Tan Khee Giap

A new approach to measuring the liveability of cities: the Global Liveable Cities Index

This paper advocates a new measure of liveability – the Global Liveable Cities Index (GLCI) – to rank the world’s major cities. The GLCI advances the measurement of the ‘liveability’ construct by taking into account the multidimensional sensibility of diverse groups of ordinary persons across 64 cities. The paper also compares the GLCI with six well known city indices from the literature and finds that the GLCI performs as a relevant liveability indicator for diverse groups of ordinary persons. In addition, the paper conducts policy simulations to find that city planners interested in attracting talent of a given personality type can invest in areas with low scores in the GLCI.

Fiscal sustainability and competitiveness in Europe and Asia

1. Overview 2. Fiscal Sustainability and Competitiveness: Definitions, Issues and Measures 3. Nordics 4. GIPSIs 5. North Asia and India 6. Southeast Asia 7. Drawing Lessons

Development Growth Models for Singapore and Malaysia: A Geweke Causality Analysis

Purpose Nearly five decades after undergoing a structural transformation and navigating several external shocks, both Singapore and Malaysia are now grappling with some crucial policy challenges that necessitate a course-correction in order to sustain their growth momentum, going forward. In light of the renewed interest in understanding the growth constraints faced by the two countries, this paper aims to empirically explore the drivers of economic growth in both Singapore and Malaysia, using data from 1975 to 2012. Design/methodology/approach The paper employs a novel empirical approach-the Geweke causality analysis-to investigate the causal drivers of economic growth in Singapore and Malaysia. Intuitively, the Geweke causality analysis helps us understand and measure the linear dependence and feedback between multiple time series variables. To that effect, we perform both a bi-variate as well as a multi-variate causality analysis. Findings The empirical results established using Geweke causality analys...

Fiscal Sustainability and Competitiveness: Definitions, Issues, and Measures

This chapter explores the issue of fiscal sustainability and the nexus between public debt and export competitiveness with applications to selected European and Asian economies. The next section briefly outlines some analytical concepts relating to fiscal sustainability as well as their practical limitations. Section 2.2 directly links the issue of export competitiveness with fiscal sustainability and focuses on empirical estimates of debt thresholds. Section 2.3 uses the estimates derived to ascertain the extent of fiscal space or lack thereof in a set of country case studies in Europe and Asia. Section 2.4 concludes.

North Asia and India

The period between the Asian financial crisis and the global financial crisis (2000–07) was marked by a favourable macroeconomic environment combined with generally healthy fiscal positions and robust economic growth across most of emerging Asia (i.e., excluding Japan). The slump in 2007–08 forced several countries to opt for massive countercyclical policies to deal with the crisis, and this in turn worsened their fiscal positions. While the downturns induced by the global financial crisis proved to be temporary in Asia, there are two specific sources of domestic risk that appear to be a common denominator in most economies there. The first concerns rapidly inflating asset prices, particularly in the property sector. The second refers to aging-related expenditures that are likely to add to these economies’ fiscal pressures in the future. In order to maintain fiscal sustainability in the future, these economies must undertake greater efforts to curtail increases in social sector spending. Considering that the Asian economies do not have easy financing options available to meet the challenges arising from growing aging-related expenditures, especially with narrow and low tax bases, it is important that the economies take fiscal prudence seriously and make sure that they remain fiscally sustainable in the long run.