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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the author's comments on the paper A Tale of Two Cities: Factor Accumulation and Technical Change in Hong Kong and Singapore, by Alwyn Young. The economies of Hong Kong, China and Singapore show similarities and differences. The economies of the two countries are highly open to international trade and have remarkably high ratios of exports and imports to gross domestic product (GDP). Both countries have been peaceful and politically stable for some time, although Singapore had difficulties in the 1960s and Hong Kong's prospects for 1997 are uncertain. They are nearly identical in age-adjusted fertility and mortality rates, although Hong Kong has somewhat higher average population growth because of great in-migration. Sharp contrasts show up for investment rates, the related behavior of consumption, the current-account balance, direct foreign investment and the role of government. Hong Kong's ratio of real gross investment to real GDP from 1960 to 1985 has been reasonably stable at around 21 percent. Singapore, in contrast, began at about 13 percent in the early 1960s, reached 21 percent between 1965 and 1969, and then soared to an average of 37 percent from 1970 to 1985.

Singapore's economy faces some major concerns resulting from intensified regional competition and the transformation from being investment-driven to innovation-driven. This paper examines 1) the accumulation and utilization of huge government surpluses in the past 40 years; (2) the country's total cost structure (e.g., land, wages, and regulatory costs); (3) the relationships among small and medium-sized enterprises, government-linked companies, and multinational corporations; and (4) the product and market diversification that is needed to mitigate the impacts on unemployment resulting from structural changes and the transition from manufacturing to services. Singapore's comparative and competitive advantages as a strategic hub of economic activities in Asia are examined and policy recommendations are put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effect of corruption on foreign direct investment. The sample covers bilateral investment from twelve source countries to 45 host countries. There are two central findings. First, a rise in either the tax rate on multinational firms or the corruption level in a host country reduces inward foreign direct investment (FDI). In a benchmark estimation, an increase in the corruption level from that of Singapore to that of Mexico would have the same negative effect on inward FDI as raising the tax rate by fifty percentage points. Second, American investors are averse to corruption in host countries, but not necessarily more so than average OECD investors, in spite of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt PracticesAct of 1977. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the author's comments on the paper A Tale of Two Cities: Factor Accumulation and Technical Change in Hong Kong and Singapore, by Alwyn Young. As Young points out, there is a remarkable constancy of the capital-output ratio across countries; there is also a fairly stable capital-output ratio in advanced nations. The constancies have been well known for a long time and were in fact at the heart of the famous Solow conclusion that technological change, not capital accumulation its the source of most growth. Young finds that although the economies in Hong Kong, China and Singapore grew at similar rates, they accumulated capital at very different rates: Singapore invested much more heavily, in both physical and human capital. Singapore seems to have gained nothing at all from its high investment. A growth-accounting exercise produces the startling result that Singapore showed no technical progress at all. Both Singapore and Hong Kong are extremely open economies; Singapore in particular has an important share well over 100 percent, thanks to intermediate inputs. This means that measures of real output are essentially measures of real value added. Young suggests that Singapore has consistency pushed itself into technologies too far ahead of itself to benefit from learning by doing.

This article presents author Alwyn Young's response to comments on his paper A Tale of Two Cities: Factor Accumulation and Technical Change in Hong Kong and Singapore. Responding to the Robert Barro, Young noted that all endogenous growth models are in a sense trivially linear in something. The AK model and other models of endogenous growth certainly do not yield the same predictions. Nouriel Roubini noted that because of the large volume of foreign investment, there is likely to be a substantial gap between gross domestic product and gross national product (GNP). Because much of the capital in Singapore is foreign owned, and, therefore, much of the income to factors of production flows abroad, the growth rate of GNP may better reflect the welfare of Singaporeans and may help to explain the relative low growth rate of consumption. Michael Bruno observed that subsidies to capital accumulation will cause the true elasticity of output with respect to capital to be less than its observed factor share. Because both implicit and explicit subsidies play such an important role in Singapore, Bruno wondered if one could estimate the true production elasticities. Young replied that he did not attempt to estimate the true elasticities.

The author comments on a study which examined the trends of foreign immigrants in Asia and their effect on the economic growth of Singapore. It is argued that the general equilibrium model used in this article could be applied to other studies on the policy implications of migration of skilled and unskilled workers. The effectiveness of this model is based on the robustness of the welfare factors of migration, which could explain income distribution in households.

In Southeast Asia, the seasonal transboundary haze pollution stemming from slash-and-burn practices of traditional Indonesian farmers affects several countries in the region including Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei. Despite both domestic and regional efforts that have been put in place to help fight against haze, Southeast Asian haze remains a long-term issue that recurs in a varying degree of intensity during every dry season in the region. While we remain optimistic that the problem will eventually be resolved, given that most of these fires are the result of human activity, solutions can be executed successfully only in the longer run. In the interim, one of Singapore's options is to adapt. A contingent valuation (CV) survey on 793 Singapore residents was conducted in Singapore between November and December 2017 to elicit their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a haze adaptation program and a haze eradication program in Singapore. We use a double-bounded dichotomous choice CV survey design and the Kaplan-Meier-Turnbull method and the probit regression to infer the distribution of Singapore residents' WTP for the two programs and find that they are willing to pay between S$ 46.46 and S$ 60.06 for a haze adaptation program that reduces the local impacts of haze and between S$ 51.66 and S$ 66.76 for a haze eradication program. These findings suggest that Singapore residents continue to value the government's effort to derive solutions to resolve the haze crisis that recurs intermittently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a case study of Hong Kong and Singapore, two of the fastest growing economies in the postwar world, to evaluate competing theories of economic growth. Although broadly similar in historical background and economic structure, the two economies are strikingly different along three dimensions of interest to growth theorists: (1) Hong Kong began the postwar era with a considerably better educated labor force; (2) the subsequent accumulation of human and physical capital in Singapore far exceeds that in Hong Kong; and (3) Singapore has experienced considerably more rapid structural change, as government targeting policies have propelled the economy into technologically advanced sectors. A total factor productivity growth analysis of the two economies reveals that while TFP growth in Hong Kong accounts for over two-thirds of the increase in GDP per capita during the 1970s and 1980s, total factor productivity growth in Singapore during the same period is next to nil. These results constitute strong evidence against linear models of growth that emphasize contemporaneous externalities in the accumulation of factors of production. The poor TFP performance of the Singaporean economy, when associated with its astounding rate of structural transformation, supports models that emphasize the constraints imposed by learning by doing on the evolution of comparative advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the New Media Arts, Technology and Education conference held by the Multimedia Art Asia Pacific (MAAP) in Singapore in October 2004. Speakers; Overview of the lectures; Background on MAAP.

Using unique consumer financial transactions of more than 56,000 consumers, we study the consumption response to a housing policy experiment in Singapore that resulted in a decrease in access to home equity. Using difference-in-differences analysis, we find a significant negative consumption response to the policy shock. Moreover, the consumption response is concentrated in credit card spending and is stronger among individuals with limited access to credit market or with a high precautionary saving motive. These results suggest that a decrease in access to home equity reduces the role of housing as a self-insurance mechanism for consumption smoothing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the economic challenges facing Singapore. One problem in the country is that it is totally dominated by foreign-owned firms and that such firms typically locate research&development (R&D) in their home countries. Through subsidiaries, the government is encouraging foreign firms to locate R&D in Singapore with some success. It is possible that the lack of democracy is negative for future economic growth, since constraints on freedom of speech and civil society might also have negative effect on creativity and entrepreneurship.

The article presents a response to the findings on radical pro drop (RPD) and fusional pronominal morphology in Colloquial Singapore English (CSE). It presents equations illustrating how RPD generalization is derived. It points out that the true nature of RPD in CSE rests in the topic structure originated from its superstate language. It notes the consistency of the findings that this nature can be generalized to other topic-prominent languages with RPD.

This article considers the distribution of feline symbols and figures throughout the cultural life in Singapore. A brief summary of legend surrounding Singapore is presented. Singaporeans are interested on how to use feline symbols to promote national values. In short, the combination of myth-making and anthropomorphized paw-holding that characterizes the use of Singapore's state felines underscores the ways in which Singaporean is as Singaporean does. The Singapore lion is only the latest representation of the vast, conceptually ingenious, ideologically consistent but generally sanitized and oversimplified phenomenon that might be called Singularpore.