Wednesday, 13 December 2017

The Straits Times

In today’s edition of The Straits Times, there was an article contribution by Professor Chew Soo Hong and Provost’s Chair Professor from the Department of Economics at NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, in which he discussed whether haze clouds decision-making. Prof Chew shared findings from a first-of-its-kind natural experiment on ambient PM2.5 and decision making that he conducted with researchers from Wuhan University, which was observed in an incentivised laboratory setting in Beijing in October 2012, before PM2.5 was included as part of the air quality measure in China.  He noted that when looking at the social costs of environmental pollution, policymakers have tended to focus on the direct economic costs, but there is a need to take into account the impact of air pollution on how people make decisions.

Click here to read the article.

Monday, 11 December 2017

Lianhe Zaobao 

This was a review of a book by Associate Professor Lee Chee Hiang from the Department of Chinese Studies at NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences on charitable organisations started by the Teochew community in Singapore. The book presented new research findings on the development of such charitable organisations, the folk beliefs and customs of the Teochew community, and the early Singapore immigrant society and charity activities.

Click here to read the article in Chinese.

Wednesday, 6 December 2017

The Straits Times

This was an article contribution by Associate Professor Irene YH Ng from the Department of Social Work and Director of Social Service Research Centre at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Assoc Prof Ng discussed the longer term implications of plans to give priority primary school admission to pupils attending kindergartens operated by the Ministry of Education. She observed that this leads to a group being created that will likely be assigned a prestige label because of the ‘insiders’ benefit of priority admission. Assoc Prof Ng opined that there is a danger that the creation of a new preferential group will further segregate pupils by socio-economic status and bring the ‘arms race’ for educational success earlier to the pre-primary level, adding that such priority admission can create more intense competition among children at a young age (and their parents) and inadvertently worsen educational inequality.

Click here to read the article.

Tuesday, 28 November 2017

The Straits Times

This was an article contribution by Dr Kelvin Seah Kah Cheng from the Department of Economics at NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, in which he discussed how we can get an accurate estimate of the value of a private university degree, relative to an autonomous university degree. Dr Seah noted that as long as there is nothing special about the threshold entry requirement, other than its use in assigning students to the different types of universities, we can reasonably attribute any difference in labour market outcomes at the threshold to the effect of university choice. This is because students immediately on both sides of the threshold are likely to be similar. He added that before such an exercise is done, it would be premature to sound the death knell for private schools.

 Click here to read the article.