The Singapore Economic Review

Globalization enhances efficiency and economic growth and expands the domain of personal contact and communication. Nonetheless, globalization has also evoked discontent because of claimed social injustice. The relation between globalization and social justice therefore merits attention, in order to identify whether justifications for discontent are present and, if there are reasons for discontent, to establish whether globalization should be blamed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what affected the post-crisis exchange rates of three ASEAN countries: Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. Our critical departure from previous studies is the use of intra-daily exchange rates. The use of the intra-daily data is useful in removing possible estimation biases which the choice of numéraire may cause. It also contrasts exchange rates when official intervention is active with those when it is not active. We find significant structural breaks in the correlations when the East Asian market is open, which suggest strong monetary and real linkages among the ASEAN countries.

Using quarterly bank-level data over the period 1997–2005, this paper examines the effect of foreign bank presence on commercial banks incorporated in Thailand, using traditional and value-based performance measures as indicators of the degree of competition and proxies for the efficiency in the provision of banking services. The findings suggest that foreign bank presence is not only beneficial in terms of traditional performance measures, but also in terms of economic profit. The results with respect to economic value added and cash value added, however, cast some doubt over the presumed benefits of opening up, underlining the importance of using a proxy that considers the cost of equity and departs from standard accounting principles. Furthermore, the results indicate that foreign entry through the acquisition of domestic banks appears to have a stronger and more beneficial impact on locally incorporated banks than through the establishment of branches, with majority ownership by a foreign blockholder being of importance.

This policy note finds that the ageing of the population in Singapore will cause a reversal of the current net Central Provident Fund (CPF) contribution into a substantial net CPF withdrawal from 2025, with a peak occurring at 2035. The result is qualitatively robust to changes in the underlying assumptions of the projection. The paper then highlights the implications of this change on the exchange rate and monetary management in Singapore. Finally, the paper proposes policy measures that can help (a) mop up the excess liquidity due to the net CPF withdrawals; and (b) maintain the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)'s influence on Singapore's exchange rate at a reasonable level in the longer future.

We used Engle–Granger cointegration test to investigate and compare the long-run performance of imports and exports in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Korea and Thailand. Graphical analysis demonstrates an inherent tendency of imports and exports to move together in the long run. Cointegration and error correction results support the graphical analysis that these countries do not violate on the average the international budget constraint, and trade disequilibrium is a short-run phenomenon that is sustainable in the long run. Macroeconomic policies in the sample countries have been adequately effective to affect long-run equilibrium between imports and exports. The international events had differential impact on each country of our sample.

This paper examines whether increasing trade intensities among East Asian countries have led to a synchronization of business cycles. It extends the work of Shin and Wang (2004) in two ways: by improving the specification of their business cycle correlation equation and by extending the sample to cover the post-crisis period. The study finds that intra-industry trade, rather than inter-industry trade, is the major factor in explaining business cycle co-movements in East Asia. This result has important implications for the prospects of introducing a single currency in the region.

This paper attempts to provide conclusive evidence in favor of sensitivity of optimal commodity taxes to demographic variables. This involves estimating optimal commodity taxes for the chosen 16 Indian states, incorporating demographic profiles for each state using NSS data. Such calculations are further done under alternative welfare weights for each household. The results reveal that the introduction of demographic variables in the demand system makes the tax rates more non-uniform across commodities and across states, and significantly alters their response to changes in the social planner's perception of a household's welfare. These effects are more pronounced for certain commodities that are basic and essential in a household's basket. Differences in welfare weights also have a similar effect on tax rates, though to a lesser degree.

This paper analyzes the effects of a changing production subsidy in a model with money-in-the-utility function for households, monopolistic competition amongst an endogenously-determined number of firms, and nominal wage sluggishness that can prevent the equilibrium from attaining full employment. Its conclusion is that in a steady state with less than full employment (that is, under stagnation), a larger production subsidy will promote entry and stimulate effective demand provided that the elasticity of substitution among the differentiated products is sufficiently high. This paper is motivated by recent Japanese experiences.