynamic Probit And Conditional Logit, Myoung-Jae Lee, Yoon-Hee Tae

Research Collection School Of Economics

We analyse the dynamic labour participation behaviour of Korean women. State dependence under unobserved heterogeneity is considered, where the heterogeneity may be unrelated, pseudo-related, or arbitrarily related to regressors. Three minor methodological contributions are made: interaction terms with lagged response are allowed in dynamic conditional logit; a three-stage algorithm for dynamic probit is proposed; and treating the initial response as fixed is shown to be ill-advised. The state dependence is about 0.6 × SD(error), higher for the married or junior college-educated, and lower for women in their twenties and thirties. While education increases participation, college education has negative effects for …

"No Dogs Or Chinese Allowed": Globalization And China, Lawrence C. Reardon

The University Dialogue

No abstract provided.

Bank Lending And Real Estate In Asia: Market Optimism And Asset Bubbles, Winston T. H. Koh, Roberto S. Mariano, Andrey Pavlov, Sock-Yong Phang, Augustine H. H. Tan, Susan M. Wachter

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the Asian real estate price run-up and collapse in the 1990s. We identify financial intermediaries’ underpricing of the put option imbedded in non-recourse mortgage loans as a potential cause for the observed price behavior. This underpricing is due to behavioral causes (lender optimism and disaster myopia) and/or rational response of lenders to market incentives (agency conflicts, deposit insurance, or limited liability of bank shareholders). The empirical evidence suggests that underpricing occurred in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Consequently, these countries experienced a more severe market crash than Hong Kong and Singapore, where underpricing was kept under control by …

Future Job Prospects In Singapore, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

What forces have shaped our nation’s employment and remuneration record so far? Where is Singapore’s unemployment rate headed? What should policy-makers do about it? These are the questions tackled in this paper.

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

Research Collection School Of Economics

This investigation of the switch from open-outcry trading to electronic trading on the Hang Seng Index (HSI) futures contract reveals that the bid–ask spread narrows and the futures price plays more of a role in information transmission. Factors, such as anonymity in trading and fast order execution in electronic trading, attract informed traders to the futures market, enhancing the information flow. Our results provide support for the worldwide trend of transforming open-outcry markets into electronic trading platforms

Future Job Prospects In Singapore, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

The Creation And Economic Regulation Of Housing Markets: A Comparison Of The Experiences Of Singapore And Korea, Sock-Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Privatization, creation of markets and economic regulation are terms that few would immediately associate with the housing sector. Mainstream housing markets in most of the free market economies of the developed world are regarded as competitive markets, with little need for economic regulation of the market. Regulations that attempt to control behavior directly are generally limited to policies relating to rent control, the provision of rental housing or rental allowances for lower income groups, as well as land use regulations and building controls.

The housing sectors of Singapore and Korea are highly unusual in the extent of government involvement and …

A Var Analysis Of Singapore's Monetary Transmission Mechanism, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

The Singapore economy has experienced greater business cycle fluctuations in recent years, being subject to recurrent shocks from the external environment. Given the extreme openness of the economy—Singapore’s export share of GDP is approximately 180%—it is not surprising that the main cause of the increase in economic volatility is a rise in the frequency and magnitude of exogenous shocks. These include the downswing in the global electronics industry in 1996–97, the Asian financial crisis in 1997–98, the burst of the information technology bubble in 2001, and the outbreak of the SARS respiratory disease in 2003. Such a close sequence of …

Board Structure, Political Influence And Firm Performance - An Empirical Study On Publicly Listed Firms In China, Dongping Han, Fusheng Wang, Heng Yue

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The board of directors is the cornerstone of any effective corporate governance system. A well-structured board can effectively monitor and motivate management of a company for the benefit of the company's shareholders. This paper investigates the relationship between board structure and firm performance using a sample of 490 publicly listed firms in China. The characteristics of board structure we examined include: board size, inside/outside/independent directors, CEO/Chair duality, stock holdings of directors, the rewards to directors and aged directors. We find significant relationship between firm performance and three characteristics: the rewards to director, the stock holdings of directors and the existence …

Expectations Formation And Forecasting Of Vehicle Demand: An Empirical Study Of The Vehicle Quota Auctions In Singapore, Sing-Fat Chu, Winston T. H. Koh, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies expectations formation and forecasting of vehicle demand in Singapore under the vehicle quota system. Under the system, a car buyer must first bid for a vehicle license in monthly auctions in order to purchase a new car. We construct an econometric model to test the hypothesis that past bid distributions of the license auctions contain information that car buyers can use to update their expectations about the intensity of market demand, forecast license premiums and formulate their bidding strategies in future auctions. Our empirical analysis indicates that past bid distributions have a good degree of predictive power …

Expectations Formation And Forecasting Of Vehicle Demand: An Empirical Study Of The Vehicle Quota Auctions In Singapore, Sing-Fat Chu, Winston T. H. Koh, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the expectations formation and forecasting of vehicle demand in Singapore under the vehicle quota system. Under the system, a car buyer must first bid for a vehicle license in monthly auctions in order to purchase a new car. We construct an econometric model to test the hypothesis that past bid distributions of the license auctions contain information that car buyers can use to update their expectations about the intensity of market demand, forecast the license premiums and formulate their bidding strategies in future auctions. Our empirical analysis indicates that past bid distributions have a good degree of …