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Articles 6811 - 6840 of 8025

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Target Saving In An Overlapping Generations Model, Brishti Guha, Ashok S. Guha Mar 2008

Target Saving In An Overlapping Generations Model, Brishti Guha, Ashok S. Guha

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine a model in which the utility function has been engineered so that it is optimal for consumers to aim for a fixed target level of retirement resources. In this case, consumption displays excess sensitivity to current income as well as perfect old age insurance. In an overlapping generations model, this leads naturally to multiple and unstable equilibria. Under static expectations, it also leads to a well-defined dynamics, including possible historical traps, implosions involving ever-diminishing capital stock and ever-increasing interest rates, and the feasibility of optimal one-time interventions.


On Changes In Rural China: The Rise Of Agrarian Capitalism And Dissolution Of The Peasantry In Contemporary China, Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Mar 2008

On Changes In Rural China: The Rise Of Agrarian Capitalism And Dissolution Of The Peasantry In Contemporary China, Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

For decades, Mr. Hong and his family have toiled the ground of Dounan Village, an area of Yunnan Province that became well-known throughout China for the quality of its fresh vegetables. While Hong and his neighbors have, since the early 1980s, concentrated on the small plot of land that the state allocated to them, in recent years, Dounan village has begun producing vegetables in large enough scale to market to distant, wealthy coastal areas, bringing new-found prosperity to the area. After gaining experience producing vegetables both on the plot that the government allocated to his family, and on his neighbors’ …


The Relative Importance Of Task, Citizenship And Counterproductive Performance To Job Performance Ratings: Do Rater Source And Team-Based Culture Matter?, Filip Lievens, James M. Conway, Wilfried De Corte Mar 2008

The Relative Importance Of Task, Citizenship And Counterproductive Performance To Job Performance Ratings: Do Rater Source And Team-Based Culture Matter?, Filip Lievens, James M. Conway, Wilfried De Corte

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study contributes to our understanding of which factors predict raters' policies for combining performance components into an overall job performance rating. We used a work-roles framework to examine the effects of rater source and team-based culture. The sample consisted of 612 individuals in three job categories (3 17 nurses, 168 personnel recruiters and 127 sales representatives). Respondents rated employee performance profiles that were described on task, citizenship and counterproductive performance. Raters' weights differed by (a) organizational culture (low- vs. high-team-based); (b) rating source (supervisor vs. peer) and (c) job. In a team-based culture, more weight was given to citizenship …


Investment Patterns In Singapore's Central Provident Fund System, Benedict S. K. Koh, Olivia S. Mitchell, Toto Tanuwidjaja, Joelle Fong Mar 2008

Investment Patterns In Singapore's Central Provident Fund System, Benedict S. K. Koh, Olivia S. Mitchell, Toto Tanuwidjaja, Joelle Fong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Rising elderly life expectancies imply the need to accumulate sufficient savings for retirement. This paper investigates the role of recent changes in the investment menu of the Singaporean Central Provident Fund (CPF) system. Our research explores the investment patterns of CPF participants and articulates their implications for policymakers. We find that most investors use their money for housing purchase and default the remainder to the CPF investment pool. The bulk of non-housing saving sits in bank accounts paying a low return. A fraction of workers does elect outside investment products, with high-income earners and males taking more risk than low-income …


Asymptotic Variance And Extensions Of A Denisty-Weighted-Response Semiparametric Estimator, Myoung-Jae Lee, Fali Huang, Young-Sook Kim Mar 2008

Asymptotic Variance And Extensions Of A Denisty-Weighted-Response Semiparametric Estimator, Myoung-Jae Lee, Fali Huang, Young-Sook Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

Building on some early works, Lewbel (2000) proposed estimators for binary and ordered discrete response models with endogenous regressors. These estimators have been extended for panel data and for truncated and censored models by later papers. The estimators are particularly innovative in that the latent linear regression functions are pulled out of the nonlinear limited dependent variable models, which are then treated as if they were the usual linear models. But understanding the estimators and their applications have been “hampered” by less-than-ideal expositions and assumptions. For this problem, this short note reviews the estimators and makes the following three points. …


Financial Frictions, Capital Reallocation, And Aggregate Fluctuations, Jürgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang Mar 2008

Financial Frictions, Capital Reallocation, And Aggregate Fluctuations, Jürgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We address an important business cycle fact, i.e., the amplified and hump-shaped responses of output to productivity shocks, in a dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions. Models with financial frictions in the current literature have either the amplification mechanism or the propagation mechanism. Our model shows that the dynamic interaction of borrowing constraints, endogenous capital accumulation, and capital reallocation among agents with different productivity constitutes a mechanism through which the effects of productivity shock on aggregate output are amplified and propagated, more in line with the empirical evidence than other related models in the literature.


Testing Structural Change In Time-Series Nonparametric Regression Models, Liangjun Su, Zhijie Xiao Mar 2008

Testing Structural Change In Time-Series Nonparametric Regression Models, Liangjun Su, Zhijie Xiao

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a CUSUM type of test for structural change in dynamic nonparametric regression models. It is based upon the cumulative sums of weighted residuals from a single nonparametric regression and complements the conventional parameter instability tests in parametric models. We derive the limiting distributions of the test under both the null hypothesis and sequences of local alternatives. A boot-strap procedure is also proposed and its validity is justified. Finally, simulation experiments are conducted to investigate the finite sample properties of our test.


Advertising And Collusion In Retail Markets, Kyle Bagwell, Gea Myoung Lee Mar 2008

Advertising And Collusion In Retail Markets, Kyle Bagwell, Gea Myoung Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider non-price advertising by retail firms that are privately informed as to their respective production costs. We first analyze a static model. We construct an advertising equilibrium, in which informed consumers use an advertising search rule whereby they buy from the highest-advertising firm. Consumers are rational in using the advertising search rule, since the lowest-cost firm advertises the most and also selects the lowest price. Even though the advertising equilibrium facilitates productive efficiency, we establish conditions under which firms enjoy higher expected profit when advertising is banned. Consumer welfare falls in this case, however. We next analyze a dynamic …


Pakistan Lawyers' Movement: A Losing Cause?, Shubhankar Dam Feb 2008

Pakistan Lawyers' Movement: A Losing Cause?, Shubhankar Dam

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

On 13 January, the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) voted to end the continuous boycott of judges who swore oath's under the country's Provisional Constitution Order and to instead substitute "a complete boycott of the superior judiciary every Thursday and a one-hour token strike on a daily basis." Predictably, the decision created a furor: for many, it was a sell-out. Both the Lawyers National Action Committee (LNAC) and the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) quickly denounced the decision as "contradictory" and "against the spirit of the lawyers' sacrifices." The provincial bar councils, the high court bar associations and the district bar …


Perceptions Becoming Reality: Bridging The Market Knowledge Gap, Siu Loon Hoe Feb 2008

Perceptions Becoming Reality: Bridging The Market Knowledge Gap, Siu Loon Hoe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

PurposeOrganizations constantly strive to learn about new market trends and ideas to stay ahead of the game. However, with an increased demand of market knowledge, how does the organization motivate employees to constantly acquire and disseminate market knowledge? The purpose of this paper is to highlight the perceived importance of market knowledge in promoting continuous employee acquisition and dissemination of customer and competitor knowledge.Design/methodology/approachThe perceived importance of market knowledge concept is highlighted and discussed.FindingsThe paper offers a view on how management could address the increased demand for market knowledge and how the development and learning team could provide further support …


Mapping The Discipline Of The Olympic Games An Author-Cocitation Analysis, Peter Warning, Rosie Ching, Kristine Toohey Feb 2008

Mapping The Discipline Of The Olympic Games An Author-Cocitation Analysis, Peter Warning, Rosie Ching, Kristine Toohey

Research Collection School Of Economics

The authors conducted an author cocitation analysis on prominent authors writing about the Olympics during the 1990s. Author cocitation is an established bibliometric technique that can be used to measure the relative similarities of topics written about by the cited authors. This enables a visual representation of the “intellectual space” of the discipline, in this case the Olympics, to be created for the period under review. So core and peripheral research areas are identified, along with their major contributors. The representation appears as a two-dimensional cluster-enhanced map. Subject expertise was then applied to the results to place labels on the …


Optimal Collusion With Internal Contracting, Gea Myoung Lee Feb 2008

Optimal Collusion With Internal Contracting, Gea Myoung Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we develop a model of collusion in which two firms play an infinitelyrepeated Bertrand game when each firm has a privately-informed agent. The colluding firms, fixing prices, allocate market shares based on the agent’s information as to cost types. We emphasize that the presence of privately-informed agents may provide firms with a strategic opportunity to exploit an interaction between internal contracting and market-sharing arrangement: the contracts with agents may be used to induce firms’ truthful communication in their collusion, and collusive market-share allocation may act to reduce the agents’ information rents.


Predicting The Psychological Health Of Older Adults: Interaction Of Age-Based Rejection Sensitivity And Discriminative Facility, Debbie Sau-King Chow, Evelyn Wing-Mun Au, Chi-Yue Chiu Feb 2008

Predicting The Psychological Health Of Older Adults: Interaction Of Age-Based Rejection Sensitivity And Discriminative Facility, Debbie Sau-King Chow, Evelyn Wing-Mun Au, Chi-Yue Chiu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We hypothesize that older adults who anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to social rejection because of their old age (i.e., have high age-based rejection sensitivity) are vulnerable to depression and poor social functioning. We further hypothesize that the association between age-based rejection sensitivity and poor psychological health would be attenuated among older adults who possess adequate cognitive coping ability--they can discern and respond discriminatively to subtle variations in situational demands (i.e., have high discriminative facility). Based on the results of a focus group study, we constructed an age-based rejection sensitivity measure, which predicts greater depression, poorer social functioning, …


Philanthropy: Giving Meaninfully, Gerard Ee Jan 2008

Philanthropy: Giving Meaninfully, Gerard Ee

Social Space

Helming one of Singapore’s more prominent non-profit organisations, the National Kidney Foundation, at a time when public confidence has been severely shaken, is a feat that requires more than just heartwarming feelings of goodwill. As the giving climate in Singapore gives way to donor fatigue and a degree of scepticism, Gerard Ee tells Social Space the kind of philanthropic acts that he thinks will bring local charity to the next level.


The Dilemmas Of Giving: The Heart Of Paradox, Charles Hampden-Turner, Teng Kee Tan Jan 2008

The Dilemmas Of Giving: The Heart Of Paradox, Charles Hampden-Turner, Teng Kee Tan

Social Space

In their attempts to ‘do-good’ and alleviate the pains of the less fortunate, the impoverished and the disadvantaged, foundations and charitable bodies face common dilemmas. Professor Charles Hampden-Turner and Professor Tan Teng Kee explore.


When The Client Comes First, Bee Lian Ang Jan 2008

When The Client Comes First, Bee Lian Ang

Social Space

When donors, government and other funders provide support, they want assurances that the daily living conditions and lives of the beneficiaries are actually improved. The one question that is often asked is: What is the outcome of the help or service rendered? The science of determining outcomes, or outcome management, has its roots in social science evaluation research. Besides being used as a tool to evaluate the achievement of client outcomes, it is also a valuable management tool.


Growing Green Space, Geh Min Jan 2008

Growing Green Space, Geh Min

Social Space

Environmental groups: Saviours of the world or nutty nuisances? Dr Geh Min traces the evolution of the green movement in Singapore in the context of changing political, social and environmental values.


Singapore Management University Report To Stakeholders 2008 - 2009, Singapore Management University Jan 2008

Singapore Management University Report To Stakeholders 2008 - 2009, Singapore Management University

Report to Stakeholders

SMU was envisioned as a bold experiment to redefine tertiary education in Singapore. Taking up the gauntlet to bring university education to a new threshold, it challenges itself to become a leading research university known for its innovative pedagogy that produces a different kind of graduate: all-rounded, talented individuals who can think creatively and divergently, filled with business world savvy and strong interpersonal skills yet rooted in social consciousness. The untested ideas of yesterday have become pages after pages of success stories which we continue to celebrate every Commencement in August. Against the backdrop of not only the worst global …


Social Learning Spaces In The Li Ka Shing Library, Pin Pin Yeo Jan 2008

Social Learning Spaces In The Li Ka Shing Library, Pin Pin Yeo

Research Collection Library

This paper describes the efforts made by the Li Ka Shing Library, Singapore Management University, in the design, creation and continual improvements of its spaces to meet the needs of its community. The Collaborative Study Area was presented as an example of introducing social learning spaces into the Library. We conducted a survey to measure the satisfaction with our spaces and the activities carried out in the Library. In striving to become a research, social and event space for its community, the Library is also used as an event and training space. This article was presented as a paper at …


Sleepless In Singapore, Jack Sim Jan 2008

Sleepless In Singapore, Jack Sim

Social Space

Is it time for Singapore to adopt a new social and business model? Jack Sim, the inimitable founder of World Toilet Organization, unveils his ‘not-so-wild-and-far-fetched’ vision of a timeless zone in Singapore.


Smu Launches Mba Programme, Singapore Management University Jan 2008

Smu Launches Mba Programme, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases

No abstract provided.


Are De Jure Labor Laws Absolute? Formal Manufacturing In India, Gurmeet Singh Ghumman Jan 2008

Are De Jure Labor Laws Absolute? Formal Manufacturing In India, Gurmeet Singh Ghumman

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

We investigate the view that de facto labor market conditions are important in evaluating the effects of labor institutions in developing countries where enactment does not necessarily imply enforcement. Using India as a case study we empirically investigate the effects of labor markets on the organized manufacturing sector from 1970 to 1997. Recognizing that the state can intervene in the outcome of labor disputes we construct a measure to proxy the degree of the state legislature's prejudice towards pro-worker causes. We argue that leftist and communist political parties can interfere in the resolution of disputes in favor of workers through …


Birth Spacing Effect On Children's Attainments: Indentification Using Instrument Variables, Jing Xie Jan 2008

Birth Spacing Effect On Children's Attainments: Indentification Using Instrument Variables, Jing Xie

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In this study, I address the relationship between an often overlooked dimension of family structure--the spacing between children's births--and the degree of children's attainments such as Mathematics, Reading Cognition and Reading Comprehension. Comparing to the results of OLS estimation, 2SLS Estimation using Twin and Catholic as Instrument Variables shows less significant effects on children's attainments. Hausman Test shows that OLS estimators are not consistent with 2SLS estimators, which means there is endogenous problem in OLS estimation. As the result in 2SLS shows the different spacing effects in different spacing groups, it is possible to use nonlinear estimation (quadratic form of …


Singapore: The New Philanthropic Hub, Terry Alan Farris Jan 2008

Singapore: The New Philanthropic Hub, Terry Alan Farris

Social Space

With the recent implementation of greater accountability and fewer restrictions in the charity sector, there is now greater scope for Singapore to establish itself as an important regional philanthropic hub. Terry Alan Farris surveys the new landscape.


Overseas Giving: Should Charity Begin At Home?, Chi Chiu Tan Jan 2008

Overseas Giving: Should Charity Begin At Home?, Chi Chiu Tan

Social Space

In extending a hand overseas with developmental and humanitarian aid, is Singapore doing what is best for itself and the recipient communities? And what role does its government have to play in this arena? Dr Tan Chi Chiu weighs in.


Tracing Singapore's Social Sector, Sharifah Maisharah Jan 2008

Tracing Singapore's Social Sector, Sharifah Maisharah

Social Space

How has the face of Singapore’s social sector changed through the shifting landscape of state provision? Sharifah Maisharah looks at the evolution of the social sector pastiche starting from colonial rule in 1819.


Resuscitating A Healthcare Charity, R Akhileswaran, Seet Ai Mee Jan 2008

Resuscitating A Healthcare Charity, R Akhileswaran, Seet Ai Mee

Social Space

When government funding policies change, voluntary welfare organisations that depend largely on subsidies to run their services can find their survival at stake. Dr R Akhileswaran and Dr Seet Ai Mee present the case study of HCA Hospice Care.


Social Enterprises: Beyond The Hype, Sean Quek Jan 2008

Social Enterprises: Beyond The Hype, Sean Quek

Social Space

With their promises of sustainability, social integration and lower dependence on welfare, social enterprises are the flavour of the month. But, as Sean Quek points out, the challenges involved in designing and executing a sustainable social enterprise are often underestimated.


When Is A Voluntary Code Not Voluntary?, Yuen Teen Mak Jan 2008

When Is A Voluntary Code Not Voluntary?, Yuen Teen Mak

Social Space

Many countries have adopted the ‘comply or explain’ approach to raise standards of corporate governance in listed companies. The approach has now found its way into the charity sector in Singapore. Mak Yuen Teen highlights some misconceptions about the voluntary nature of the approach and provides suggestions for its effective implementation.


Listening To The Stars: The Constellation Model Of Collaborative Social Change, Tonya Surman, Mark Surman Jan 2008

Listening To The Stars: The Constellation Model Of Collaborative Social Change, Tonya Surman, Mark Surman

Social Space

There has been much talk about social sector partnerships and networks. Tonya Surman and Mark Surman explain how the ‘constellation model’, developed for the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and the Environment, offers an innovative approach to organising such collaborative efforts.