Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The New Law On Foreign Interference: What's Next For Businesses?, Tan K. B. Eugene, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Bill (Fica) was passed in Parliament on Monday after about 10 hours of impassioned debate. Despite the government agreeing to several amendments proposed by the Workers' Party, the substance was not changed in any significant way. Although the government provided more details on how Fica is to operate, more details will be unveiled when it comes into operation. What does all this mean for businesses?

Fica: What Checks & Balances Are Needed Against Powers Being Used Inappropriately?, Tan K. B. Eugene, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

COMMENTARY: "The key question is not whether the state should have powers to take countermeasures, but rather whether there are adequate checks against the risk of those powers being inappropriately used."

Compensation For Frivolous Or Vexatious Prosecution, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

According to section 359(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code, an acquitted accused person may receive compensation if the prosecution was “frivolous or vexatious”. In Parti Liyani v Public Prosecutor, Singapore’s High Court – for the first time – comprehensively discussed what section 359(3) means and how it is to be applied. This article aims to outline and comment on the High Court’s decision, and to highlight several issues which may be explored in future.

Adapting To The New Normal : Collection Development Strategies In A Post Pandemic Future, Nazimah Ram Nath

Research Collection Library

• The New Normal: What it means to librarianship?
• Collection development in SMU Libraries - evolving with the new normal
• Collective trends on collection development strategies in Academic Libraries
• Tools, products and services for a robust digital transformation
• Navigating the New Normal

"Would You Like To Be A Library Peer Advisor?", Redzuan Abdullah

Research Collection Library

Librarians leveraging on student peer-to-peer learning to add value to information literacy and learning programmes at the Singapore Management University (SMU) Libraries.

Essence Of Partnership Management In Project-Based Learning: Insights From A University’S Global Project Programme, Gary Pan, Poh Sun Seow, Shankararaman, Venky, Kevin Koh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Universities today are embracing teaching pedagogy of project-based learning (PBL) through collaboration with industry. PBL allows students to learn theory in the classroom, then apply what they have learned in the field, solving a wide array of business or societal challenges facing organizations, while at the same time, solidifying their own knowledge. While there are many benefits of such academic-industry partnership, there are also challenges that if not addressed, may have serious consequences. This study aims to develop a framework that highlights the essence of partnership management in a PBL setting and validate the framework by conducting a focus group …

Singapore In The Global Value Chains, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Economics

This chapter analyses the participation of Singapore in the global value chains (GVC): how much of its gross exports are GVC-related trade; how downstream it is; and which countries are its key upstream and downstream trade partners. The analysis is carried out both at the country aggregate level and at the sector level. New formulas are proposed in the gross export decomposition framework of Koopman, Wang and Wei (2014) and Borin and Mancini (2017), to characterise a country/industry’s downstreamness in the GVC and the importance of each trade partner in its backward/forward linkages. Singapore started off with a very high …

Declining Discount Rates In Singapore's Market For Privately Developed Apartments, Eric Fesselmeyer, Haoming Liu, Alberto Salvo

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Singapore's market for new privately developed apartments exhibits wide quasi-experimental variation in ownership tenure. We develop an empirical model in which prices are decomposed into the utility of housing services and a factor that shifts with asset tenure and the discount rate schedule, which we discipline to vary smoothly over time. We estimate discount rates that decline over time and, to accommodate the observed price differences, fall to 0.5-1.5% p.a. by year 400. The finding that households making sizable transactions do not entirely discount benefits accruing centuries from today is relevant, with the appropriate risk adjustment, for evaluating climate-change investments.

Understanding Organizational And Socio-Cultural Contexts: A Communicative Constitutive Approach To Social License To Operate Among Top Hong Kong Companies, Angela K. Y. Mak, Suwichit (Sean) Chaidaroon, Alessandro Poroli, Pang, A.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Embracing a constitutive view of communication, this study explores how organizations in Hong Kong make sense of and negotiate their corporate societal commitment. It does that by examining how the considered organizations construct their engagement in society and talk of their aspirations on identified society-oriented doings by cultural discourse analysis. Findings show that the studied Hong Kong companies constructed their engagement by communicationally relating to other societal actors, establishing we-ness in community engagement actions, incorporating elements of the local cultures (languages and places) and in their reasoning and disclosing emotion-rich considerations. Aspirations were instead presented through a constant reference to …

Media Connection And Return Comovement, Zilin Chen, Li Guo, Jun Tu, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Media news may cover multiple firms in one article, which establishes a media connection across firms. We propose a media connection strength (MCS) measure between two given firms, which is defined as the number of news articles co-mentioning these two firms. We show that the MCS measure can significantly explain and forecast return comovement of media-connected firm-pairs. Further analyses show that our results are robust to various alternative explanations. We argue that the MCS measure can capture comprehensive and complex correlated fundamental information among media-connected firms and hence may provide a new mechanism for return comovement beyond the existing rational- …

The 2021 Ipr Future Of Communications In Asia Report, Tina Mccorkindale, Sarah Crawshaw, Su Lin Yeo, Stephen Thomas, Alexis B. Fitzsimmons, Pang, A.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The communication function within Asian-headquartered organizations is undergoing significant growth and changes that will be pivotal for its future success, according to a new Institute for Public Relations (IPR) research report. The “IPR Future of Communications in Asia” research report investigates key changes that will impact the future of the communications function. The analysis is based on interviews with 30 senior communications executives based in Asia in a variety of industries from 2019 to 2020, and three focus groups with nearly 20 senior communication leaders in late 2020.

We Are On The Way: Analysis Of On-Demand Ride-Hailing Systems, Guiyun Feng, Guangwen Kong, Zizhuo Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: Recently, there has been a rapid rise of on-demand ride-hailing platforms, such as Uber and Didi, which allow passengers with smartphones to submit trip requests and match them to drivers based on their locations and drivers’ availability. This increased demand has raised questions about how such a new matching mechanism will affect the efficiency of the transportation system—in particular, whether it will help reduce passengers’ average waiting time compared with traditional street-hailing systems. Academic/practical relevance: The on-demand ride-hailing problem has gained much academic interest recently. The results we find in the ride-hailing system have a significant …

Towards Better Data Augmentation Using Wasserstein Distance In Variational Auto-Encoder, Zichuan Chen, Peng Liu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

VAE, or variational auto-encoder, compresses data into latent attributes, and generates new data of different varieties. VAE based on KL divergence has been considered as an effective technique for data augmentation. In this paper, we propose the use of Wasserstein distance as a measure of distributional similarity for the latent attributes, and show its superior theoretical lower bound (ELBO) compared with that of KL divergence under mild conditions. Using multiple experiments, we demonstrate that the new loss function exhibits better convergence property and generates artificial images that could better aid the image classification tasks.

The 2021 Ipr Future Of Communications In Asia Report, Sarah Crawshaw, Alexis B. Fitzsimmons, Tina Mccorkindale, Pang, A., Stephen Thomas, Su Lin Yeo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

IPR interviewed 27 senior communications executives who work for Asian-headquartered companies, specifically in mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore and India, through February 2020. Interviews were transcribed and a thematic analysis was conducted. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, IPR conducted follow-up focus groups with nearly 20 senior communications leaders in Asia in November and December 2020 to better understand the long-term impact of the pandemic on communications in the region. These sessions were conducted according to Chatham House rules, so the participants’ identifiers have been removed.

Path To Global Inflence:Conditions For Chinese Film Industry To Succeed, Dong Yu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The world has undergone tectonic transformations since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Inevitably, the pandemic created the perfect conditions for the acceleration of digitization and new infrastructural technologies aimed to increase the speed and availability of content. In China, the pandemic forced
major releases to be streamed via online platforms and drastically altered consumer’s perception of the quality of digital content. Most importantly, digital streaming has shown huge capitalization potential, aided by the spread of 5G technologies, as those who embraced online platforms thrived in the midst
of the global pandemic. During the course of this dissertation, the Chinese …

Dynamic Analysis Of Money Supply, Unemployment And Inflation Rate In The Us, Guangyu Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Price stability is not only an important indicator of the healthy and stability of macro-economy, but also one of the goals of macroeconomic policy. There are many factors affecting inflation. Different monetary policy instruments, such as money supply, liquidity and market expectations, have different effects on inflation. Meanwhile, monetary policy goals, such as inflation rate, employment rate and economic growth rate, also affect each other.

This paper provides an empirical study of money supply, inflation and unemployment in the US economy. Based on the existing theoretical and empirical analysis, this paper selects different research models and new data dimensions to …

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 …

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2021: 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. 2021 marks the 15th year of measurement for the CSISG national study.

Declining Discount Rates In Singapore's Market For Privately Developed Apartments, Eric Fesselmeyer, Haoming Liu, Alberto Salvo

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Singapore's market for new privately developed apartments exhibits wide quasi-experimental variation in ownership tenure. We develop an empirical model in which prices are decomposed into the utility of housing services and a factor that shifts with asset tenure and the discount rate schedule, which we discipline to vary smoothly over time. We estimate discount rates that decline over time and, to accommodate the observed price differences, fall to 0.5-1.5% p.a. by year 400. The finding that households making sizable transactions do not entirely discount benefits accruing centuries from today is relevant, with the appropriate risk adjustment, for evaluating climate-change investments.

When Running For Office Runs In The Family: Horizontal Dynasties, Policy And Development In The Philippines, Dean C. Dulay

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Political dynasties exist in practically every variant of democracy, but take different forms in different places. Yet the types of dynastic structures have remained unexplored. We argue that horizontal dynasties—multiple members from the same political family holding different political offices concurrently— affect policymaking by replacing potential political rivals, who may oppose an incumbent’s policy choices, with a member of the family. But in developing countries, the policy change that accrues from dynastic status may not lead to higher levels of economic development. We test this argument’s implications in the Philippines. Employing a close elections regression discontinuity design on a sample …

Just Doing Their Job: The Hidden Meteorologists Of Colonial Hong Kong C.1883–1914, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article investigates the contribution made by indigenous employees to the work of the Hong Kong Observatory from its inception and into the early twentieth century. As has so often been the case in Western histories of science, the significance of indigenous workers and of women in the Hong Kong Observatory has been obscured by the stories of the government officials and observatory director(s). Yet without the employees, the service could not have functioned or grown. While the glimpses of their work and lives are fleeting, often only revealed in minor archival references, this article seeks to interrogate these sources …

Framing Asian Atmospheres: Imperial Weather Science And The Problem Of The Local C.1880–1950, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It would be of the greatest importance to meteorology’, noted the editor of the Singapore Chronicle in 1829, ‘if a set of hourly meteorological observations could be instituted at Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Singapore, Malacca, and some station on the elevated plains of Hindostan’. 1 Of course, the author’s comments speak from a uniquely imperial perspective, whereby such observations would benefit the colonial service of – in this case – the British Empire, enabling enhanced knowledge of imperial atmospheres and the related economic and scientific benefits that this could bring. That meteorology was closely linked to empire and imperial control has …

Estimating The Associations Between Big Five Personality Traits, Testosterone, And Cortisol, Zachary Sundin, Lester Sim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Objective: Hormones are often conceptualized as biological markers of individual differences and have been associated with a variety of behavioral indicators and characteristics, such as mating behavior or acquiring and maintaining dominance. However, before researchers create strong theoretical models for how hormones modulate individual and social behavior, information on how hormones are associated with dominant models of personality is needed. Although there have been some studies attempting to quantify the associations between personality traits, testosterone, and cortisol, there are many inconsistencies across these studies. Methods: In this registered report, we examined associations between testosterone, cortisol, and Big Five personality traits. …

Cultural Adaptation Congruence In Immigrant Spouses Is Associated With Marital Quality, Lester Sim, Shanting Chen, Minyu Zhang, Robin S. Edelstein, Su Yeong Kim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Objective and background: Previous research suggests that cultural adaptation is associated with Mexican-origin couples' marital outcomes, including marital distress and rates of dissolution. However, research on the marital implications of different types of spousal differences in cultural adaptation often omits important dyadic dynamics (i.e., incongruence between couples and with their partners); this, coupled with existing methodological issues, might contribute to the pattern of mixed findings in the literature. Method: Using data from 273 Mexican-origin couples, we conducted response surface analyses to examine how spousal congruence in four adaptation domains (acculturation, enculturation, English proficiency, Spanish proficiency) is associated with wives' and …

The Moderating Role Of Social Network Size On Social Media Use And Self-Esteem: An Evolutionary Mismatch Perspective, Amy J. Lim, Clement Yong Hao Lau, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Existing meta-analyses have shown that the relationship between social media use and self-esteem is negative, but at very small effect sizes, suggesting the presence of moderators that change the relationship between social media use and self-esteem. Employing principles from social comparison and evolutionary mismatch theories, we propose that the social network sizes one has on social media play a key role in the relationship between social media use and self-esteem. In our study (N = 123), we showed that social media use was negatively related to self-esteem, but only when their social network size was within an evolutionarily familiar level. …

Covid-19 And The 2020/21 International Moots Season, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This is the seventh annual review of Singapore’s performance in international moot court competitions. While the previous season already felt the ravaging effects of the pandemic, it was more of the same this season, although this time round, all the major competitions were prepared to go online.

Singapore Will Soon Have Workplace Anti-Discrimination Laws: Here’S What You Need To Know, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Work is often a significant part of one’s life. Decisions by employers — including hiring decisions and choices on how to treat employees at work — can have life-changing effects on lives and livelihoods. Therefore, if there were reason to suspect that some employers make such decisions on the grounds of applicants’ or employees’ race, sex, or other personal characteristics without a valid reason, then we should be worried. If that were to become widespread, our society would suffer. Some people would face greater challenges than others at work, and therefore in life, merely because of who they are.

Why 9/11 Matters To Singapore, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan discussed why 9/11 matters to Singapore. He opined that when it comes to countering the terrorist threat, civil society has an important role to play in strengthening inter-faith engagement and understanding.

Holistic Prediction For Public Transport Crowd Flows: A Spatio Dynamic Graph Network Approach, Bingjie He, Shukai Li, Chen Zhang, Baihua Zheng, Fugee Tsung

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper targets at predicting public transport in-out crowd flows of different regions together with transit flows between them in a city. The main challenge is the complex dynamic spatial correlation of crowd flows of different regions and origin-destination (OD) paths. Different from road traffic flows whose spatial correlations mainly depend on geographical distance, public transport crowd flows significantly relate to the region’s functionality and connectivity in the public transport network. Furthermore, influenced by commuters’ time-varying travel patterns, the spatial correlations change over time. Though there exist many works focusing on either predicting in-out flows or OD transit flows of …

Routing Policy Choice Prediction In A Stochastic Network: Recursive Model And Solution Algorithm, Tien Mai, Xinlian Yu, Song Gao, Emma Frejinger

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We propose a Recursive Logit (STD-RL) model for routing policy choice in a stochastic time-dependent (STD) network, where a routing policy is a mapping from states to actions on which link to take next, and a state is defined by node, time and information. A routing policy encapsulates travelers’ adaptation to revealed traffic conditions when making route choices. The STD-RL model circumvents choice set generation, a procedure with known issues related to estimation and prediction. In a given state, travelers make their link choice maximizing the sum of the utility of the outgoing link and the expected maximum utility until …