Asia Competitiveness Institute, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore
Summary: While it seems that China will continue as the world’s super factory and leading exporter, Vietnam is increasingly exporting products similar in structure to Chinese exports. Vietnam is emerging as an attractive option for international firms as a cheaper and better manufacturer than China.[1],[2] Using the United Nations Comtrade database from 2004 – 2021, […]
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Summary: When evaluating a regional policy, it is important to consider composition changes, which are changes in the population or economy that result from the policy. Failing to account for these changes can lead to misleading evaluations. In a recent ACI working paper publication, we examine the effect of the Greater Bay Area on basic […]
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Summary: China’s tourism industry has been hit hard in the past three years due to its zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19. According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the nation’s tourism industry generated total revenue of RMB 6.63 trillion in 2019. The tourism revenue declined to RMB 2.23 trillion, RMB 2.92 trillion and RMB 2.04 […]
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Summary: Credit markets underwent tremendous technological transformation post the global financial crisis. While banks and other traditional lenders continue to be the main source of financing for households and firms, other alternative forms of financing, like digital lending, are gaining ground. Such “FinTech credit” provides direct credit access or facilitates credit access through online platforms. […]
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Summary: The residential status of patent applicants indicates the source of inventions in a country. Different technological development strategies of nations affect the structures of patent applicants’ profiles. For example, China’s favourable policies towards domestic innovation culminated in residents’ share in the country’s total patent filings at 90% in 2021. In contrast, 86% of Singapore […]
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Summary: ACI’s ASEAN Economic Competitiveness Analysis finds differences in the performance of Indonesia and the Philippines’ infrastructure development. Indonesia performs better in physical infrastructure, while the Philippines performs better in technological infrastructure. Such disparities are intriguing since the countries face similar geographical challenges concerning infrastructure development. The countries also have similar standards of institutional quality […]
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Summary: The Greater Bay Area strategy accelerated the “Guangzhou-Foshan Urban Integration”. The transportation time between the two cities shortened to about an hour, facilitating business expansion and labour flows. Around thirty-eight designated hospitals (thirty from Guangzhou and eight from Foshan) have shared the general medical insurance for residents in the two cities. The two cities […]
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Summary: Collaboration with overseas inventors has become an important driver for invention in Singapore. Singapore’s partnerships with overseas inventors increased by 34% compared to the previous decade. The United States remains Singapore’s most dominant partner, with one-third of all overseas co-inventor patent families. In addition, China, Germany, and India have achieved more invention collaborations in […]
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Summary: The digital economy has become a key growth engine for the next stage of development in Asia. The inclusion of digital economy related provisions into both the CPTPP and the RCEP as well as a growing body of bilateral digital economy agreements is strong evidence of the importance of attached to the growth of […]
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Summary: Are ideas harder to get? Nicholas Bloom, Charles Jones, John Van Reenen and Michael Webb (AER, 2020) documented the contrast between the continuously uprising research input and the stable total factor productivity (TFP) growth globally. In the case of Singapore, the contrast is even more striking. Since 2000, R&D personnel per million population in […]
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