Singapore’s poor productivity performance


Academic Views

Private sector economists Manu Bhaskaran and Nigel Chiang argue that in both labour and total factor productivity, Singapore is under-performing relative to trading partners, peers and OECD countries, reflecting deep and systemic issues in the economy, especially in sectors where an over-reliance on labour force growth through migrant labour has affected incentives to invest. This is […]

November 20, 2020

Politically apathetic no more? Young Singaporean perspectives on race and civil liberties


Academic Views, GE2020

Saleena Saleem (a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool) and Adi Saleem Bharat (an LSA Collegiate Fellow in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan and the co-founder and coordinator of the Jewish-Muslim Research Network) consider the implications of the […]

August 5, 2020

Labour in Singapore’s post-COVID-19 economy


Academic Views, Coronavirus

Economists Pang Eng Fong and Linda Lim (emeritus professors of strategy at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University, and the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, respectively) discuss the implications of the COVID-19 crisis for the position of migrant labour in Singapore’s economic model. Samantha Teresa, SMU BBA […]

June 2, 2020

Rethinking costs and the social compact


Academic Views, Coronavirus

Elvin Ong, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for Southeast Asia Research at the University of British Columbia and Overseas Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of Singapore, argues that reform of the economy—including to reduce dependency on low-waged migrant labour—should be done on a progressive basis. Over the past few weeks, Singaporeans have been actively […]

May 22, 2020