This project aims to generate new insights on the impact of major technological shifts on the maritime industry and maritime trade. The project is to be conducted in collaboration with MPA, the World Bank and NTU to provide a short, high-level report on this topic and will be announced at the “Maritime Outlook Forum” in Oct 2019 The project discusses key technological trends under Thrust 1 (Efficient intelligent world-class next-generation port) and Thrust 5 (Sustainable maritime environment and energy) of the Singapore Maritime R&D roadmap, and aims to understand the potential impact of these trends on the maritime industry and maritime trade in Singapore. The technology trends include : 1.Manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing 2.e-commerce and impact on logistics and distribution patterns 3.Blockchain and its application to shipping documents and trade finance

Funded by a grant from the Ng Teng Fong Charitable Foundation, this is a follow-on from a pilot project funded by the NUS Business School HSS Seed Fund. This 2-year project commenced in July 2018 and will be carried out in collaboration with Tsinghua University. Recent public policy focus on university-industry collaboration has created a tension between the core university mission of university research and the “third mission” of contributing economic value and societal impact. This study frames the debate in the context of Stokes’ quadrant model, which postulates two motivations for scientific research: (a) furthering fundamental scientific understanding, and (b) addressing user problems. Using data on NUS, Tsinghua and Stanford University faculty members, the project examines the links between scientific motivation of individual researchers and the technology commercialization outcomes achieved. Comparative analysis between NUS and Tsinghua will examine the role of heterogeneous institutional structures. A proposed focal research area is talent mobility as a source of academic entrepreneurship, and how research motivation influences this relationship.

In this project, I explore the application of labour market information (e.g., financial analyst turnover, corporate accounts’ career paths, the revolving door practice of regulator, etc.) in topics related to financial accounting. For example, I use an innovative dataset of lower-level employee profiles from a large professional social network to examine the turnover of lower-level accounting employees in financial misconduct. Specifically, I examine two research questions: (1) whether accounting employees proactively leave before financial misconduct is revealed; (2) whether accounting employees who do not proactively leave are punished in the labour market after financial misconduct is revealed. In another working paper, my co-author and I assemble a comprehensive dataset of individual characteristics (e.g., SEC-affiliation, educational background, gender) of lawyers based on LinkedIn and other public sources. We examine the impact of SEC-affiliated lawyers on the SEC comment letter process and shed light on the concern that former SEC employees may continue to influence the agency even after they leave.

Shadow banking, or credit intermediation outside the formal banking system, has continued to evolve since the 2007–09 Global Financial Crisis. The shadow banking sector in China has been growing by more than 20% per year from 2007 to 2017. Due to data limitations, not much is known about the cause of this rapid growth or the potential impact it has on financial and economic stability. This study aims at filling this gap in the literature by examining micro-level data compiled from primary sources. I identify shadow banking activities of both regulated banks and non-financial firms in this project and plan to study their performances and risks. With the Chinese economy is at the forefront of some of the crucial developments in this area, this study can also shed light on the economics of shadow banking.

A central question in human development and policy design is how environmental factors and interventions at different stages shape individuals’ human capital. This project investigates the long-run effect of adolescent environment on non-cognitive skills. We will use exogenous shocks that influence individuals’ adolescent environment, such as the historical episode of Cultural Revolution in China, where millions of teenagers were forced to leave their urban homes and life to work in the countryside, to establish a causal link between adolescent experience and long-run non-cognitive outcomes, including their core beliefs, preferences, and health outcomes.

To generate and compete for product demand, firms usually promote product information (product functionality, product comparisons, product quality, selling price, warranty and returns policies, etc.) to create consumer awareness and to help consumers to make informed purchasing decisions. Besides “product promotion information”, most firms are tight-lipped about supply chain and cost related information. However, we are intrigued by the radical strategy implemented by a San Francisco-based apparel retailer Everlane.com who discloses its supply chain (input) costs (material and labour costs) as well as the average profit margin by other firms selling similar items. In general, the manufacturing cost of a product is a closely-guarded secret for two major concerns: (1) cost transparency can make a firm more vulnerable to competition; and (2) cost transparency can create unhappy consumers who feel that the firm’s profit margin is unreasonably high (i.e., the selling price is too high relative to the manufacturing cost). While many firms are keeping their cost information as trade secrets, third-party infomediaries now offer various product cost information online. As more infomediaries are offering cost estimates about different products, we wonder if a firm should disclose its cost information voluntarily. In this project, we examine the following research questions. Firstly, does a monopoly benefit from voluntary cost transparency? If so, what are the key market parameters that determine the extent of the benefit? Secondly, under what conditions would competing firms adopt voluntary cost transparency? Would cost transparency undermine the competitiveness of the firm? To this end, we first develop a theoretical framework to examine if firms have incentives to adopt voluntarily cost transparency in a monopolistic setting. We then extend our analysis to a competitive setting. To validate our theoretical findings, we report on the results of our experimental findings.

A collaboration with Assistant Professor Fan Qiao of Duke-NUS Medical School, we plan apply the genome-wide association study (GWA study, or GWAS) approach to identify genetic variants in association with occupational well-being indices, such as survey measures of happiness, job satisfaction, and psychological distress. Furthermore, occupational characteristics, such as job complexity, will be used in conjunction with genetic markers, to examine the gene-environment interaction. For this study, we will study data collected from the UK Biobank, a research project that recruited more than half a million people aged between 40-69 years between 2006 and2010 across the UK. The UK Biobank project is unique because it covers a very broad range of areas such as genetics, health, social relationship, eating behaviours, and work.

Relying on a quasi-natural experiment instituted by air quality regulations during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, we examine the effect of air pollution on auditors’ behaviours. We find that a 1-percent increase in the air pollution index increases the percentage of work hours necessary for an auditor to audit a firm by 4 percent. This effect is more pronounced when the leader of an audit team is more entrenched, is older, or male. Further analysis reveals that audit quality and audit fees are not affected by air pollution. We conclude that air pollution reduces auditors’ work efficiency.

Many firms and individuals generate content online and offer them to consumers in a specific fashion: Besides the main content, they also produce samples or previews. Interested consumers will further consume the main content. Recently, pay-what-you-want (PWYW) has emerged as a new and popular monetisation method both in the offline world (e.g., entrance fee to museums, performances, etc.) and in cyberspace (e.g., live streaming). By PWYW, consumers are given the autonomy to set the price (including zero price) they want to pay for the products. By studying the WeChat Media Platform, this research uses a combination of difference-in-difference and structural empirical models to understand key issues regarding content monetisation and preview design. For instance, we examine how previews should be designed when PWYW becomes trendy, and the potential substitutions between different monetisation methods for content providers.

In this project, I explore the antecedents and consequences of employees’ unethical pro-organisational behaviour (UPB) through the lens of moral decoupling – a moral reasoning process whereby individuals separate their perceptions of morality from their perceptions of performance. First, I argue that employees increase their engagement in UPBs when they (1) see their supervisors doing the same and (2) believe that their supervisors endorse moral decoupling. Second, I argue that employees’ UPBs are only positively related to supervisors’ evaluations of their job performance when supervisors themselves report that they morally decouple. I test these hypotheses in a field sample of supervisor¬–employee dyads and two experimental studies. This combination of studies highlights the complex link between ethics and perceptions of performance in organisations.