Singapore Economy Research Articles

Forum Theater in Singapore: Resistance, Containment, and Commodification in an Advanced Industrial Society

Forum theater is an interactive practice whose “third-world” revolutionary origins have been transposed into techniques for dealing with “oppressions” within bourgeois societies. By constructing an analytical framework that articulates a Marcusean “one-dimensional society” approach and a Gramscian “constant struggle for hegemony” approach, this article discusses forum theater's relative autonomy from and susceptibility to the authoritarian and culture-industry logics of advanced industrial society. In 1993, forum theater was successfully introduced to Singapore by local professional theater company The Necessary Stage (TNS) and then quickly proscribed by the state for its Marxist associations and unscripted nature. At the turn of the millennium, however, the state has come to realize more clearly the economic value of the arts, including its “subversive” qualities that may generate excitement and nurture a culture of innovation necessary for the creative economy of renaissance Singapore, a global city for the arts. In the transition to this new climate, TNS and another professional theater company, Drama Box, have attempted to negotiate new forum spaces for critical thinking against the grain of hegemony, without being co-opted by authoritarian capitalism. Both have attempted this in often-contrasting ways: for instance, TNS addresses a mostly English-speaking, theater-attending, middle-class audience, while Drama Box inserts Chinese-language forum theater into the organic everyday-life spaces of working-class communities. While TNS stages most of its forum theater work within the conventional walls of theater space, Drama Box embraces an aesthetic and site specificity that are closer to the form's popular roots. The Marcusean/Gramscian framework presented in this article offers a dynamic approach for critically analyzing the birth, death, and rebirth of forum theater in Singapore, and the contrasting and yet complementary ways in which TNS and Drama Box have negotiated with new opportunities and limitations in their socially conscious artistic practice. That forum theater has “reemerged” — a decade after its proscription by the state — as a “legitimate” part of the global city's state-led and economically driven artistic and cultural “renaissance” calls into question the extent of its radicalism today, but it also offers suggestions for new and more sophisticated modes of resistance and collaboration.

Systemic Risk in Europe

Global Credit ReviewVol. 03, No. 01, pp. 1-6 (2013) No AccessSystemic Risk in EuropeEric Jondeau and Michael RockingerEric JondeauInstitute of Banking and Finance, University of Lausanne and Swiss Finance Institute, Switzerland and Michael RockingerInstitute of Banking and Finance, University of Lausanne and Swiss Finance Institute, SwitzerlandCorresponding author.https://doi.org/10.1142/S2010493613500013Cited by:1 PreviousNext AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsRecommend to Library ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Keywords:Systemic riskmarginal expected shortfallmultifactor modelvolatilitycorrelation References Acharya, V. V., L. H. Pedersen, T. Philippon and M. P. Richardson (2010), Measuring Systemic Risk, accessed May 2010, from SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1573171 . Google Scholar Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (2011), Global Systemically Important Banks: Assessment Methodology and the Additional Loss Absorbency Requirement, accessed November 2011, from: http://www.bis.org/publ/bcbs207.htm . Google Scholar Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (2012), A Framework for Dealing with Domestic Systemically Important Banks, accessed October 2012, from: http://www.bis.org/publ/bcbs224.htm . Google Scholar Brownlees, C. T. and R. F. Engle (2012), Volatility, Correlation and Tails for Systemic Risk Measurement, accessed October 2012, from SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1611229 . Google Scholar Engle, R. F., E. Jondeau and M. Rockinger (2012), Dynamic Conditional Beta and Systemic Risk in Europe, accessed December 2012, from SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2192536 . Google Scholar FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited By 1SPILLOVER EFFECTS OF ASIAN BANKING SECTOR ON SYSTEMIC RISK IN THE INSURANCE SECTOR: BASED ON A DOUBLE-CoVaR MODELLIZHEN WANG, YILIN HAO, ZHONGBO JING, and JIANDI ZHANG27 December 2022 | The Singapore Economic Review, Vol. 0, No. 0 Recommended Vol. 03, No. 01 Metrics History KeywordsSystemic riskmarginal expected shortfallmultifactor modelvolatilitycorrelationPDF download

Higher education and entrepreneurial citizenship in Singapore

Focusing on Singapore's 'Global Schoolhouse' project, this article discusses how efforts to transform Singapore into a 'world class' knowledge economy entail changes to the status of citizenship in Singapore. The project of wooing top foreign universities to Singapore is permeated with an entrepreneurial ideal of Singapore as the 'Boston of the East'. Since Singaporeans tend to be viewed by the Singapore government as particularly risk averse compared to Westerners and other Asians, the government has increasingly relied on 'foreign talent' to provide entrepreneurial dynamism to Singapore. The expansion of high-quality university education in Singapore serves as a vehicle of this 'foreign talent' policy as much as it accommodates the needs of local students for higher education. The ensuing questions about citizenship in Singapore's knowledge economy are finally discussed in terms of a differentiated 'entrepreneurial citizenship'.

BOOK REVIEW: "Review of 23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism" by Ha-Joon Chang

The Singapore Economic ReviewVol. 57, No. 04, 1280013 (2012) Book ReviewsNo AccessBOOK REVIEW: "Review of 23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism" by Ha-Joon ChangKumi MoriokaKumi MoriokaDuke University, NC, USAhttps://doi.org/10.1142/S0217590812800136Cited by:0 PreviousNext AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsRecommend to Library ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Bloomsbury Press, New York, 2012, pp. 304. References X. Fan and M. P. Dickie, ASEAN economic Bulletin 17(3), 312 (2000). Crossref, Google Scholar Feldstein, M and D Altman (1998). Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts. Working Paper No. 6860, National Bureau of Economic Research . Google Scholar A. Greenspan , The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World ( Penguin Press , New York , 2007 ) . Google Scholar Grubel, H (2002). What's wrong with equalization: Social insurance and moral hazard Conference Paper No. 03. Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, Frontier Centre for Public Policy & Montreal Economic Institute . Google Scholar Ikeda, D (2009). Toward humanitarian competition: A new current in history. January 26. Available at: http://www.sgi-usa.org/newsandevents/docs/peace2009.pdf. Accessed 28 March 2012 . Google Scholar A. D. Irwin , Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s ( The MIT Press , Cambridge , 2011 ) . Crossref, Google Scholar Tower, E, WH Kaempfer and DT Willett (2002). Trade protectionism. Working Paper No. 02-20. Duke University, Department of Economics . Google Scholar Tower, E and A Waite (2011). Does the data support the neo-mercantilist preoccupation with protecting manufacturing? Working Paper No. 106. Asia-Pacific Research and Training Network on Trade . Google Scholar Wölfl, A (2003). Productivity growth in service industries: An assessment of recent patterns and the role of measurement. OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Paper No. 2003/7. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development . Google Scholar FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Recommended Vol. 57, No. 04 Metrics History Published: 21 December 2012 PDF download

The ‘Beijing consensus’ and the ‘Singapore model’: unmasking the myth of an alternative authoritarian state-capitalist model

What is today touted as the ‘Beijing consensus’ or the ‘China model’ is nothing more than a resized version of the ‘Singapore model’ or an attempt to revive the developmental state. In particular, the ‘Beijing consensus’ assumes a greater role for the state in the economy under authoritarian rule. Since Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour in 1992, Chinese academics, politicians, and administrators have flocked to the soft-authoritarian city-state and the result has not only been a sprawling discourse but also a number of political reforms aimed at increasing the effectiveness of the state and strengthening one-party rule. An analysis of this discourse shows that while providing Chinese policy-makers with many important ideas, these studies reveal serious weaknesses in China's attempt to follow the ‘Singapore model’. Instead of having found an alternative authoritarian state-capitalist model, the ‘Beijing consensus’ is only a transitory phase.

Economic Growth and Foreign Workers in ASEAN and Singapore

This paper studies the trends of foreign immigrants in Asia and their effect on the growth of the Singapore economy. The paper also discusses the key labor market trends and the rationale for foreign workers in a small open economy like Singapore. Further, the paper highlights key simulations of the impact of foreign immigrants on output growth and wage gap for the Singapore economy by using Thangavelu's (2011) dynamic general equilibrium model. The study accounts for the flow of skilled and unskilled foreign workers on (a) steady-state growth; (b) the wage gap between the skilled and unskilled workers; and (c) innovation capabilities of the domestic economy. Further, the model also accounts for the contribution of immigrants on the welfare of the domestic economy through the immigration surplus that will accrue to the domestic economy.

Testing the validity of the monetary model for ASEAN with structural break

This study examines the validity of the long run structural relations underlying the monetary exchange rate model for Malaysia, Singapore, The Philippines and Thailand. Take into consideration the possibility of structural change, we examined the models using recent developed techniques of testing unit root and cointegration with a structural break. Our findings of three cointegrating relations among the variables in the system were further identified by testing theoretical restrictions on the cointegrating equations. The long run relationships were able to be interpreted according to the theory, hence, support the long run validity of the monetary exchange rate model.

BOOK REVIEW: "Review of Fisheries Exploitation in the Indian Ocean — Threats and Opportunities" Edited by Dennis Rumley, Sanjay Chaturvedi and Vijay Sakhuja

The Singapore Economic ReviewVol. 57, No. 03, 1280009 (2012) Book ReviewsNo AccessBOOK REVIEW: "Review of Fisheries Exploitation in the Indian Ocean — Threats and Opportunities" Edited by Dennis Rumley, Sanjay Chaturvedi and Vijay SakhujaCLEM TISDELLCLEM TISDELLSchool of Economics, The University of Queensland, Australiahttps://doi.org/10.1142/S0217590812800094Cited by:0 PreviousNext AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsRecommend to Library ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Singapore Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, and Southeast Indian Ocean Research Group, 2009, pp. xvi+364, [ISBN: 978-981-230-986-0]. FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Recommended Vol. 57, No. 03 Metrics History Published: 11 September 2012 PDF download

Asymmetric dynamics in stock market correlations: Evidence from Japan and Singapore

This paper uses the asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation model developed by Cappiello et al. (2006) to analyze the correlation between the Japanese and Singaporean stock markets and makes two principal findings. First, it finds that financial integration has advanced because of the Japan–Singapore Economic Partnership Agreement, thereby strengthening the bidirectional relationship between Japan and Singapore. Second, it demonstrates empirically that the weight of Asian stocks in portfolios within the Asian region has increased since the global financial crisis, again strengthening the relationships among Asian region economies.

The political economy of intergenerational income mobility in Singapore

Ng IYH. The political economy of intergenerational income mobility in SingaporeThis study used the Singapore National Youth Surveys of 2002 and 2010 to measure the intergenerational dependence of youths' income on their parents' income. The pooled estimate of 0.24 gave a scaled value of 0.44, which when compared internationally indicates an economy with moderately low intergenerational income mobility. The findings analysed against Singapore's political economy suggest that the 2009 recession, a widened safety net and immigration might have mitigated the negative effects that a developmental welfare state and rising inequality have on intergenerational mobility. The effects of Singapore's differentiated education system were unclear. However, despite the limitations in data and data availability in Asia, the findings provide useful points of departure for other countries. The findings also indicate the need for more extensive data and research on what effects the current economic and policy trends have on mobility.

Review of Singapore's air quality and greenhouse gas emissions: Current situation and opportunities

Singapore has many environmental accomplishments to its credit. Accessible data on air quality indicates that all criteria pollutants satisfy both U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and World Health Organization (WHO) air quality standards and guidelines, respectively. The exception is PM2.5 (particles with an aerodynamic diameter ≤2.5 μm), which is not currently considered a criteria pollutant in Singapore but may potentially be the major local air pollution problem and cause for health concern. Levels of other airborne pollutants as well as their physical and chemical processes associated with local formation, transformation, dispersion, and deposition are not known. According to available emission inventories, Singapore's contribution to the total atmospheric pollution and carbon budget at the regional and global scales is small. Emissions per unit gross domestic product (GDP) are low compared with other countries, although Singapore's per-capita GDP and per-capita emissions are among the highest in the world. Some information is available on health effects, but the impacts on the ecosystem and the complex interactions of air pollution and climate change at a regional level are also unknown. This article reviews existing available information on atmospheric pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and proposes a multipollutant approach to greenhouse gas mitigation and local air quality. Singapore, by reducing its per-capita emissions, increasing the availability of information (e.g., through regularly publishing hourly and/or daily PM2.5 concentrations) and developing a research agenda in this area, would likely be seen to be a model of a high-density, livable, and sustainable city in Southeast Asia and other tropical regions worldwide. Implications Singapore is widely recognized for its environmental achievements and often cited as a model of a high-density, livable, and sustainable city. This article reviews available information with the aim to provide a reference for future scientific research of strategic relevance for Singapore's air quality and greenhouse gas mitigation management under a multipollutant framework. However, the limited publicly accessible data and little scientific information prevent a comprehensive assessment of the local air quality and greenhouse gas emissions. Singapore's dynamic economy and strong profile in advanced science and technological innovation have the potential to enhance the research agenda in this area, which is not yet well developed in tropical cities.

A CGE assessment of Singapore's tourism policies

The extraordinary performance of the Singapore tourism industry is attributed, among other factors, to the active tourism policies of the Singapore government, but the effectiveness of Singapore tourism policies has never been quantified. By building a CGE model for the Singapore economy with an emphasis on tourism and utilising the recently published Singapore input–output tables and tourism survey data, this study has gauged economic impact of Singapore inbound tourism and the effectiveness of Singapore tourism policies based on the simulated macroeconomic and sectoral effects. The modelling results show that, in terms of both real GDP and total tourism expenditure, tourism GST deduction is the most effective policy followed by the tourism activity subsidy policy. The tourism industry subsidy policy is proven to be the least effective. Since different tourism policies have different strengths and weaknesses, a balanced and focused approach to tourism policy is suggested for policy makers.

Impacts of Photovoltaics and Electromobility on the Singaporean Energy Sector

Singapore has a steady rise in its electricity demand. The Singaporean electricity supply system relies so far heavily on fossil fuels, especially gas and oil, which are both mainly imported from Malaysia and Indonesia. This makes the electricity system in Singapore rather vulnerable to price variations and possible political conflicts with neighbouring countries. A short term solution is the construction of a LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminal which opens supply options to many sources in the world. In the long term, renewable energies such as photovoltaics will certainly be introduced into the Singapore's energy system in a more significant way. This paper discusses the possibility to produce substantial amounts of electricity by solar photovoltaics (PV). In addition, the integration of electromobility in Singapore is analysed. Using PV and electric vehicles (EV), the future primary energy demand and CO2 emissions in Singapore could be reduced significantly. The paper will describe the TIMES (The Integrated MARKAL (Market Allocation) EFOM (Energy Flow Optimisation Model) System) model for Singapore which is developed within the project TUM CREATE (Technische Universität München Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise). TUM CREATE is a research programme sponsored by the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF). One research goal of a sub-project in TUM CREATE is to develop scenarios of the future energy demand and energy supply in Singapore under various boundary conditions, especially oil and gas prices or policies to reduce import dependencies etc. All upstream and downstream sectors of the energy system, including traffic and heavy industry like refineries, will be part of the developed model. First results about the impact of PV and electromobility on Singapore's primary energy demand and CO2 emissions are presented here.

Productivity-Wage-Growth Nexus: An Empirical Study of Singapore

This paper investigates the empirical relationship between labor productivity, real wages and real GDP in Singapore from 1997 to 2011. The paper begins with a review of productivity, wage and growth situations in Singapore in the past decade and further attempts to uncover the underlying relationship in this nexus using theoretical framework from labor and growth literature. Using the Vector-Autoregressive or Vector-Error Correction Mechanism when cointegration is present, this paper uncovers various causality relations in different industries which conform to economic theory and empirics. An impulse response analysis is also undertaken to understand how specific policy decisions could be framed to provide for higher wages across industries. The empirical results suggest that in the Singapore economy, there exist a bi-directional causality relation between labor productivity and real GDP but that wages seem to be caused by other underlying factors. However, real wages respond positively to positive shocks in the real GDP or labor productivity using cholesky or generalized decomposition. This paper concludes by discussing policies that could be undertaken to promote inclusive growth in the environment of sustained economic growth.

Foreign direct investment and employment in manufacturing and services sectors

PurposeThis paper aims to examine both the cointegrating and causal relationships among inward FDI and the host country's employment in manufacturing and services sectors.Design/methodology/approachThis paper applies autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework to test the cointegration and causality patterns using Singapore as a case.FindingsApart from the presence of a unique long‐run relationship, the findings also show evidence of long‐run causality, running from employment in manufacturing and services to FDI inflows, and from FDI inflows and services employment to manufacturing employment. Furthermore, there is evidence of short‐run causality showing strong FDI‐employment and employment linkages, predominantly from the manufacturing to services.Research limitations/implicationsOne likely area of future research is to extend this paper by using disaggregated data, e.g. FDI inflows by sector (manufacturing and services), and employment by the respective sectors.Practical implicationsManufacturing and services have been regarded as the “twin engines” of growth for the Singapore economy. As the economy is moving up the value chain from downstream to upstream activities, a significant proportion of foreign direct investment (FDI) has been attracted to the manufacturing and services sectors. The present study provides useful policy implications towards promoting foreign investment in emerging areas of and manpower development in both sectors of the economy.Originality/valueThis paper explores the possible interactions between FDI inflows and employment in manufacturing and services sectors as well as the employment linkages between manufacturing and services in Singapore.

TOURISM AND GROWTH IN SINGAPORE: NEW EXTENSION FROM BOUNDS TEST TO LEVEL RELATIONSHIPS AND CONDITIONAL GRANGER CAUSALITY TESTS

This paper empirically investigates the tourism-led growth (TLG) hypothesis in the case of Singapore by employing the bounds test to cointegration, error correction models and Granger causality tests using annual data from 1960 to 2007. Results confirm the existence of long-term equilibrium relationship between international tourism and economic growth in the case of Singapore; real income growth converges to its long-term equilibrium level significantly by 51.4% in the TLG model. The major finding of this study is that the TLG hypothesis is confirmed for the Singaporean economy in the long-term as a result of conditional Granger causality tests.

IS10 Development of Psychotherapy Training for Trainee Psychiatrists in Hong Kong

This study compares urban planning mechanisms that operate within Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. The political economy of Hong Kong is in a state of flux. While the power of the government and the corporate interests remain largely intact, they are challenged by pro-China interests and a democratizing civil society. The land use planning system reflects this power contest. In face of both strong resistance from the development industry and China's eagerness to perpetuate a market-led society in post-1997 Hong Kong, the outcome of the power contest remains uncertain. The state-centred political economy of Singapore has bred a top–down land use planning system centrally controlled by the government. Not only has the government dominated the plan making process, the legislation has entrusted the public sector to scrutinize and guide private development through a discretionary development control system. The government is able to mobilize resources to implement plans with the tacit consent of a regulated and meritocracy-based society. In contrast, Taiwan's multi-layered government structure and its complicated relationships with business interests (`gold-power' alliance) within a cultural milieu with scant respect for rules and regulations, have produced a complex and yet loosely coordinated land use planning system. The Urban Planning Law emphasizes plan making and implementation by the public sector at the district level, but local authorities lack resources to implement plans. The regulatory development control system, to a large extent, is abused by the community and land use zoning is not taken seriously in general. As plan amendments can be made behind closed doors, the `gold-power' alliance has tried to rezone land for speculative purposes. The impact of the recent democratization process on the society's legal attitudes and the roles of planning in urban governance in Taiwan remains to be seen.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Singapore English

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Singapore English

Singapore's 2011 Budget: Focusing on Strengthening the Economy and Society for the Future

In this article, the author comments on Singapore's 2011 Budget, which was announced on 18 February 2011. The author pays special attention in the measures in the 2001 Budget that are intended to strengthen Singapore's economy and society in the future.

Challenging and co-opting globalisation: Singapore's strategies in higher education

Since its independence in 1965, Singapore has adopted a developmental state orientation and has placed a strong emphasis on education to meet its socio-economic development needs. In line with its aspirations to be a regional education hub, the Singapore higher education system hosts a number of prestigious institutions and international partnerships. In recent years, research and development spending has been ramped up, specialist research centres have been established and universities have become more research intensive. In this paper, we seek an explanation for these distinctive features of the Singapore model of higher education and examine how features of globalisation such as ranking, quality assurance and international collaboration are expressed in the Singapore context. Further, we ask what lessons, if any, can be drawn from Singapore's experience and what challenges Singapore faces in meeting its evolving vision for higher education.