The Singapore Economic Review

By the end of the 1990s, the Singaporean government had recognised the need to open up its banking sector so as to remain competitive in the global economy. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) thus began deregulation of the banking sector in 1999 to strengthen the competitiveness of local banks relative to their foreign competitors through mergers. This paper employs a nonparametric Malmquist productivity index to provide measure of productivity, technological change and efficiency gains over the period 1995–2005. The findings reveal some total factor productivity growth associated with deregulation and scale efficiency improvement largely from mergers amongst the local banks.

This paper explores the issue of discrimination against Asian migrants relative to their non-Asian counterparts in the Australian labour market. A unique and consistent data set from three waves of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia (LSIA, 1993–95) is used to estimate probit models of the probability of being unemployed separately for males and females of Asian and non-Asian origins. The unemployment probability gap between the two migrant groups is decomposed into two components, the first associated with differences in their human capital and other demographic characteristics, and the second with differences in their impacts (called discrimination). The results provide an evidence of discrimination against Asian male migrants in all three waves. Discrimination against Asian females is detected only in the first wave. The Asian females who are professionals and can speak English 'well' are rather favoured relative to their non-Asian counterparts. Thus, the empirical evidence on discrimination against migrants of Asian origin is mixed.

Macroeconomic instability, characterised by high inflation, fragile foreign exchange positions and high rates of interest, increases uncertainty and hence slows down economic growth. While this is generally accepted, the usual perception about the agricultural sector, particularly in India, is that it is immune to general macroeconomic shocks. In this paper, we examine this perception using a vector autoregressive model. The findings show that the agricultural sector is not insulated from macroeconomic shocks.

The literature on the role of institutions in economic growth and development is well-established. In contrast, the relationship between institutional quality and competitiveness, while important, received much less attention until recently, when there has been a growing interest in incorporating variables representing institutional quality into country competitiveness indices. Such attempts take cognizance of the results from cross-country empirical findings. However, any attempt to construct a satisfactory mapping of institutions to competitiveness is fraught with difficulties, including data consistencies, omission of causal factors and the lack of theoretical foundations. Some of these difficulties stem from differences in the overall objectives of the research literature and the development of competitiveness indices. The research literature can explain why, whether and what type of institutions are important, but such findings do not lend themselves to the construction of appropriate policy variables.

This paper studies sources of fluctuations in real and nominal US dollar exchange rates in Cambodia and Lao PDR by decomposing them into the components induced by real and nominal factors. These shocks affecting real and nominal exchange rates are identified by using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model with the long-run neutrality restriction of Blanchard and Quah (1989). The empirical analysis demonstrates that real shocks in direction of depreciation lead to real and nominal depreciation, while nominal shocks induce long-run nominal depreciation but real appreciation in the short-run. Several economic implications are also discussed.

In Singapore personal injury litigations, successful claimants usually receive their compensations as a lump sum. The main advantage of a lump sum payment is that the proceedings can be concluded with a 'clean break' between the parties. The lump sum is a result of discounting the future pecuniary values into a single present-day amount, considering the time value of money and the claimant's mortality. Conventionally, lump sum awards are determined by making reference to a spread of amounts in comparable cases. However, a fairer method would be one that involves input from not only lawyers but also other experts including economists and actuaries. This study, which is carried out by an inter-professional working group, provides a set of actuarially computed tables for use in personal injury settlements in Singapore. The calculations involve a consideration of recent advancements in stochastic mortality modeling and an empirical study on the econometrics of real returns on risk-free assets in Singapore. We then present two recent personal injury cases in Singapore, aiming at helping the Singapore legal profession understand and use the economic principles with actuarial tables, and educating economists and actuaries the legal concerns and concepts in personal injury cases.

We examine the impact of exchange rates on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into the United States in the context of a model that allows for the interdependence of FDI over time. Interdependence is modeled as a two-state Markov process where the two states can be interpreted as either a favorable or an unfavorable environment for FDI in an industry. We use unbalanced industry-level panel data from the US wholesale trade sector and our analysis yields two main results. First, we find evidence that FDI is interdependent over time. Second, under a favorable FDI environment, the exchange rate has a positive and significant effect on the average rate of FDI inflows.

This paper studies the relationship between the profits of firms and countervailing duties in vertically related markets characterized by oligopolies. It is shown that a countervailing duty equal to the foreign export subsidy is required to neutralize the impact of foreign export subsidies on the profits of domestic firms. The domestic country has an incentive to impose a countervailing duty on foreign final goods even though foreign governments only subsidize exports of intermediate goods. In addition, foreign exporting firms may benefit from a countervailing duty more than a foreign export subsidy.