Every year, a large number of women immigrate as brides from developing countries to developed countries in East Asia. This phenomenon virtually did not exist in the early 1990s, but foreign brides currently comprise 4 to 35 percent of newlyweds in these developed Asian countries. This paper...

We provide novel evidence on how the COVID-19 global health and economic crisis is affecting overall life satisfaction and domain-specific satisfaction using data from a monthly longitudinal survey of middle-aged and older Singaporeans. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we document...

The COVID–19 pandemic has challenged the capacity of healthcare systems around the world and can potentially compromise healthcare utilization and health outcomes among non-COVID–19 patients. Using monthly panel data of nationally representative middle-aged and older Singaporeans, we...

We estimate the network externality of a public transit system by examining the effects of its expansion on the housing market. Our results show that a major expansion of Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system increased the price of apartments within 0.5 km of a pre-expansion station by...

For most people, buying a home is their single largest financial commitment. Previous research shows that Chinese buyers pay less for homes with unlucky addresses and more for homes with lucky addresses. Using Singapore data on housing transactions combined with a plethora of individual buyer...

We study roughly 11,000 loans from unlicensed moneylenders to over 1,000 borrowers in Singapore and provide basic information about this understudied market. Borrowers frequently expect to repay late. While lenders do rely on additional punishments to enforce loans, the primary cost of not...

We examine the short-term impact of COVID-19 on consumption spending and labor market outcomes. Using monthly panel data of individuals mainly aged 50–70 in Singapore, we find that COVID-19 reduced consumption spending and labor market outcomes immediately after its outbreak, and its negative...

We examine Singapore's fairly homogeneous private-housing market and show that new apartments on historical multi-century leases trade at a non-zero discount relative to property owned in perpetuity. Descriptive regressions indicate that new apartments with 825 to 986 years of tenure remaining...

chorus of the tragedy which plays on the world stage. The main thesis of our work is that,despite the triumphant rhetoric praising the merits of perfect competition, the global fields ofthe dysfunctional market system have mushroomed in what we call Warrant Economics forthe Free-Market...

We address the long standing question of whether production factors are paid their marginalproducts. We propose a new approach that circumvents the need to specify productionfunctions and to compare marginal products to factor payments. Our approach is based on asimple equation that directly...