Research Seminar Series

The ASB Research Seminar Series provides a forum for academics from a broad range of disciplines to present their research work. Attendants typically comprise ASB faculty as well as researchers at the World Bank, SACEAN, Bank Negara Malaysia, University of Malaya and other local institutions. Seminars are usually held on Wednesdays at lunch time. If you would like to present at the ASB Research Seminar Series please contact Anella Munro (anella.munro@asb.edu.my), Gabriele Ciminelli (gabriele.ciminelli@asb.edu.my) or Kevin Crow (kevin.crow@asb.edu.my)

Upcoming Talks

Date/Time
Speaker
Title & Abstract

8 Apr 2020
Wednesday

Neha Tripathi
National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School

TBD
Field: Management and Organisation

Past Talks
Date/Time
Speaker
Title & Abstract

25 Mar 2020 [CANCELLED]
Wednesday

Srini Reddy
Singapore Management University

TBD
Field: Marketing

26 Feb 2020
Wednesday

Travers Child
China Europe International Business School (Shanghai)

Aid Fragmentation, Corruption, and Conflict
Field: Development economics

20 Jan 2020
Monday

Jansen Calamita
National University of Singapore (NUS)

Investment Law and Corporate Governance (TBC)
Field: International Investment Law

15 Jan 2020
Wednesday

Rodrigo Bandeira-de-Mello
Marrimack College (US), Université Paris-Dauphine

Untitled
Field: Strategy

27 Nov 2019
Wednesday

Kathryn Hochstetler
LSE, UK

Global Environmental Governance and International Development
Field: International Development

20 Nov 2019
Wednesday

Wei Yu
NUS, Industrial Systems Engineering and Management

Does Childhood Adversities Create Great Entrepreneurs? A Systematic Investigation of Childhood Adversity, Resilience and Entrepreneurs’ Career Success
Field: Entrepreneurship

13 Nov 2019
Wednesday

Cristiano Bellavitis
The University of Auckland

Untitled
Field: Entrepreneurial finance

30 Oct 2019
Wednesday

Mike Mai
NUS Business School

When does gender matter for creativity in groups? Examining the interactive effect of gender composition and perspective variety on group creativity
Field: Organizational Behavior

9 Oct 2019
Wednesday

Ralf van der Lans
HKUST

Seeding of Viral Marketing Campaigns in Social Networks
Field: Marketing

2 Oct 2019
Wednesday

James Yetman
CIS

Contagion Risk Among Big Global Banks
Field: Finance

25 Sept 2019
Wednesday

Alessandro Fergnani
NUS Business School

Corporate Foresight: A New Frontier for Strategy and Managment
Field:Future studies

18 Sept 2019
Wednesday

Jeremy Goh
Singapore Management University

Corporate Governance and Bond Evaluation
Field: Finance

11 April 2019
Thursday

Tuan Phan
Associate Professor,
NUS, Singapore

Shopping or Dining? Analyzing User Behavior due to Flight Delays

Flight delays are costly to passengers, the air travel industry, businesses, and the overall economy. Yet, there is little empirical evidence on how passengers behave and spend their time as a result of given time due to schedule disruptions. In this study, we use a large proprietary dataset on passengers’ indoor movements from a major airport and publicly available flight delay data to study how flyers spend their time due to flight delays.

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We find that, on average, for every ten minutes of delay, passengers spend twenty additional seconds near shops and 8 seconds near dining establishments.

Furthermore, we find that passengers at lower rated airlines are more likely to spend time at dining establishment. Our findings can aid airlines and airports to better manage passengers satisfaction due to service disruptions.

27 March 2019
Wednesday

Anella Munro
Senior Advisor,
Reserve Bank of New Zeland, New Zealand

A Prudential Stable Funding Requirement and Monetary Policy, in a Small Open Economy
Post crisis, we have introduced regulation to make the financial system safer. Do these regulations prevent the build-up of risk or shift the point of risk? How do they interact with monetary policy? This presentation looks at the stable funding requirement (SFR), part of the Basel III liquidity regulation that came into effect in 2018, and part of the liquidity policy introduced in New Zealand, in 2010.

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The first part of the presentation is focused on a paper that examines the interaction of the SFR and monetary policy, in a macroeconomic model. To incorporate the policy in a macroeconomic model, we need a bank with richly specified liabilities, which requires innovations to the model structure. The model is estimated using New Zealand data, the effect of the policy in the macro-economy is explored, and its impact on monetary policy trade-offs is evaluated. A higher SFR amplifies a bond funding spread shock, but is passive in the transmission of other model shocks, only affecting the composition of funding. Overall, monetary policy trade-offs are only slightly worsened, but are worsened in states when the zero lower bound is likely to bind. Trade-offs can be improved when monetary policy leans against credit growth.

The second part of the presentation considers broader implications of the paper, and challenges for financial stability policy, including the risk that unstable funding has just changed its name.

20 March 2019
Wednesday

Asad Ata
Associate Professor,
MISI, Malaysia

Sustainability for Certification or Certification for Sustainability: The Palm Oil Paradox
Field: Sustainability

With local and international pressures, there is race towards benchmarking palm oil against local and global sustainability standards. Amidst record-low prices and restrictive export criteria how does it affect the Independent Small Holder farmer for Oil Palm contributing most upstream in the palm oil supply chain? The risk of being the first one to be culled out in the name of sustainability is real. How do we enable ethical and responsible sourcing while safeguarding the interest of some of the many small players in the supply chain who may live day to day on a mere subsistence level and are furthest away from any endorsement to sustainability.

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Dr. Ata has been working with the small farmers in state of Johor in Malaysia for the past 5 years where their concentration is the highest and the land size very small. Dr. Ata’s talk will be about – how do we translate global commitments to sustainability through successful supply chain engagement into true partnerships and meaningful collaboration across stakeholders.

13 March 2019
Wednesday

Andrew Coleman
Senior Lecturer,
University of Otago, New Zealand Productivity Commission, and New Zealand Treasury, New Zealand

When I’m 64, am I an age apart
Field: Macroeconomics

WHEN I’M 64:WHAT DO NEW ZEALANDERS WANT IN A RETIREMENT INCOME POLICY?

In this paper we describe how multi-criteria decision analysis was used to investigate the preferences of a nationally representative sample of New Zealanders with respect to retirement income policies. Using the estimates of individual preferences over seven different aspects of retirement income policy, we find that a policy which raises taxes to prefund the government retirement income scheme is supported by a majority of people of all ages and income groups. Our results suggest that multi-criteria decision has considerable potential in helping policy makers identify and develop policies that are aligned with people’s preferences.

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AN AGE APART? PENSIONS, PUBLIC OPINION, AND THE PREFERENCES OF POLICY-MAKERS.

There is growing evidence of a disconnect between the preferences of the general public and those of policy making ‘elites’. This paper uses a new technique based on multiple-criteria decision-making surveys to compare the range of preferences held by the general public and the staff of a major New Zealand government policy-making agency to ascertain the extent the preferences of the staff members systematically differ from those of the general public. The survey concerns the
relative importance of seven aspects of retirement income policy. We show a large proportion of the agency’s staff held minority viewpoints, and few had preferences similar to those held by the largest public subgroups. By identifying these differences, management of a policy-making organisation can ensure the diversity of views held by the public are not ignored simply because the views of the organisation’s staff are insufficiently diverse.

11 March 2019
Monday

Maria Teresa Punzi
Assistant Professor,
Webster University Vienna, Austria

Environmental Risk and Financial Stability
Field: Macroeconomics

This project connects environmental problems with fields of economics and finance, by highlighting how climate change policy affects the economy through the banking channel. Financial instability arises from: (i) environmental policy affects entrepreneurs’ profitability and firms’ liquidity; (ii) banks price climate change risk by charging higher lending rates.

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As a result, firms’ default increases in the non-green sector. Such environmental risk reveals a spillover effect from the non-green to the green sector through bank capital and bank funding channels: banks charge higher lending rates to all sectors in order to restore the balance sheet due to the foregone loans, thus contributing to lower demand and supply of funds.

Central banks and financial regulators can play an active role in promoting investment, while maintaining their mandate of stable inflation and financial stability.

14 February 2019
Thursday

Anurag Singh
PhD Candidate,
Columbia University, USA

Clustered Sovereign Defaults
Field: Macroeconomics and international trade

Clustered sovereign defaults, where multiple countries default in a relatively short period of time, is a recurring phenomenon, yet there is a lack of quantitative models designed to study them. This paper builds a quantitative framework to study clustered defaults, and investigates the nature of shocks and the mechanism through which these shocks lead countries to clustered defaults. The paper begins with a joint estimation of structural parameters that drive the output process of 24 countries and a process for the world interest rate.

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The postulated output process includes transitory and permanent global components, as well as transitory and permanent country-specific components. The paper then builds a sovereign default model augmented with financial frictions at the firm level. The model and the estimation process of driving forces are validated jointly when the shocks, estimated independently of the model or of default data, are fed into the model and the model reproduces the clustered default of 1982. The two main findings of the paper are: (1) the primary driver of clustered defaults is global shock to the transitory component of output; and (2) contrary to what is commonly believed, the Volcker interest rate hike was not a decisive factor for the 1982 developing country debt crisis.

13 February 2019
Wednesday

Gabriele Ciminelli
Projects Officer,
IMF, USA

Policy Guidance and the International Transmission of Macro News: Evidence from Investment Funds
Field: International finance, applied macroeconomics

Cross-border portfolio capital flows have been shown to depend, in part, on risk perceptions and U.S. monetary policy. This paper contends that U.S. macroeconomic data releases are another important ‘global’ factor driving cross-border flows and that their effect depends on the guidance provided by the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed). I source data on allocations into investment funds and study the response of U.S. investors to domestic employment news, focusing on the period following the Great Financial Crisis.

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I show that, when the Fed complemented its zero-rate policy with calendar-based forward guidance, monetary policy expectations were insensitive to macro releases. Absent implications for future policy, positive news increased confidence about the economy, lowered uncertainty and led investors to re-balance their portfolios toward faster growing and riskier countries. On the other hand, as the Fed progressively changed guidance to signal that it was ready to withdraw policy accommodation, investors perceived the same positive news to bring forward the moment of policy normalization and reacted by reducing their foreign market exposures. Countries with better institutions experienced less negative inflows, while those with a more open capital account fared worse. These findings highlight an important role of central bank guidance in determining how investors shift capital across countries in response to shocks. They also provide novel evidence of investors risk-taking abroad, following positive shocks at home, during periods of accommodative policy guidance.

8 February 2019
Friday

Triwit Ariyathugun
PhD Candidate,
University of Chicago, USA

Asset Pricing Implications of the Interest on Reserves Policy
Field: Macroeconomics

Since October 2008, the Federal Reserve System began paying interest on reserves balances held by financial institutions. My work examines the effects of this monetary policy on asset prices and macroeconomic outcomes. To do so, I develop a dynamic heterogeneous-agent asset pricing model in which banks take leverage by borrowing from households. Banks have a choice of depositing reserves with the government. The government collects taxes from households to pay the interest on reserves. This policy reduces banks’ risk-taking, interpretable as less risky lending made to the real economy. Banks’ net worth becomes less volatile.

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The risky loan commands a higher risk premium. The cumulative return process on risky loan faces both higher mean and higher volatility. The policy further generates macroeconomic effects through a reduction in the price of capital, which results in lower investment and growth. My work generates testable implications of the impact of reserves policy on bank lending, loan pricing and loan quality. Commercial banks in Japan may face asset management challenges in an environment with positive interest on excess reserves and negative nominal interest rate.

23 Jan 2019
Wednesday

Prasanna Karhade
Assistant Professor,
The University of Hong Kong, SAR Hong Kong China

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Multi-Level Theory for Restaurant Participation on Food Delivery Platforms in India
Field: Macroeconomics

Food delivery platforms are a source of great value and are promising to grow dramatically in the next few years. Given the tremendous growth potential in food delivery platforms in India, platform providers need to understand the factors that restaurants consider before participating on platforms. We draw on multiple theoretical perspectives to model restaurant’s decision to participate on food delivery platforms.

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We argue that multi-level theorizing is necessary to explain combinations of criteria that constitute the complex, yet boundedly rational decision of platform participation. The population of 95,735 restaurants, serving a total of 135 total different cuisines, located in the 37 largest cities of India, forms the dataset for developing our multi-level theory. Our tree induction methodology, which employs high levels of pruning, empowers us to discover patterns that serve as credible approximations of the decision flows tacitly used by restaurants in deciding to participate on platforms. We identify six unique combinations of predictors across three theoretical levels, that are situated in at least four theoretical perspectives, to explain platform participation. Detailed implications for theory, practice and policy are developed.

17 Jan 2019
Thursday

Hans Genberg
Executive Director,
The SEACEN center, Malaysia

Monetary Policy Dilemmas in Emerging Markets
Field: Macroeconomics

Following the two decades of steady non-inflationary economic expansion during the Great Moderation, inflation targeting and a freely floating exchange rate was declared ‘international best practice’ in monetary policy. Many central banks, particularly in advanced economies, adopted it as their strategy. In addition, the prevailing view among a majority of academics and central bankers was that sharp movements in asset prices and financial imbalances should not influence central bank policy.

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The financial crisis that started in 2007-08 led to a reassessment of this conventional view. Now there is a growing consensus that financial stability should be added as an objective pursued by central banks. In many emerging market economies, central banks are also concerned with volatility of capital flows and associated exchange rate fluctuations. This raises a number of issues that will be discussed in the presentation:

– Do central banks have enough policy instruments to deal with a multitude of objectives?
– Are these instruments effective in the context of increasing integration of international financial markets?
– How can we ensure that policies to achieve multiple objectives to not end up operating at cross-purposes?
– Should central banks use the policy interest rate to deal with financial imbalances in the economy?
– Should central banks lean against changes in exchange rates?
– Is there a role for capital controls as a policy tool?
– Is there a risk of overburdening the central bank with too many objectives? Should some have precedence over others?

These are all questions that central banks, particularly in emerging markets, are struggling to find answers to. The presentation will discuss them both from a conceptual perspective and with reference to actual practice in some South-East Asian central banks.