Search

The informational domain related to COVID-19 reflects the degree of uncertainty and pace of evolution of the pandemic. This places a burden on peoples' searches for information to guide their choices, importantly including for COVID-19 vaccines. Thus, it is important for health communications that support vaccination campaigns to attenuate vaccine hesitancy to be accessible, including in terms of readability, and adapted to the evolving pandemic. This paper aims to understand internet searches on COVID-19 vaccination, specifically the mix of sources and readability of the sources over a two-year period (2021–2023) in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, for search results in English, as English is a main language for each of these locations. The sources accessed through online searches in June 2021 and May 2023 were categorized by type of source and whether they were from one of the focal locations or elsewhere. The readability of information from web-search results was assessed using a set of readability tests (Flesch–Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog Index, Coleman–Liau Index, and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook Grade level). Over the two-year period there was an increase in government sources and reduction in mass media sources with distinct local patterns. Local government sources increased in Singapore whereas foreign government and multi-lateral organization sources increased in Hong Kong, with the Philippines being an intermediate pattern. In contrast to the changing mix of sources, the readability tests indicate a low proportion of URLs scoring within recommended readability thresholds across locations and types of sources over the two years. Information on COVID-19 vaccine development and deployment is an important part of health communications that includes internet search. The paper contributes to understanding health communications during a pandemic, including mix of local and non-local sources and contingency on local social and health context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the rapid urban expansion and the burgeoning number of landfill sites, managing water infiltration in these areas has become a critical challenge, especially in cities like Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Singapore where traditional cover materials such as silt, clayey gravel, and sand are scarce. A three-layer (silt/gravelly sand/clay) capillary barrier cover system has been proposed to address this issue in humid climates. As an alternative to scarce traditional materials, using local soils and construction waste (CW) for this system presents a viable solution. However, the real-world performance of this adapted three-layer system, constructed with local soils and CW under natural rainfall conditions, remains to be fully evaluated. This paper presents a field test evaluating the water infiltration behavior of a three-layer capillary barrier landfill cover system under natural conditions. The tri-layered system is comprised of a 0.6 m loose local unscreened soil layer, covered by a 0.4 m CW layer and topped by a 0.8 m heavily compacted local screened soil layer. Monitoring findings reveal that, during the wet season, infiltration through the top two layers was staved off until the third rainfall, after which these layers retained moisture until 15 September 2016. The fluctuation in pore water pressure in the topmost layers showed each rainfall was contingent not only on the day's precipitation but also the hydraulic state. Beyond the hydraulic state's influence, a deeper tensiometer showed resulted in a diminished correlation between the surge in pore water pressure and daily rainfall. This declining correlation with depth can be attributed to the capillary effect and the reduced permeability of the screened soil layer. Rainfall patterns significantly affect percolation, with the combination of a short-duration, intense rainfall and prolonged weak rainfall resulting in a marked increase in percolation. In the foundational screened soil layer, the pore water pressure remained relatively low, with the cumulative percolation over six months (June to December) registering approximately 10 mm. These findings suggest a promising performance of the three-layer capillary barrier cover system, integrating local soils and CW, in the year of the study conducted in a humid environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at metro station clustering based on passenger flow data. Compared with existing clustering methods that only use boarding or alighting data of each station separately, we focus on higher granularity origin-destination (O-D) path flow data, and provide more flexible and insightful clustering results. In particular, we regard the metro system as a network, with each station as a node. The real-time passenger flows over time between different O-D paths serve as directed edges between nodes. Compared with traditional networks, our edges are temporal curves, and can be regarded as functional data. For this functional data-edged graph, we are the first to develop a novel community detection approach for node clustering. Our method is based on functional factorization. First a dual time-warped sparse nonnegative functional factorization is proposed for extracting patterns of the functional edges. Then the passenger flow of each O-D path can be regarded as a linear combination of different extracted passenger flow patterns. Based on it, we construct a multi-view directed and weighted network, where each view represents one particular pattern, and the factorization coefficient of each O-D path on this pattern is treated as the weight of this directed edge in this particular view. Then a novel community detection algorithm based on nonnegative matrix tri-factorization is constructed according to the topological structure of the multi-view network. The fusion of different views can be either subjectively determined or objectively learnt in a data-driven way, which gives flexibility of the clustering algorithm to emphasize on different travel patterns. Two real datasets of Singapore and Hong Kong metro systems are used to validate the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic linkages between macroeconomic factors and stock market developments in the economies of Hong Kong and Singapore are the subject of investigation in this paper. These city-states belong to the world's most globalised economies and are two of the world's four largest financial centres. In the crisis years, both these countries experienced a decline in GDP, faced the threat of deflation, and their foreign trade turnover decreased. The crisis also affected the financial sector. This paper aims to ascertain the impact of structural economic changes, namely the financial crisis, on the prosperity of these advanced economies. The basic characteristics of determinants of economic development and the analysis of the mutual relationships of selected macroeconomic indicators with the financial markets serve to meet the aim of this paper. The macroeconomic variables used in most research are GDP, the interest rate, the inflation rate, money supply and the unemployment rate. To test the dependence of these indicators, a regression model was constructed, and the period from 2005 to 2016 was chosen for observation. From the linear regression equation, it is obvious that the unemployment rate, the exchange rate and the interest rate have a prevailing negative effect on equity returns, in contrast to money supply, which has a prevailing positive effect. The Chow test confirms that the global financial crisis at the end of 2008 had a negative impact on the predictive ability of the chosen linear regression analysis in the long-term time horizon in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs empirical data in three major Asian real estate markets - Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore, from 2001 to 2021, to study the leverage strategies of two related types of real estate companies – real estate investment trusts (REITs) and real estate operating companies (REOCs). The business model of the former must adhere to a real-estate-focused investment strategy while the latter undertakes a whole range of real estate development activities including land acquisition, financial feasibility analysis, construction, investment and asset management to redevelopment and disposal, and are not subject to the REIT rules with respect to tax transparency, earning distribution, real estate holding and leverage limit. We find that REOCs use 18.96% more debt than REITs after controlling for the agency and market risks, dividend yields, and property sector, country, and year fixed effects of firms; dividend payout has no effect on the leverage strategies; and high tax ratio increases the debt usage of REOCs relative to REITs. We also analyze the liquidation costs and business uniqueness effects. We find real estate value to total firm value ratio, as a proxy of liquidation cost, has negative effects on debt ratios for both real estate firms. Due to their uniqueness, REOCs with a high concentration of rental revenue stream are more vulnerable to liquidation risks, and thus more likely to have lower debt ratio. REITs however tend to have higher debt usage as rental incomes enhance cash-flow liquidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem definition: A significant percentage of online consumers place consecutive orders within a short duration. To reduce the total order arrangement cost, an online retailer may consolidate consecutive orders from the same consumer. We investigate how long the retailer should hold the consumer's orders before sending them to a third-party logistics provider (3PL) for processing. In this order-holding problem, we optimize the holding time to balance the total order arrangement cost and the potential delay in delivery. Methodology/results: We model the order-holding problem as a Markov decision process. We show that the optimal order-holding decisions follow a threshold-type policy that is straightforward to implement: Hold any pending orders if the holding time is within a threshold or send them to the 3PL otherwise. Whenever the consumer places a new order, the holding time is reset, and the threshold is updated based on a cumulative set of the past consecutive orders in the consumer's shopping journey. Using a consumer's sequential decision model, we personalize the threshold by finding its closed-form expression in the consumer's order features. We determine the model's coefficients and evaluate the threshold-type policy using the data of the 2020 MSOM Data Driven Research Challenge. Extensive numerical experiments suggest that the personalized threshold-type policy outperforms two commonly used benchmarks by having fewer order arrangements or shorter holding times. Furthermore, personalizing the order-holding decisions is significantly more valuable for "enterprise" customers. Managerial implications: Our research suggests a higher threshold for consumers who are more likely to place consecutive orders within a short duration. The consumers' demographic information has a significant effect on the threshold. Specifically, the threshold is higher for "plus" consumers, female consumers, and consumers in the age group of 16–25 years. The threshold for tier 1 cities is lower than that for tier 2 to tier 4 cities but higher than that for tier 5 cities. History: This paper has been accepted as part of the 2020 MSOM Data Driven Challenge. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71931009, 72201237, and 72231009], the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [Grants 15501920 and 15501221], the Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund [Tier 1, Grant RG17/21; Tier 2, Grant MOE2019-T2-1-045], the Association of South-East Asian Nations Business Research Initiative Grant [Grant G17C20421], and the Neptune Orient Lines [Fellowship NOL21RP04]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2023.1201. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of macroeconomic variables and firm-specific factors on corporate profitability in Singapore and Hong Kong before, during and after the global financial crisis. This paper uses the two-step system Generalized Method of Moments to examine the impact of macroeconomic and firm-specific factors on corporate profitability. The model includes firm-specific factors (firm size, leverage, liquidity, sales growth and previous year's profitability) and macroeconomic factors (real GDP growth and inflation rate). Corporate profitability is represented by ROA, ROE and Tobin's Q. Results from the pooled sample showed that past profitability, firm size and leverage have a strong relationship with firm performance. Our pooled sample results also showed that Hong Kong firms are more affected by macroeconomic factors during the global financial crisis than Singapore firms. Our study provides insights into the relationship between firm-specific factors, macroeconomic factors and firm performance under three different economic periods in two developed economies in the Asia-Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Sanctions Ordinance is the primary legal basis of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) for implementing the United Nations Security Council's resolutions. However, there are concerns that the Ordinance is potentially violating the separation of powers in its delegation of regulation-making authority to the executive. There are also criticisms against the expediency of the Ordinance as a mechanism lot enforcing Security Council sanctions. Against this background, this paper attempts to examine the separation of powers doctrine, its place in HKSAR's constitutional system and its relevance to the Ordinance. On the issue of expediency, this paper focuses on the scope and speed of implementing the sanctions, and the human rights and criminal justice pro blems it involves. For comparative purposes, references are to be made to the law of the USA, Canada and Singapore. [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.

With the current globalisation and complexity of today’s business environment, there are increasing concerns on the role of business ethics. Using culture and religion as the determinants, this paper presents a cross-national study of attitudes toward business ethics among three countries: Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. The results of this paper have shown the attitudes toward business ethics to be significantly different among the three countries. It was also found that respondents who practised their religion tend to consider themselves more ethically minded than those who do not. Additional findings on gender have also revealed significant differences between the males and females for respondents in Singapore and Australia. Males are generally considered more ethical than females across the three countries studied. [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.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the impacts of time segment modeling approach for berth allocation and quay crane (QC) assignment on container terminal operations efficiency. Design/methodology/approach: The authors model the small time segment modeling approach, based on minutes, which can be a minute, 15 min, etc. Moreover, the authors divided the problem into three sub-problems and proposed a novel three-level genetic algorithm (3LGA) with QC shifting heuristics to deal with the problem. The objective function here is to minimize the total service time by using different time segments for comparison and analysis. Findings: First, the study shows that by reducing the time segment, the complexity of the problem increases dramatically. Traditional meta-heuristic, such as genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, etc., becomes not very promising. Second, the proposed 3LGA with QC shifting heuristics outperforms the traditional ones. In addition, by using a smaller time segment, the idling time of berth and QC can be reduced significantly. This greatly benefits the container terminal operations efficiency, and customer service level. Practical implications: Nowadays, transshipment becomes the main business to many container terminals, especially in Southeast Asia (e.g. Hong Kong and Singapore). In these terminals, vessel arrivals are usually very frequent with small handling volume and very short staying time, e.g. 1.5 h. Therefore, a traditional hourly based modeling approach may cause significant berth and QC idling, and consequently cannot meet their practical needs. In this connection, a small time segment modeling approach is requested by industrial practitioners. Originality/value: In the existing literature, berth allocation and QC assignment are usually in an hourly based approach. However, such modeling induces much idling time and consequently causes low utilization and poor service quality level. Therefore, a novel small time segment modeling approach is proposed with a novel optimization algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, Asia has begun the race for economic supremacy at the global level. The so-called "Four Asian Tigers" are those countries which have continually experienced rapid and significant economic growth over the last half of century and comprise the high growth and income economies of Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. These East Asian countries were largely considered as economic models since their growth rates of real per capita gross domestic product in the period 1960-1995 reached around 6% per year. As economic growth represents the outcome of specific issues, the paper aims to identify and present the main factors that contributed to the meteoric growth of the Asian Tigers by focusing on the economies of three of them, namely Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea. The methodological approach was based on a quantitative method. The paper argues that important lessons related to economic growth could be drawn from the valuable experience of these countries. Also, it identifies and presents some of the most important factors, such as the developmental state and the rapid industrialization, that highly contributed to their impressive economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Price discovery of real estate investment has been getting lots of attentions from researchers and it is generally believed that lagging errors exist in appraisal-based returns of commercial real estate investments, in comparison to other investment instruments traded in the stock market Due to fewer transactions in the commercial real estate market, it is reasonable to notice a difference in the handling of current market information. By introducing two study approaches along with a test case using Singapore's data, this paper explores the extent of lagging in Hong Kong's commercial (office)real estate values, in a State Space Model with Kalman filter. The findings first suggest that whether appraisal-based indices overstate or understate true values lies in the economy condition at the time. Then, commercial real estate values in Hong Kong are about three months behind the stock market property indices. Also, as indicated by the findings, data collection/selection bias may render a de-lagged index not as efficient as it is supposed to be. This paper provides a different perspective on price discovery and the process of de-lagging property values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although previous research has pointed to potential performance gains through relational contracting (RC), reservations remain as to its value and viability. Even those who wish to use RC need guidelines for introducing it, especially where it clashes with prevalent project cultures. A study was launched from Hong Kong to identify the critical factors which promote RC and team building in the context of specific cultures. This paper consolidates the perceptions of 60 respondents to a questionnaire survey in Singapore, in relation to the hypothesized 24 factors facilitating RC, and 28 factors impeding/deterring RC. It indicates the evident readiness of the Singaporean contracting industry to embrace collaborative working practices. On the whole: (1) all the 24 factors facilitating RC, and 23 of the 28 factors deterring RC, are significant; (2) these two sets of factors could be represented by six and seven “broad factors,” respectively; and (3) except in a few cases, respondents from large and medium companies, as well as with and without experience in RC, have similar perceptions of the importance of different factors. It was perceived that trust should be at the core of RC approaches to construction procurement, but also seen that the current level of trust is low. Identifying the principal “facilitators” and “impediments”/ deterrents to RC, provides pointers to building relationally integrated teams to boost performance to much higher levels, as are now expected from the industry. The literature indicates that the outcome of the survey in Singapore reflects the trends in many countries that are moving toward RC. This research model and approach may be conveniently replicated in other contractual regimes, in order to reinforce these observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spectacular economic success of the Newly Industrialising Countries (NICS) of Asia since the 1960s, has led to the quest to identify other less developed countries which may be just about to become the next NICS of Asia. This paper examines the arguments for and against the view that there is a "second tier" of less developed countries which are about to join the ranks of the Asian NICS. While Malaysia and Thailand are generally thought to be the most likely candidates, this paper argues that one hitherto unrecognised contender. China, is likely to join these countries in achieving NIC status. This paper examines the question of whether there are likely to be more Newly Industrializing Countries (NICS) emerging over time, following in the footsteps of the original four in Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan). While some writers suggest that several developing countries are about to achieve NIC status in the near future, others argue that world trading conditions have deteriorated to such an extent as to make this very unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

For the last two decades, the international auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's have been at the forefront of global art market expansion. Their world-wide footprints have enabled auction house specialists to engage with emerging artists and aspiring collectors, most notably in the developing economies of the Global South. By establishing their sales infrastructure in new locales ahead of the traditional mechanisms of primary market commercial galleries, the international auction houses have played a foundational role in the notional construction of new genres of art. However, branding alone is not sufficient to establish these new markets; the auction houses require a network of willing supporters to facilitate and drive marketplace supply and demand, be that trans-locational art market intermediaries, local governments, and/or regional auction businesses. This paper examines emerging art auction markets in three Global South case studies. It elucidates the strategic mechanisms and networks of international and regional art auction houses in the development of specific genres of contemporary art: Hong Kong and 'Chinese contemporary art', Singapore and 'Southeast Asian art', and Australia and 'Aboriginal art'. Through examination and comparison of these three markets, this paper draws on research conducted over the past decade to reveal an integral role played by art auctions in the expansion of broader contemporary art world infrastructure in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes and tests a model of how firms acquire knowledge from their international joint venturing experience. Based on survey response from 73 Singapore and 89 Hong Kong firms with respect to their joint ventures set up in China, the results indicate that both overseeing effort and management involvement are significant channels of knowledge acquisition. The former channel is more important for firms with a great deal of operational experience in China and for parents of older joint ventures. This finding indicates that firms improve their skills of knowledge acquisition through learning-by-doing. Moreover, the strategic importance of the venture concerned, instead of the learning intent of the parent, is the driving force behind the allocation of resources to the two channels. This implies that firms mainly learn through managing their key joint ventures. Since a venture that provides novel and fruitful learning experience may not, and need not, be an operation of great strategic importance, this finding suggests the existence of learning myopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Singapore to two main host destinations: China and Hong Kong. It allows policy makers and researchers to understand the differences/similarities in the determinants of FDI from Singapore to a developing country, China, and a developed country, Hong Kong. Annual time series data covers the period 1994 to 2014 is used. Commonly used determinants, such as gross domestic product per capita of a host country, gross domestic product per capita of Singapore, real interest rate of a host country and trade openness of a host country are utilized to study Singapore's outward FDI (OFDI). Because the sample has only 21 observations, autoregressive distributed lag based bounds testing approach to cointegration developed by Pesaran, Shin & Smith (2001) is used to estimate cointegrating regression among these variables. This approach is an appropriate econometric estimation technique because the estimated long-run coefficients obtained from the reparameterization of an ARDL model are super-consistent even in small sample size. The main findings show that gross domestic product per capita of a host country attracts FDI from Singapore to each of these countries. It is also observed that higher interest rates in these two host countries attract Singapore's FDI. The degree of openness of China influences the flows of Singapore's FDI to China positively, but not for Hong Kong. It is a surprise that this empirical study is unable to find evidence that gross domestic product per capita of Singapore has an influence on its own FDI outflows. The overall results reveal that the motives of multinational corporations (MNCs) from Singapore to invest abroad typically differ between developing and developed economies, depending upon their respective competitive advantages. In general, MNCs invest in more advanced economies, such as Hong Kong, due to its purchasing power and market potential. Same goes for the developing markets, such as China, that consists of cheaper labor and large market opportunities. For the developing economies, trade liberalization is proved to be the pull factor that attracts MNCs. The more open an economy, the greater the attraction it has to MNCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines generalized trust and trust in institutions in Confucian Asia, covering six countries namely, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, and one dependent region, Hong Kong. Using data from the 2006 AsiaBarometer Survey, our study affirms the reliability and validity of using a two-item scale to measure generalized trust. Our analysis suggests that due to demographic differences, there are variations in the level of generalized trust of countries in Confucian Asia, despite the fact that these societies share a similar background in Confucian philosophy. The relationships between generalized trust and political trust, and between generalized trust and trust in public institutions, are weak but positive. The positive relationship between generalized trust and trust in economic institutions is only significant for some of the economies, while trust in international institutions has the weakest relationship with generalized trust for all societies. We conclude the paper with research implications. [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]

The economic success of some of the countries within the East Asian region has generated a range of studies which have attempted to identify the sources of that growth. One strand within these analyses has focused on the critical role of schooling in the accumulation of human capital. This paper examines the role which education has played in the rapid development of the four 'Asian Tigers'; namely: Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. It is argued that whilst patterns of educational provision displayed some common features there were also significant differences in other areas such as the role of the state, sources of educational funding, the role of technical education and of the school curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, labour-management relations in Hong Kong and Singapore appear to have been shifting away from confrontation towards cooperation. This paper examines the relative contributions of the laissez-faire and the State approaches to this development, and proposes that a collaborative industrial partnership might take different forms in the two societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fifth wave of COVID-19 in Hong Kong (2022) had brought a series of chaos to society. Nevertheless, its Asian neighbours, namely Singapore and Macao, have avoided such chaos. By investigating the well-rounded preventive measures and social environment in Singapore and Macao, this article highlights the Hong Kong government's "idleness". It reveals that the relationship between a government and its people does play a significant role in operating COVID-19 measures, which could directly prevent a large-scale outbreak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The rate of international migration for the primary purpose of employment has increased exponentially in recent decades. A significant proportion of this global movement takes place across East and Southeast Asia as workers move on a temporary basis from lower-middle-income home countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam to high-income host destinations including Hong Kong and Singapore. Relatively little is known about the unique and long-term health needs of this heterogeneous group of people. This systematic review presents an analysis of recent research into the experiences and perceptions of health of temporary migrant workers in the East and Southeast Asian regions. Methods: Five electronic databases CINAHL Complete (via EbscoHost), EMBASE (including Medline), PsycINFO (via ProQuest), PubMed and Web of Science, were systematically searched for qualitative or mixed methods, peer-reviewed literature published in print or online between January 2010 and December 2020. Quality of the studies was assessed using the Critical Appraisal Checklist for Qualitative Research published by the Joanna Briggs Institute. Findings from the included articles were extracted and synthesised using qualitative thematic analysis. Results: Eight articles were included in the review. Findings from this review indicate that multiple dimensions of workers' health is impacted by the processes of temporary migration. In addition, the research reviewed indicated that migrant workers used various strategies and mechanisms to attempt to address their health-related issues and to take better care of themselves. Such agentic practices could help them manage and maintain their health and wellbeing across physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions within the structural constraints of their employment. Conclusions: Limited published research has focused on the health perceptions and needs of temporary migrant workers in East and Southeast Asia. The studies included in this review focused on female migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines. These studies provide valuable insights but do not reflect the heterogeneity of migrants moving within these regions. The findings of this systematic review highlight that temporary migrant workers experience high and sustained levels of stress and are exposed to certain health risks which may compromise long-term health outcomes. These workers demonstrate knowledge and skills in managing their own health. This suggests that strength-based approaches to health promotion interventions may be effective in optimising their health over time. These findings are relevant to policy makers and non-government organisations supporting migrant workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, accompanied by the massive increased urban population density and the compact built environment, the challenge lies in Asian metropolis has evoked the promotion of human health and well-being. This paper aims to deliver the authors’ intention to evaluate the performance of diverse site configuration in the field of urban open space under the tropical and subtropical Asian climatic conditions. The empirical study was conducted in Hong Kong and Singapore in 2015 by the approach of objective environment assessment and perceived health survey. The research findings postulated two paradigms in climate-adaptive design strategy: 1) the precise composition of urban canopy directly impacts the thermal comfort of urban open space; and 2) the comprehensive site configuration significantly influences the personal evaluation of health perception. Based on the above findings, a framework is conceptualized as an attempt to strengthen the climate-adaptive open space design strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the effect of declaring a pandemic? This research assesses behavioral and psychological responses to the WHO declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the U.S. We surveyed 3,032 members of the general public in these three regions about the preventative actions they were taking and their worries related to COVID-19. The WHO announcement on March 11th, 2020 created a quasi-experimental test of responses immediately before versus after the announcement. The declaration of the pandemic increased worries about the capacity of the local healthcare system in each region, as well as the proportion of people engaging in preventative actions, including actions not recommended by medical professionals. The number of actions taken correlates positively with anxiety and worries. Declaring the COVID-19 crisis as a pandemic had tangible effects–positive (increased community engagement) and negative (increased generalized anxiety)–which manifested differently across regions in line with expectancy disconfirmation theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English has become such a widespread international language that it has spawned Anglophone literatures in many countries. The spread of English has been one of the largely unintended benefits of empire, including in Hong Kong. For most countries the era of empire sufficiently belongs to history that literary -postcolonial studies now seem to have largely run their course, to be replaced by the more open -transcultural studies. This signifies the English language's loss of the stigma of empire as it gains a local habitation and a name. However, English often remains a minority language and a minority literature in a specific national context. These literatures are certainly minority ones in global terms, routinely ignored in the Norton, Oxford and other major anthologies of modern English literature. This makes all the more important a possible fraternity, or sorority, of such immigrant Anglophone literatures and the reading of them in relation to each other. Such writing will be, in the words of the editors of the first anthology of writing in English from South-east Asia, -separated by distance, cultural diversity and differing historical trajectoriesl (Patke et al, xv). What the writing will have in common are the characteristics of English, thereby encouraging an attention to the aesthetic qualities of the writing as well as the socio-political issues which have dominated literary criticism over the last fifty years in reaction against New Criticism. This paper attempts such a glocal study through a comparison of the work of established contemporary poets from Hong Kong, Singapore and The Philippines, each an Asian place with a recent but now strong enough Anglophone poetry to mark the foundations of a tradition. For practical purposes, this is a sample of countries and of poets, the three being Agnes Lam (Hong Kong), Kirpal Singh (Singapore) and Isabela Banzon (The Philippines). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers a form of marketing strategy among upmarket food and beverage establishments in Hong Kong and Singapore involving the use of Chinese text in their decor. Although the two cities have a majority Chinese population, English is widely considered the language of social mobility and an unmarked language in the discursive construction of eliteness. In asking, "Why Chinese?" we consider how the indexical value of a vernacular language can be rescaled in upmarket commercial spaces for an emergent group of consumers known as "cultural omnivores." Through the process of indexical selectivity, the invocation of Chinese in these establishments taps into the unique disposition of cultural omnivores by feeding their multilingual desires, and more specifically their desire to consume relatively more or less prestigious languages omnivorously in indexing social distinction. Such alternative readings of the prestige value of the vernacular by a privileged group of consumers point to the ambivalent indexicality of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban resilience is an attractive concept among academies and governments with the increasing severity of climate change and relevant disasters in cities. Few studies have been conducted to compare the key elements of attentions for enhancing urban resilience among Asian cities, although resilience is context-dependent. This study aims to compare the key elements of attentions for enhancing urban resilience among Singapore, Hong Kong and Hangzhou. A comprehensive literature review and expert interview validation were used to solicit the preliminary elements of attentions for enhancing urban resilience. Planners and researchers in the field of urban planning were surveyed to assess the significance level of the preliminary elements in the three case cities, as professional knowledge is required in the survey. Statistics were used to identify the key elements of attentions in the three case cities. Results demonstrate that the three cities have various elements of attentions for enhancing urban resilience despite sharing many similarities, which also demonstrate the guidance limitation of the general urban resilience framework. It also provides a reference for other international comparisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore are the top five cities/countries with the cheapest fixed line broadband as proportion of monthly income. It is interesting to know that several decades ago, they were still among the list of developing nations, struggling for survival and relief. However, they are climbing to the top in ICT development now. Aims: This paper reviews the ICT development in school education of Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore with respect to their social, geographical, and economic backgrounds. Johannessen's three orders of benchmarks are proposed for the comparison. Method: Literature reviews on recent reports, research articles, books and internet data were used to understand the current situation of the ICT development in education for Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. Conclusion: It is clear that these three cities' determination and relative amount that had invested in the development of ICT in education were enormous when compared with the US investment. Among these three cities, the investment of Singapore has been much larger than the other two. Singapore's apparent leading in the development of ICT in education is not an accident, especially for the first benchmarks. For the second and third benchmarks, Macau lags behind Hong Kong and Singapore, this is partially due to Macau education system is comparatively much liberal than the other two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost a decade ago, the electronic commerce revolution began, led by such companies as Amazon.com and Ebay.com. These companies have grown into the internet business giants they are today, diversifying in the products they sell, the services they provide and the jurisdictions they conduct business in. However, aside from these rare examples, most medium and small internet-based business enterprises have grown with the dot.com bubble and dissolved when it burst mid-way through the decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper develops and tests a model of the key factors affecting the sharing of international joint venturing experience in parent firms. Experience sharing here refers to the extent that joint venturing experience is shared among managers at different levels of the parent. Joint venture-specific factors include overseeing effort and management involvement; parent-specific factors consist of firm size, foreign direct investment experience, and institutionalization of experience. • The discussion is based on survey responses from 73 Singapore and 89 Hong Kong companies with respect to their joint ventures set up in China. The statistical technique of partial least squares was used to test the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Current inactivated influenza vaccines provide suboptimal protection against antigenic drift, and repeated annual vaccinations shape antibody specificity but the effect on protection from infection is not well understood. Methods: We studied the effects of cumulative and staggered vaccinations in mice to determine the effect of influenza vaccination on protection from infection and immune quality. Results: We found that the timing of vaccination and antigenic change impacted the quality of immune responses. When mice received two different H3N2 strains (A/Hong Kong/4801/2014 and A/Singapore/INFIMH‐16‐0019/2016) by staggered timing of vaccination, there were higher H3HA antibody and B‐cell memory responses than four cumulative vaccinations or when two vaccinations were successive. Interestingly, after challenge with a lethal‐drifted H3N2 virus (A/Hong Kong/1/1968), mice with staggered vaccination were unable to produce high titres of antibodies specific to the challenge strain compared to other vaccination regimens because of high levels of vaccine‐specific cross‐reactive antibodies. All vaccination regimens resulted in protection, in terms of viral loads and survival, from lethal challenge, while lung IL‐6 and inflammation were lowest in staggered or cumulative vaccination groups, indicating further advantage. Conclusion: Our findings help justify influenza vaccination policies that currently recommend repeat vaccination in infants and annual seasonal vaccination, with no evidence for impaired immunity by repeated seasonal vaccination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The role of smoking in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) remains uncertain, especially in endemic regions. We conducted an individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies to investigate the associations between smoking exposure and risk of NPC.Methods: We obtained individual participant data of 334 935 male participants from six eligible population-based cohorts in NPC-endemic regions, including two each in Guangzhou and Taiwan, and one each in Hong Kong and Singapore. We used one- and two-stage approaches IPD meta-analysis and Cox proportional hazard models to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of NPC for smoking exposure adjusting for age and drinking status.Results: During 2 961 315 person-years of follow-up, 399 NPC evens were ascertained. Risks of NPC were higher in ever versus never smokers (HRone-stage = 1.32, 95% CI = 1.07-1.63, P = 0.0088; HRtwo-stage = 1.27, 1.01-1.60, 0.04). These positive associations appeared to be stronger in ever smokers who consumed 16+ cigarettes/day (HRone-stage = 1.67, 95% CI = 1.29-2.16, P = 0.0001), and in those who started smoking at age younger than 16 (2.16, 1.33-3.50, 0.0103), with dose-response relationships (P-values for trend = 0.0028 and 0.0103, respectively). Quitting (versus daily smoking) showed a small reduced risk (stopped for 5+ years: HRone-stage = 0.91, 95% CI = 0.60-1.39, P = 0.66; for former smokers: HRtwo-stage = 0.84, 0.61-1.14, 0.26).Conclusions: This first IPD meta-analysis from six prospective cohorts in endemic regions has provided robust observational evidence that smoking increased NPC risk in men. NPC should be added to the 12-16 cancer sites known to be tobacco-related cancers. Strong tobacco control policies, preventing young individuals from smoking, would reduce NPC risk in endemic regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore's air travel bubble was finally in place and you were on board a four-hour flight to Hong Kong. As you settled back to watch a movie after the meal service, you heard an announcement: "We are seeking the assistance of a doctor or any healthcare provider. If you are one, please identify yourself to a member of our cabin crew." Even though you were unsure if you were sufficiently competent to attend to the medical condition, you bravely reached for the call button. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a rare hepatic malignancy in children. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a key predisposing factor in endemic regions but its impact on outcome has not been studied. We aim to evaluate the prognostic implication of HBV seropositivity and role of cancer surveillance in children with HCC from East Asian populations with national HBV vaccination. Methods: Review of population-based databases for patients (< 18 years old) diagnosed with HCC from 1993 to 2017 in two Southeast Asian regions with universal HBV vaccination (instituted since 1988 and 1987 in Hong Kong and Singapore, respectively). Results: Thirty-nine patients were identified (Hong Kong, 28; Singapore, 11). Thirty were male; median age at diagnosis was 10.8 years (range, 0.98–16.6). Abdominal pain was the commonest presentation while five patients were diagnosed through surveillance for underlying condition. Alpha-fetoprotein was raised in 36 patients (mean, 500,598 ng/ml). Nineteen had bilobar involvement, among the patients in whom pretreatment extent of disease (PRETEXT) staging could retrospectively be assigned, 3 had stage I, 13 had stage II, 4 had stage III, and 11 had stage IV disease. Seventeen had distant metastasis. HBsAg was positive in 19 of 38 patients. Two patients had fibrolamellar HCC. Upfront management involved tumor resection in 16 (liver transplantation, 2), systemic chemotherapy in 21, interventional procedures in 6 [transarterial chemoembolization (TACE), 5, radiofrequency ablation (RFA), 1], and radiotherapy in 4 (selective internal radiation, 3, external beam radiation, 1). Five-year event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) were 15.4 ± 6.0 and 26.1 ± 7.2%, respectively. Patient's HBsAg positivity, metastatic disease and inability to undergo definitive resection represent poor prognostic factors in univariate and multivariable analyses. Patients diagnosed by surveillance had significantly better outcome. Conclusion: Pediatric HCC has poor outcome. HBV status remains relevant in the era of universal HBV vaccination. HBV carrier has inferior outcome and use of surveillance may mitigate disease course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Geriatric depression is a growing public health issue worldwide. This study aims at identifying the relevant neighbourhood attributes, separate from the individual-level characteristics, that are related to the onset of depressive disorders among the geriatric population. Methods: This study adopts a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach to understand the effect of the neighbourhood environment on geriatric depression, as identified by data collected from community-dwelling elderly living in Hong Kong and Singapore. Using network buffers as the unit of analysis, different features of the neighbourhood environment are captured and analysed. SEM also examines the strength and direction of the relationships using different parameters at both the individual and neighbourhood levels, as well as the prevalence of depressive symptoms among the elderly. Results: The total sample size is 347, with 173 and 174 elderly people in Hong Kong and Singapore respectively. The results show that in addition to one's physical health status, both objective and subjective neighbourhood factors including the size of parks, land use mix, walkability, and connectivity are all statistically significant influential factors in geriatric depression. In particular, enhancing walkability and providing more parks at the neighbourhood level can bring mental health benefits. Conclusions: Public health policy initiatives aimed at tackling geriatric depression can be achieved by adopting a holistic and integrative approach to better prepare the neighbourhood environment in an ageing society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dual-class stock (DCS) structures, and their implications for managerial accountability and corporate governance more broadly, have become prevalent concerns for corporate lawyers and policymakers. Recent academic and practitioner debates on DCS have tended to focus less on the general merits and drawbacks of DCS versus one share/one vote structures, and more on the specific common-ground concern as to whether and how such structures are subjected to contingent reversal or "sunset". This Article compares the relative advantages and disadvantages of time-, ownership- and transfer-centered models of DCS sunset provisions. It argues in favor of the transfer-centered model on the grounds that: (a) its specific event-based trigger renders it less arbitrary in application than the time-centered model, and protects against the possibility of founders being prevented prematurely from realizing their long-term strategic vision (as is a risk with the time-centered sunset model); (b) it avoids the moral hazard and other perverse controller incentives that are prone to ensue from time-centered sunsets; and (c) unlike both the time- and ownership-centered models (which are motivated primarily by agency cost concerns), the transfer-centered model is sensitive to the powerful non-financial incentives that controllers typically have to safeguard and promote firm value, even where their corporate control rights significantly outweigh their corresponding cash flow rights. Accordingly, it suggests that the SEC and principal U.S. exchanges should resist recent calls from influential investor-related bodies to mandate time-based sunsets. Instead, domestic policymakers should look overseas to Hong Kong and Singapore, whose respective listing authorities have recently introduced transfer-based sunset requirements for DCS issuers, in considering the most appropriate blueprint for any future regulatory initiatives in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing evidence demonstrates that in many places language coexistence has become ubiquitous and essential for supporting language and cultural diversity and associated with its financial and economic benefits. The competitive evolution among multiple languages determines the evolution outcome, either coexistence, or decline, or extinction. Here, we extend the Abrams-Strogatz model of language competition to multiple languages and then validate it by analyzing the behavioral transitions of language usage over the recent several decades in Singapore and Hong Kong. In each case, we estimate from data the model parameters that measure each language utility for its speakers and the strength of two biases, the majority preference for their language, and the minority aversion to it. The values of these two biases decide which language is the fastest growing in the competition and what would be the stable state of the system. We also study the system convergence time to stable states and discover the existence of tipping points with multiple attractors. Moreover, the critical slowdown of convergence to the stable fractions of language users appears near and peaks at the tipping points, signaling when the system approaches them. Our analysis furthers our understanding of evolution of various languages and the role of tipping points in behavioral transitions. These insights may help to protect languages from extinction and retain the language and cultural diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research draws on elements of systemic functional linguistics to conduct a discourse analysis of dragon-boating in Asia, predominantly in the commercial areas of Hong Kong and Singapore, where this sport has both a long history and strong culture today. It seeks to understand how experiential and interpersonal meanings are related to this sport in a variety of online texts ranging from local news media sites, corporation team websites, sites from dragon boat companies specialising in training corporations, dragon boat paddlers' websites and other popular sources such as 'expatliving'. Findings demonstrate that dragon boating has certain unique characteristics which help to give it significance in this region. With the Duanwu Festival held annually, the sport is steeped firmly in mythology and legend. Additionally, the nature of the boat as a synchronised machine is exploited by corporations and linked to competitive performance. As an intense sport, physical and mental attributes such as 'strength' and 'tenacity' are associated with it; the upper body requirements of the practice also gives it a unique trait for breast cancer survivors. 'Tragedy' is also a part of dragon boat's modern history with a fatal accident for the Singapore men's team during an international race in Cambodia. In sum, the sport of dragon boating can be seen to have a rich schema of semiotic associations in Hong Kong and Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore and compare the age, source and future risk of COVID-19 infection in Hong Kong SAR China and Singapore as of March 5, 2020. Results: We find significant difference in age patterns of confirmed cases in these 2 localities early in the pandemic. Conclusion: We highlight the potential importance of population age structure in confirmed cases, which should be considered in evaluation of the effectiveness of control effort in different localities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Given the rapidly ageing nature of our global population, policy makers around the world are now more actively promoting active ageing. Researchers have begun exploring the use of assistive technologies in the form of social robots as companions for older persons to address their psychosocial needs, a key component of active ageing. However, there has been limited evidence on the efficacy of such social robots, especially in the Asian context. This article elucidates the protocol of a study to investigate the acceptance and quality of interaction between a Japanese social robot, LOVOT, and elderly singletons in Singapore and Hong Kong. Method In this mixed-method study design, 15 elderly singletons from Singapore and another 15 from Hong Kong were recruited: participants were 60-75 years of age, living alone, and had no known cognitive or mental issues. The primary outcome measure is the participants' differences in responses to and acceptance of LOVOT prior to and following their interaction with the robot, as outlined in the baseline assessment: the Qualtrics survey measured the participants' technology acceptance (Chen & Lou, 2020), loneliness (Russell, 1996), older people's quality of life (Bowling et al., 2013 & Herdman et al., 2011), subjective happiness (Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999), cultural inclinations, willingness to pay, and demographic characteristics, along with the LOVOT's sociability (Heerink et al., 2010) and system usability (Brooke, 1996). During the first session, participants were interviewed about their opinions on gerontechnology, social robots, and pets. Following the interview, participants were given 15 minutes to freely interact with LOVOT. This interaction was succeeded by a Qualtrics survey and interview to measure the elders' acceptance and attitudes toward LOVOT. The interaction, post-interaction survey and interview, was repeated for two subsequent sessions for a total of three interactions with LOVOT. The study was conducted in both Singapore and Hong Kong. Results and Discussion This review outlines the protocol of a pioneer study investigating the efficacy of the social robot, LOVOT, as companions for older persons in Singapore and Hong Kong. Such studies introduce innovative solutions to improving the psychosocial health and engagement of older adults. This protocol can be adapted to explore the efficacy of these assistive technologies in other elder care settings as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two independent studies by two separate research teams (from Hong Kong and Singapore) failed to detect any influenza RNA landing on, or inhaled by, a life-like, human manikin target, after exposure to naturally influenza-infected volunteers. For the Hong Kong experiments, 9 influenza-infected volunteers were recruited to breathe, talk/count and cough, from 0.1 m and 0.5 m distance, onto a mouth-breathing manikin. Aerosolised droplets exhaled from the volunteers and entering the manikin’s mouth were collected with PTFE filters and an aerosol sampler, in separate experiments. Virus detection was performed using an in-house influenza RNA reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay. No influenza RNA was detected from any of the PTFE filters or air samples. For the Singapore experiments, 6 influenza-infected volunteers were asked to breathe (nasal/mouth breathing), talk (counting in English/second language), cough (from 1 m/0.1 m away) and laugh, onto a thermal, breathing manikin. The manikin’s face was swabbed at specific points (around both eyes, the nostrils and the mouth) before and after exposure to each of these respiratory activities, and was cleaned between each activity with medical grade alcohol swabs. Shadowgraph imaging was used to record the generation of these respiratory aerosols from the infected volunteers and their impact onto the target manikin. No influenza RNA was detected from any of these swabs with either team’s in-house diagnostic influenza assays. All the influenza-infected volunteers had diagnostic swabs taken at recruitment that confirmed influenza (A/H1, A/H3 or B) infection with high viral loads, ranging from 105-108 copies/mL (Hong Kong volunteers/assay) and 104–107 copies/mL influenza viral RNA (Singapore volunteers/assay). These findings suggest that influenza RNA may not be readily transmitted from naturally-infected human source to susceptible recipients via these natural respiratory activities, within these exposure time-frames. Various reasons are discussed in an attempt to explain these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]