Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Oral History Interview With Tan Teck Meng: Conceptualising Smu, Teck Meng Tan

Oral History Collection

The interview covered: first involvement with SMU, concept for SMU, parent engagement, third university, design of campus, city campus, private university, research, collaboration with Wharton, challenges.

Biography:

Professor of Accounting, 2000–2011

Deputy President, SMU, 1999–2001

Head of start-up team for SMU

Professor Tan Teck Meng was a key player in the conceptualising and formation of Singapore’s third university. In 1997, he was appointed chairman of a task force to look into the feasibility of setting up SMU. Subsequently he became SMU’s first employee and was appointed SMU’s founding deputy president (1999—2001).

After his term in administration, Professor Tan …

A Hidden Markov Model For Earthquake Declustering, Zhengxiao Wu

Research Collection School of Economics

The hidden Markov model (HMM) and related algorithms provide a powerful framework for statistical inference on partially observed stochastic processes. HMMs have been successfully implemented in many disciplines, though not as widely applied as they should be in earthquake modeling. In this article, a simple HMM earthquake occurrence model is proposed. Its performance in declustering is compared with the epidemic-type aftershock sequence model, using a data set of the central and western regions of Japan. The earthquake clusters and the single earthquakes separated using our model show some interesting geophysical differences. In particular, the log-linear Gutenberg-Richter frequency-magnitude law (G-R law) …

Differentiating Knowledge Processes In Organisational Learning: A Case Of “Two Solitudes”, Siu Loon Hoe, Steven Mcshane

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The fields of organizational behavior (OB)/strategy and marketing have taken different paths over the past two decades to understanding organizational learning. OB/strategy has been pre-occupied with theory development and case study illustrations, whereas marketing has taken a highly quantitative path. Although relying on essentially the same foundation theory, the two disciplines have had minimal crossfertilization. Furthermore, both fields tend to blur or usually ignore the distinction between structural and informal knowledge processes. The purpose of the paper is to highlight the distinction between informal and structural knowledge acquisition and dissemination processes and propose new definitions to differentiate them. Future research …

Contingency Theory Of Strategic Conflict Management: Unearthing Factors That Influence Ethical Elocution In Crisis Communication, Augustine Pang, Yan Jin, Glen T. Cameron

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Despite the advances made offering a viable perspective in strategic conflict management, the contingency theory has not addressed a prevailing question: How can the theory inform organizations to communicate ethically with its publics, especially during crisis? The only guidance the theory offers is through its proscriptive variables, which prohibit either communication or more accommodative communication. However, given the exigency and dynamism of many situations along the life cycle of an issue, non-communicating may not be an alternative offered to organizations. This study aims to unearth a new set of factors called ethical variables that influence the organization’s stance by reviewing …

Family Control And Ownership Monitoring In Family-Controlled Firms In Japan, Toru Yoshikawa, Abdul A. Rasheed

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper focuses on a type of firms that have been traditionally neglected in both family business and governance research, namely, family-controlled, publicly-listed firms. Although principal-agent conflicts may be less prevalent in such firms, family control can potentially give rise to principal-principal conflicts, leading to expropriation of the wealth of minority owners by family owners. Superior firm performance and the willingness to distribute the profits through dividend payments would suggest the absence of such expropriation. Based on a sample of 210 OTC firms in Japan, we examined the relationships between family control and dividend payouts and profitability. Our results indicate …

China On The World Stage: A Trade Law Perspective, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Before China's accession to the WTO, many observers predicted that the inclusion of the emerging trade power will change the pre-existing power structure in the multilateral trading system. Some even went as far as suggesting that China will become the leader of developing countries in the crusade against developed countries, which have dominated the organization during most of the history of the GATT/WTO. Now that China has been in the WTO for almost nine years, has it really emerged as the leader of developing countries as predicted? In this short essay, I will argue that while China has seen itself …

International Capital Flows And World Output Gains, Jurgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a two-country overlapping-generations model with domestic financial frictions and show that cross-country differences in financial development explain three recent patterns of international capital flows. In our model, domestic financial frictions distort the interest rates and production efficiency in the less financially developed country. Capital flows not only lead to cross-country resource reallocation, but also trigger within-country resource reallocation among firms. From the efficiency perspective, full capital mobility raises the world output higher than under international financial autarky. If the mobility of either financial capital or foreign direct investment is restricted, the world output may be lower.

Collaboration Between The Public And Private Sectors For Urban Development, Sock-Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

In market economies, the government acts in many ways. In traditional public finance literature, the government taxes and provides public and merit goods. In addition, it regulates the behaviour of firms and individuals. In the context of market failures such as natural monopoly, high risk situations or long life projects, the government may choose to act as producer. In the past two decades, however, public sector collaboration with the private sector to achieve socio-economic objectives has become widely utilised as a method for the provision of the myriad of services that has come to be expected of governments.

Affordable Homeownership Policy: Implications For Housing Markets, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Affordable homeownership is a policy that is often accorded a great deal of policy attention by governments of many countries. This paper aims to examine the market implications of setting a housing price to income ratio target for a market segment by the government. The policy requires active intervention by the government with regard to the targeted sector. The paper uses a simple model of the housing market with a homeownership affordability target to derive the market implications of such targets. In the presence of uncertainty and resource constraints, the objective of homeownership affordability is achieved for the targeted group …

Monetary Policy Cooperation To Support Asian Economic Integration, Hwee Kwan Chow, Peter Nicholas Kriz, Roberto S. Mariano, Augustine H. H. Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper considers the form of monetary policy coordination and regional exchange rate arrangement that would best support economic and financial integration in East Asia. In view of the region's economic diversity, we propose a graduated program of informal policy cooperation from weak forms of cooperation to more intensive modes of cooperation such as the adoption of common monetary policy objectives. An array of informal monetary arrangements rooted to the degree of institutional development can improve the effectiveness of both sovereign and regional institutions, and promote integration in East Asia. Drawing upon the European experience with the Exchange Rate Mechanism …

The Labor Market Of Italian Politicians, Antonio Merlo, Vincenzo Galasso, Massimiliano Landi, Andrea Mattozzi

Research Collection School Of Economics

We analyze the career profiles of Italian legislators in the post-war period. Using a unique, newly collected dataset that contains detailed information on all the politicians who have been elected to the Italian Parliament between 1948 and 2008, we address a number of important issues that pertain to their career paths prior to election to Parliament, their parliamentary careers, and their post-Parliament employment. Our data span two institutional regimes: Italy's First Republic (1948-1994) and the Second Republic (1994-present), characterized by different electoral rules and party structures. We first present a brief overview of the Italian political system. We then provide …

Simulation-Based Estimation Methods For Financial Time Series Models, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper overviews some recent advances on simulation-based methods of estimating time series models and asset pricing models that are widely used in finance. The simulation based methods have proven to be particularly useful when the likelihood function and moments do not have tractable forms and hence the maximum likelihood method (MLE) and the generalized method of moments (GMM) are difficult to use. They can also be useful for improving the finite sample performance of the traditional methods when financial time series are highly persistent and when the quantity of interest is a highly nonlinear function of system parameters. The …

The Costs And Benefits Of The Dark Triad: Implications For Mate Poaching And Mate Retention Tactics, Peter K. Jonason, Norman P. Li, David M. Buss

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Dark Triad – narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy – have traditionally been considered to be undesirable traits. However, emerging work suggest that not only may there be a positive side to possessing these traits but they may also serve important adaptive functions, even if the strategies associated with them are viewed as socially undesirable. In an online survey (N = 336), we investigated the costs and benefits of the Dark Triad within the domain of mating psychology. The social style and lower order personality traits of the Dark Triad traits facilitated increased mateships in the form of poaching mates from …

The Attractive Female Body Weight And Female Body Dissatisfaction In 26 Countries Across 10 World Regions: Results Of The International Body Project I, Viren Swami, David A. Frederick, Toivo Aavik, Lidia Alcalay, Juri Allik, Donna Anderson, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study reports results from the first International Body Project (IBP-I), which surveyed 7,434 individuals in 10 major world regions about body weight ideals and body dissatisfaction. Participants completed the female Contour Drawing Figure Rating Scale (CDFRS) and self-reported their exposure to Western and local media. Results indicated there were significant cross-regional differences in the ideal female figure and body dissatisfaction, but effect sizes were small across high-socioeconomic-status (SES) sites. Within cultures, heavier bodies were preferred in low-SES sites compared to high-SES sites in Malaysia and South Africa (ds = 1.94-2.49) but not in Austria. Participant age, body mass index …

Incumbent And Challenger Campaign Spending Effects In Proportional Electoral Systems The Irish Elections Of 2002, Kenneth Benoit, Michael Marsh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Positive effects of campaign spending on electoral outcomes have been found in several comparative, multiparty contexts, but very few of these systems use proportional representation. The few studies examining spending effects in multiparty elections have found that incumbent spending is no less effective than challenger spending, contrary to the vast bulk of empirical literature drawn from single-member district contexts. This study reexamines incumbent-challenger differences in spending effects under the single transferable vote. Examining the Irish general elections of 2002, the authors find a positive and statistically significant relationship between spending and votes. Candidates that spend more win more votes, and …

Multicultural Experience, Idea Receptiveness, And Creativity, Angela K. Y. Leung, Chi-Yue Chiu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Inspired by recent advances in creative cognition research, the authors examined in the current research some creative benefits of multicultural experiences. Study 1 showed that European American undergraduates had better creative performance immediately after being exposed to American and Chinese cultures or to a hybrid culture formed by fusing American and Chinese cultures; this effect was also observed 5 to 7 days after the initial exposure. Studies 2 and 3 showed that exposure to multicultural experiences is positively related to the likelihood of engaging in some creativity-supporting processes—generation of unconventional ideas (Study 2) and receptiveness to ideas originated from foreign …

Twitterrank: Finding Topic-Sensitive Influential Twitterers, Jianshu Weng, Ee Peng Lim, Jing Jiang, Qi He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper focuses on the problem of identifying influential users of micro-blogging services. Twitter, one of the most notable micro-blogging services, employs a social-networking model called "following", in which each user can choose who she wants to "follow" to receive tweets from without requiring the latter to give permission first. In a dataset prepared for this study, it is observed that (1) 72.4% of the users in Twitter follow more than 80% of their followers, and (2) 80.5% of the users have 80% of users they are following follow them back. Our study reveals that the presence of "reciprocity" can …

The Outsourcing Of Creative Work And The Limits Of Capability: The Case Of The Philippines Animation Industry, Feichin Ted Tschang, Andrea Goldstein

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The animation industry, like many information-technology-enabled services sectors, has been of interest to many developing countries interested in developing services outsourcing industries. We analyze the case of the Philippines' animation industry. This paper investigates the outsourcing process in animation and the nature of capabilities within that, with the goal of contributing to a more general understanding of services outsourcing. We examine the industry's history, interview data with industry participants, and secondary data. We find that strong labor force skills have been central to capabilities rather than organizational abilities. Outsourcing of production takes place only so far as the work is …

Innovation And Patentability Requirement In A Globalized World, Davin Chor, Edwin L. C. Lai

Research Collection School Of Economics

One important element of a patent regime is the non-obviousness requirement, which captures the minimum improvement to the best patented technology a new invention is required to make in order for it to be patentable. We call it the required inventive step. We explore the implications of a patenting regime based on required inventive step, by incorporating such intellectual property protection considerations in the quality-improvement model of technology, trade and growth developed by Eaton and Kortum (European Economic Review 2001). In considering whether to increase the inventive step, policy-makers trade off the benefits of a higher rate of innovation against …

Book Review Of Competition Law And Policy In Singapore, By Cavinder Bull, Lim Chong Kin, Academy Publishing, Singapore, 2009, Sock-Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

Does Television Viewing Affect Children's Behaviour?, Fali Huang, Myoung-Jae Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using three-period panel data drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we investigate whether television (TV) viewing at ages 6–7 and 8–9 years affects children's social and behavioural development at ages 8–9 years. Dynamic panel data models are estimated to handle the unobserved child-specific factor, endogeneity of TV viewing, and the dynamic nature of the causal relation. Special emphasis is placed on this last aspect, focusing on how early TV viewing affects interim child behavioural problems and in turn affects future TV viewing. Overall, we find that TV viewing during ages 6–7 and 8–9 years increases child behavioural …

The Optimal Degree Of Reciprocity In Tariff Reduction, Pao Li Chang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This article clari.es the roles played by trade policy, in contrast with iceberg transport cost, in the popular setting of Melitz (2003), and characterizes the optimal reciprocal trade policy in such a setting. I show that import tariffs and iceberg transport cost are not equivalent in the strength of their trade-restricting e¤ects and their welfare implications. With all the con.icting effectsof import tari¤s on welfare considered, the optimal degree of reciprocity in multilateral tari¤ reduction turns out to be free trade.

Can Market Failure Cause Political Failure, Madhav S. Aney, Maitreesh Ghatak, Massimo Morelli

Research Collection School Of Economics

How can market failure interact with choice of institutional reform made by an electorate? We study this question in the framework of occupational choice where agents are endowed heterogeneously with wealth and talent. In our model, market failure due to unobservability of talent endogenously creates a class structure that affects vote on institutional reform. We find that the preferences of these classes may be highly nonmonotonic in wealth and are often aligned in ways that creates a tension between institutional reforms that are growth maximising and those that are politically feasible. This is in contrast to the world without market …

Semiparametric Estimator Of Time Series Conditional Variance, Santosh Mishra, Liangjun Su, Aman Ullah

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a new combined semiparametric estimator, which incorporates the parametric and nonparametric estimators of the conditional variance in a multiplicative way. We derive the asymptotic bias, variance, and normality of the combined estimator under general conditions. We show that under correct parametric specification, our estimator can do as well as the parametric estimator in terms of convergence rates; whereas under parametric misspecification our estimator can still be consistent. It also improves over the nonparametric estimator of Ziegelmann (2002) in terms of bias reduction. The superiority of our estimator is verfied by Monte Carlo simulations and empirical data analysis.

Conscientiousness And Forgivingness: A Meta-Analysis, Daniel Balliet

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Research examining the relationship between the Big Five traits and forgivingness has focused primarily on the traits agreeableness and neuroticism. To date, there are mixed findings on the relationship between conscientiousness and forgivingness. This paper presents research and theory that predicts a positive relationship between conscientiousness and forgivingness, and in order to examine this hypothesis, conducts a quantitative review of 15 studies (n = 2285) reporting this relationship. This analysis results in a small positive effect size (r = .17). Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Risk, Learning, And The Technology Content Of Fdi: A Dynamic Model, Pao Li Chang, Chia-Hui Lu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper builds a dynamic model of catching up to examine the policy stance of developing countries in attracting inward FDI. We show that the observably evident risk of FDI failure sets a minimum threshold on the South's technology capacity and furthermore creates a limit on the technology content of inward FDI. We provide economic foundations for the determinants of the FDI risk and formalize how the risk factor evolves over time as the South moves up its technology ladder. The model offers an insightful and tractable framework for empirical studies with a dynamic content, and reconciles many relevant empirical …

Congkak, A Game That Connects Us With The World, Margaret Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Imagining “Indonesia”: Ethnic Chinese Film Producers In Pre-Independence Cinema, Charlotte Setijadi, Thomas Barker

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this paper, we aim to re-examine the roles of ethnic Chinese filmmakers in Indonesian cinematic history as a preliminary study in the reconsideration of the early years of the film industry. Here, we regard the simplification of history in the film industry as part of a broader attempt by nationalist and New Order ideologues to “appropriate” the origins of cinema and “ ” in Indonesia. On the same note, we argue that the narrative tradition that privileges “indigenous” filmmakers as the originators of asli (authentic ortrue) Indonesian culture on screen reflects the dominant yet narrow definition of nationalism as …

Of Modest Giving, Community Values And Social Change: An Interview With Hsieh Fu Hua, Lien Centre For Social Innovation

Social Space

Recognising the need for building capability and filling in critical gaps in management training, expertise and research in Singapore’s social scene, businessman and contemporary art enthusiast Hsieh Fu Hua has established Binjai Tree to make his contribution in a more structured fashion. Yet he reminisces about the cultural tradition of communities providing solidarity and support to its members and tells Social Space why a more modest and quiet approach to the simple act of giving is a way to encourage more Singaporeans to cultivate a spirit of altruism.

Shilpa Sayura Foundation - The Shilpa Sayura E-School, Lien Centre For Social Innovation

Social Space

In a country like Sri Lanka ravaged by decades of civil war, access to educational resources for an ethnically diverse population is scant at best, leading to disproportionate failure rates among high school students. The Shilpa Sayura team proposes to transform 600 existing tele-centres that facilitate e-learning and self-learning of the national curriculum to a new domain of digital knowledge that develops rural education in Sri Lanka.