Tan Khee Giap is a Co-Director of the Asia Competitiveness Institute (ACI) and Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He is also the Chairman of the Singapore National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation. Upon graduating with a PhD from University of East Anglia, England, in 1987 under the Overseas Research Scheme awarded by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom, he joined the banking sector as a treasury manager and served as secretary to the Assets and Liabilities Committee for three years, thereafter he taught at the Department of Economics and Statistics, National University of Singapore, 1990–1993. Dr Tan joined Nanyang Technological University in 1993 and was Associate Dean, Graduate Studies Office, 2007–2009. He is now with Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
Dr Tan has consulted extensively with the various government ministries, statutory boards and government-linked companies of the Singapore government including Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Trade & Industry, Ministry of Manpower, Housing & Development Board, Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore, Singapore Tourism Board, Trade Development Board, Maritime Port Authority, Ministry of Information, Culture & Arts, Economic Development Board, Ministry of National Development, Media Development Authority, Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, Singapore Design Council, Ministry of Community Development, Youth & Sports, Singapore Press Holdings, Mendaki, StarHub, CapitaLand and Great Eastern Life on policies concerning financial, fiscal, trade, tourism, public housing, labour, telecommunication, tourism, liveable cities, creative industry, media, community development, airport and seaport activities. He has also served as a consultant to international agencies such as the Asian Development Bank, Asian Development Bank Institute, United Nations Industrial Development Group, World Gold Council, ASEAN Secretariat, Central Policy Unit of Hong Kong, Kerzner International, Las Vegas Sands and Marina Bay Sands.
Dr Tan is the lead author for 27 books, serving as journals editor and published widely in international refereed journals. His current research interests include econometric forecasting, Cost of Living Index, Global Liveable Cities Index and competitiveness analysis on 31 provinces in China, 35 states in India and ASEAN-10 economies.
Dr Tan was Deputy President of the Singapore Economic Society, 2004. He served in the 2002 Economic Review Committee (ERC). He has also served as Chairman of the Task Force on Portable Medical Benefits (PMB), as the Deputy Chairman of the IPS Forum for Economic Restructuring (IFER) in 2003 and as a member of the Resource Panel of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Transport, Government Parliamentary Committee for Finance and Trade & Industry and Government Parliamentary Committee for Defence and Foreign Affairs since 2007.
Dr Tan has extensively advised and guided multinational corporations leading to public listings especially those companies from Mainland China and Taiwan. He is also currently an Independent Director of the publicly listed BreadTalk Group, Boustead Projects, TEE Land and Chengdu Rural Commercial Bank.
Sasidaran Gopalan is a Research Fellow and Deputy Director (Administration) at the Asia Competitiveness Institute (ACI) at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP), National University of Singapore (NUS). Prior to joining ACI, he was based in Hong Kong as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the HKUST Institute for Emerging Market Studies and HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).
Dr Gopalan completed his PhD in Public Policy, specialising in International Finance and Policy at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University, USA. He obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Economics from Loyola College (Chennai, India) and Madras School of Economics (Chennai, India), respectively. He spent a year at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) post-graduation as a Research Associate and was subsequently based at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) at NUS for two years undertaking research on international economic policy issues concerning South Asia.
He has extensively published in the broad fields of financing for development and international macroeconomic and financial policies with respect to emerging and developing economies in Asia. Specific topics include an empirical analysis of financial openness and international capital flows, financial development, financial inclusion, foreign aid and remittances. His research has a heavy empirical and policy flavour. He is the author of several books, which include publications with leading publishing houses such as Oxford University Press and Palgrave-Macmillan. He has also published several academic articles to his credit in refereed international journals including top-tier field journals. His other publications include contributions to book chapters in edited volumes, policy briefs as well as op-eds for leading global financial dailies.
At ACI, he is the lead coordinator for the flagship projects on India relating to competitiveness analysis and ease of doing business for India at the sub-national level. In addition, he is also the co-coordinator for thematic projects such as exchange rates on foreign direct investment and trade as well as productivity tracking and efficiency monitoring of small and medium enterprises spanning the economies of ASEAN and sub-national economies of India, China and Indonesia. He also supervises and contributes to the formulation as well as implementation of several empirical research projects, targeted towards journal publications and broader policy outreach.
Anuja Tandon is a Research Assistant at the Asia Competitiveness Institute at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. She completed her Master’s degree in Applied Economics at the Department of Economics, National University of Singapore and her undergraduate degree with Honours in Economics at the Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi. At ACI, she has worked on the research project in collaboration with the World Bank on understanding the impact of the Master Plan for ASEAN Connectivity (MPAC) on the ASEAN region. She has also been involved in working on the sub-national and regional competitiveness project on India as well as on developing the Ease of Doing Business Index on Attractiveness to Investors, Business Friendliness and Competitive Policies for India. Her research interests include applied econometrics, business economics and development economics.
Tan Kong Yam is presently the Co-Director of the Asia Competitiveness Institute. He is also Professor of Economics at the Nanyang Technological University. From June 2002 to June 2005, he was a senior economist at the World Bank office in Beijing where he worked on issues of macro stabilization, integration of the fragmented domestic market, banking reform, international trade and investment, energy security as well as regional inequality. In 2004, he was a member of the World Bank expert group on the eleventh five-year plan (2006–10) for the State Council in China. The expert group provided analysis and policy recommendations on urbanization, regional inequality, innovation policy, energy and water policy as well as strategy on banking reform to the Chinese government.
Prior to that, he was the chief economist of the Singapore government (1999–2002), and Head, Department of Business Policy, Faculty of Business Administration at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is a graduate of Princeton (1975–79, class of 1931 scholar, Paul Volcker Thesis prize) and Stanford University (1980–83), where he completed his Master’s and PhD in three years. Prior to joining NUS, he worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, World Bank, Monetary Authority of Singapore, and was the Director of Research at the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Singapore.
His research interests are in international trade and finance, economic and business trends in the Asia Pacific region and economic reforms in China. He has published ten books and numerous articles in major international journals including American Economic Review, World Bank Economic Review, Long Range Planning, and Australian Journal of Management among others on economic and business issues in the Asia Pacific region. He served as a board member at the Singapore Central Provident Fund Board (1984–96) and the National Productivity Board (1989–90). He has also consulted for many organizations including Temasek, GIC, Citigroup, IBM, ATT, BP, ABN-AMRO, Ikea, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, People’s Bank of China, EDB, Areva, CapitaLand, Guangdong provincial government, Samsung, Mauritius government, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Mobil, Singapore Technology, etc.
