A Matter of Trust: Understanding Worldwide Public Pension Conversions

This paper seeks to explain the key two stylized facts of fundamental reforms to social security systems worldwide: Why have so many countries reformed when traditional systems seem, at first glance, to have a higher probability of delivering a secure retirement income? Why have these reforms been larger in developing countries facing less severe demographic problems? We show that an OLG voter model can answer both questions. Larger reforms are motivated by a fundamental breakdown in intergenerational trust while smaller reforms are caused by a lack of trust in the ability of the government to save. Empirical analysis seems to support the model.

Evaluating human versus machine learning performance in classifying research abstracts

We study whether humans or machine learning (ML) classification models are better at classifying scientific research abstracts according to a fixed set of discipline groups. We recruit both undergraduate and postgraduate assistants for this task in separate stages, and compare their performance against the support vectors machine ML algorithm at classifying European Research Council Starting Grant project abstracts to their actual evaluation panels, which are organised by discipline groups. On average, ML is more accurate than human classifiers, across a variety of training and test datasets, and across evaluation panels. ML classifiers trained on different training sets are also more reliable than human classifiers, meaning that different ML classifiers are more consistent in assigning the same classifications to any given abstract, compared to different human classifiers. While the top five percentile of human classifiers can outperform ML in limited cases, selection and training of such classifiers is likely costly and difficult compared to training ML models. Our results suggest ML models are a cost effective and highly accurate method for addressing problems in comparative bibliometric analysis, such as harmonising the discipline classifications of research from different funding agencies or countries.National Research Foundation (NRF)Published versionThe study was partially funded by the Singapore National Research Foundation, Grant No. NRF2014-NRF-SRIE001-02

Congestion control in Singapore

This paper reviews the development and implementation of congestion control policies in Singapore since the introduction of the Area Licensing Scheme in 1975. It examines the city state's experience of vehicle quotas, cordon charging and electronic road pricing. It also looks at developments in public transport and urban planning to improve accessibility and congestion control. Both public attitudes to congestion policies and their economic effects are discussed and analysed

Discrimination, trust and social capital: Three essays in applied public economics

In the first essay. Competition to Default? Racial Discrimination in the Market for Online Peer-to-Peer Lending , I investigate the incidence and causes of racial discrimination in an online lending market. Competition ameliorates discrimination, by reducing interest rates for black borrowers at twice the rate compared to whites. However, competition does not appear to drive interest rates towards the economic costs of lending to blacks, thus, racial prejudice does not appear to drive disparate treatment. I conclude the market appears to possess an inefficient degree of statistical discrimination. The second essay, A Matter of Trust: Understanding Worldwide Public Pension Conversions and written with Kent Smetters, provides a novel explanation for the recent wave of public pension reforms. Why have so many countries reformed when traditional systems are likely superior in design? Why have these reforms typically have been larger in developing countries facing less severe demographic problems? We show that an overlapping-generations median voter model can help answer both questions. Larger reforms are motivated by a fundamental breakdown of intergenerational trust. Smaller reforms are motivated by a lack of trust in the ability of the government to save resources for smoothing demographic shocks. In the third essay, Am I My Brother\u27s Firefighter? Social Capital and the Voluntary Provision of Local Public Goods , I study the social factors affecting the quality, and provision of volunteer firefighting services. Residents protected by one of the 18.575 all-volunteer fire departments in the United States depend on the willingness of volunteers to sacrifice their time, and their lives, in the service of their neighbors. Using data from the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS), I find that residents of more homogenous communities have higher propensities to volunteer, and such communities are more likely to use volunteers departments. I find evidence of crowd-out of pure volunteers when volunteers are paid for their service, but no crowd-out effects from professional firefighters. More generally, this study contributes by providing the first direct evidence on whether social capital affects the outcomes of volunteer efforts rather than just volunteer participation

A Matter of Trust: Understanding Worldwide Public Pension Conversions,” NBER Working Paper 17015

Fundamental reform of social security systems from traditional pay-as-you-go defined benefit systems toward defined-contribution accounts represents one of the most important fiscal policy changes worldwide during the past century. Current explanations of this phenomenon lack theoretical justification or empirical support. In fact, the traditional pension model is likely superior along several important dimensions. So why have so many countries reformed? Adding to this puzzle is that these reforms have taken on numerous shapes and sizes across the world, and typically have been larger in developing countries facing less severe demographic problems. We propose a simple model of “intergenerational trust ” that is consistent with these stylized facts. Empirical analysis is provided that supports the basic tenets of the model

Workshop 5 report: How much regulation should disruptive transport technologies be subject to?

In recent years, the advent of disruptive transport technologies has started to transform the transport sector. Governments are therefore challenged to find the right balance in transport governance frameworks that allows new services, practices, and entrants to emerge, but also ensures adequate and equitable service delivery, a fair and competitive landscape, and fulfillment of policy objectives. Workshop five of the 16th International Conference on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport (Thredbo 16) focused on this challenge. Eight studies of governance approaches to ridesourcing, autonomous public transport, and Mobility-as-a-Service were reported. These examples catered for a discussion on the development status of disruptive transport technologies and on what roles governments have adopted, what types of regulations and policies they have been using, and what is known about the impacts of these approaches. Drawing on this discussion, the workshop advocates transport scholars to work on the theoretical grounding of key concepts and to elicit empirical evidence from trials and operations on disruptive transport technologies’ effects on e.g. equity, employment, and modal shares. To governments wishing to facilitate the development and diffusion of disruptive transport technologies, the workshop offers ten recommendations that in sum describe an explorative, collaborative, and reflexive governance approach

Are fines compatible with building a truly fine country?

Abstract not available

Pitfalls of self-reported measures of self-control: Surprising insights from extreme debtors

10.1111/jopy.12733JOURNAL OF PERSONALIT