Asian Studies Commons^™

The Yangon Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Since its independence from British rule in 1948, Myanmar has struggled with multiple obstacles, including a series of violent internal ethnic and sectarian conflicts, isolationist fiscal policies instituted by an increasingly distrustful military government and international sanctions and condemnation following government crackdowns in 1988 and 2007. In spite of all these setbacks, President Thein Sein’s decision in 2011 to liberalise the country’s political and economic systems has created a new wave of optimism for what was once commonly regarded as a failed state.

The Phnom Penh Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Once a relatively sleepy agrarian kingdom, Cambodia has experienced some of the most horrific violence since the close of the Second World War. Between 1970 and 1999, the country was the victim of both a brutal civil war as well wider regional conflicts. The Khmer Rouge seizure of power in 1975 brought four years of forced collectivisation and mass killings that have haunted the Cambodian psyche ever since. The decade of Vietnamese occupation that followed only further exacerbated the country’s massive humanitarian problems. When the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) exited after elections in 1993, it left behind …

Utopias Misplaced: The Cost Of Outsourcing Dystopian Poetics To North Korea, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

This is a slightly revised version of the text of a talk that I (Seo-Young Chu) gave as part of the Fall 2014 Franke Lectures in the Humanities at Yale University. I'm sharing the text here to make the lecture more accessible. Topics include: North Korea/the DPRK, the "uncanny body politic," the uncanny valley, "dystopian poetics," what it means to outsource dystopian poetics, the intersection of aesthetics and politics. Authors/artists mentioned include: Thomas Hobbes, Mary Shelley, David Mitchell, Marjane Satrapi, Song Byeok, Sun Mu, Masahiro Mori, Andy Warhol. The talk also discusses the James Bond film Die Another Day.

Clothing And Social Movements: The Politics Of Dressing In Colonized Tibet, Dicky Yangzom

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the relationship between clothing and social movements. Taking the case of Lhakar in the Tibetan Freedom Movement, it explores how Tibetans in Tibet and those in exile imagine national belonging. Second, it delineates how the multiple uses of clothing, both by the colonizing state and the colonial movement articulates its importance in serving as a symbolic boundary in nationalist identity formation. Lastly, using methods of visual analysis, the research explains how the convergence between clothing, social movements, and social media creates a non-violent transnational social movement.

The Little India Riot: Domestic And International Law Perspectives, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

A riot involving hundreds of foreign labourers broke out in Little India, Singapore, on 8 December 2013. Only the second riot to occur in more than 40 years in fairly tranquil Singapore, the damage was extensive as rioters destroyed police and emergency vehicles and even injured dozens of police and civil defence personnel. The authorities only needed a few days to complete the investigations and shortly after, some of the alleged rioters were arrested and charged, while some of them were repatriated. The swiftness of the entire process prompted harsh criticism from international and local human rights groups, who claimed …

Wage, Income And Consumption Inequality In Japan, 1981-2008: From Boom To Lost Decades, Jeremy Lise, Nao Sudo, Michio Suzuki, Ken Yamada, Tomoaki Yamada

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we document the main features of the distributions of wages, earnings, consumption and wealth in Japan since the early 1980s using four main data sources: the Basic Survey on Wage Structure (BSWS), the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES), the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure (NSFIE) and the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC). We present an empirical analysis of inequality that specifically considers the path from individual wages and earnings, to household earnings, after-tax income, and finally consumption. We find that household earnings inequality rose substantially over this period. This rise is made up …

Is Urban Food Demand In The Philippines Different From China?, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

It is essential to understand the consumption pattern of food and how it changes over time to formulate sound economic policies as well as marketing and pricing strategies. In this study, we estimate the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System with six rounds of the Family Income Expenditure Survey exploiting the conditional linearity of the demand system. We find that the Filipino diet has become westernized and that the changes in urban food demand elasticities are qualitatively similar to those in urban China, especially for meat, fruits, and vegetables.We also offer some policy and business implications.

A New Hedonic Regression For Real Estate Prices Applied To The Singapore Residential Market, Jiang Liang, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper develops a new hedonic method for constructing a real estate price index that utilizes all transaction price information that encompasses both single-sale and repeat-sale properties. The new method is less prone to specification errors than standard hedonic methods and uses all available data. Like the Case-Shiller repeat-sales method, the new method has the advantage of being computationally efficient. In an empirical analysis of the methodology, we fit the model to all transaction prices for private residential property holdings in Singapore between Q1 1995 and Q2 2014, covering several periods of major price fluctuation and changes in government macro …

Has The Cold War Returned To East Asia?, James T. H. Tang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The rise of a non-democratic China as the world ‘s second largest economy, still officially subscribing to Communism or ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ as its ideology1, has raised the spectre of the return of the Cold War to Asia with the United States and China on opposing sides, with China backed by Russia, its former Cold War ally. But to what extent are there historical parallels between the Cold War and the current East Asian international relations system?

Results From The Perception And Attitudes Towards Ageing And Seniors Survey (2013/2014), Mathew Mathews, Paulin Tay Straughan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

While discussions on ageing previously centred on dependency ratios and healthcare infrastructure, there has been a growing attention to the other aspects of growing old, such as its social and emotional dimensions. There has also been a move in recent years to rethink the construct of ageing an frame it in a more positive way.In this paper we document some of the results derived from the Perception and Attitudes towards Ageing and Seniors (PATAS) survey completed in early 2014. These results delve into respondents’ beliefs about achieving successful ageing — what it constitutes how it can be achieved and respondents’ …

Simc And Sicc: New Developments In Singapore For The Resolution Of International Commercial Disputes, Eunice Chua

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

Singapore Management University Establishes A New Research Centre On Secure Mobile Computing Technologies And Solutions, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

The Singapore Management University (SMU) has announced today the establishment of a new centre of research excellence that focuses on mobile computing security. Funded by Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF), the Secure Mobile Centre is developing efficient and scalable technologies and solutions that strengthen the security of mobile computing systems, applications and services. The Secure Mobile Centre is led by a team of five faculty members from SMU’s School of Information Systems who specialise in information security and trust: Professor Robert DENG (Centre Director), Professor PANG Hwee Hwa, Associate Professor LI Yingjiu, Associate Professor DING Xuhua and Assistant Professor Debin …

Simc And Sicc: New Developments In Singapore For The Resolution Of International Commercial Disputes, Eunice Chua

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

Should Singapore Adopt ‘Say On Pay’, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In the corporate setting, the remuneration of chief executive officers (CEOs) and senior executives is typically determined by the board of directors. In many countries, corporate governance codes have been developed to provide guidance on such remuneration practices. However, there has been a recent trend of countries adopting regulations which allow shareholders some form of voting rights on executive remuneration. Such voting rights are commonly referred to as Say on Pay (SoP) votes.

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2014: Q2 Results, 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. This is the CSISG’s eighth year of measurement.

New Dean To Helm Smu Lee Kong Chian School Of Business: Smu Appoints Professor Gerard George As New Business School Dean From 2015, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

The Singapore Management University (SMU) has appointed Professor Gerard George from the Imperial College London as Dean of the SMU Lee Kong Chian School of Business from 1 January 2015 for a five-year term.

A Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Professor Gerard George is currently Deputy Dean of Imperial College Business School and the Director of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre. The Centre facilitates Imperial College London's strategic commitments in India for joint research initiatives and educational programmes in innovation and entrepreneurship. He also serves as the International Dean of BML Munjal University, an innovative new university mentored by Imperial and …

Linking Trade And Security: Evolving Institutions And Strategies In Asia, Europe, And The United States By Vinod K. Aggarwal And Kristi Govella, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Trade and security, while seemingly unrelated, have had a long and complicated relationship. On the one hand, trade has often been used as a means to enhance the security of the state. For example, the famous Silk Road was created and maintained by the Han Dynasty to seek allies to help defend itself against the Huns. On the other hand, security has been deemed as an important safeguard to trade, as is shown by the prevalence of the ‘Gunboat Diplomacy’ in the nineteenth century

Exchange Rates And Export Structure, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Yingke Zhou

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies whether changes in the exchange rate affect a country’s export structure, using an arguably exogenous sudden appreciation of renminbi on July 21, 2005 as the main source of identification. Employing combined regression discontinuity and difference-in-differences approach, we show that China’s export structure became more similar to that of the developed countries after the currency appreciation. We also find that the majority of the appreciation effect comes from the inter-firm resource reallocation rather than the inter-region or intra-firm resource reallocation.

Palm Oil-Based Biofuels And Sustainability In Southeast Asia: A Review Of Indonesia, Malaysia, And Thailand, Ishani Mukherjee, Benjamin K. Sovacool

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

By extensively reviewing the current state of knowledge, this paper explores the sustainability implications of palm oil biodiesel in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Both ecological and environmental vitality as well as socio-economic equity are emphasized in the authors' exploration of sustainability in the three country cases. The article observes that the main environmental sustainability considerations of palm oil biodiesel include its capacity to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, its carbon debt and its repercussions on forestry, biodiversity, and soil and water quality. Issues surrounding socio-economic sustainability encompass how palm oil biodiesel affects food security in …

Setting Up A Non-Profit Trust Company: The Special Needs Trust Company In Singapore, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Persons with special needs are in an extremely vulnerable position where they are potentially subject to financial abuse by criminals or other untrustworthy people. In Singapore, this concern has led to the setting up of a non-profit company called the Special Needs Trust Company (SNTC). This article traces the formation of SNTC, the infrastructure and legal documentation required for setting up such a non-profit company and how the special needs trust is currently used in Singapore. The Singapore experience may provide a useful starting point to policy makers and non-governmental organisations from other jurisdictions which may be looking into the …