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15945 results in ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

Page 768 of 798

  • Preface

  • Antal Deutsch, Hanna Zowall
  • Book:
    Compulsory Savings and Taxes in Singapore
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    21 October 2015
    Print publication:
    01 January 1988, pp v-vi

  • Summary

    The four chapters in this paper were written between November 1986 and May 1987 (before the announcement of the newly proposed long-term CPF rate), and reflect a bird's eye view of the Singapore Central Provident Fund (CPF). The CPF is a large, important, and complex instrument of the Singapore Government, and while we may have illuminated some of its facets, others may have remained hidden from us.

    On this, our first, co-operative professional effort, we divided labour by Hanna Zowall producing the tables on the computer and Antal Deutsch doing the rest. None of our efforts would have come to fruit had we not received advice and support from a number of colleagues. Mukul Asher, Glenn P. Jenkins, Lee (Tsao) Yuan, Lim Chong-Yah, and Wee Chow Hou gave us written comments. Subbiah Gunasekaran and Kenneth James helped to overcome computer problems. Monika Queisser co-operated in the production of Tables 2.1, 2.5, and 2.7. Celina Kiong typed it all with speed, accuracy, and unfailing enthusiasm.

    McGill University gave sabbatical leave to one of us to do research in Singapore during 1986-87, where the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies provided us with first class facilities and a delightful working environment. We are leaving it not only with regret, but also with a deep and abiding interest in Southeast Asia in general, and Singapore in particular.

  • II - Trade Policy Options for Indonesia

  • Book:
    The Uruguay Round
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    21 October 2015
    Print publication:
    01 January 1988, pp 38-64

  • Summary

    Economic Policy

    The extent to which Indonesia can actively participate in the GATT initiatives such as the ongoing Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations (MTN), is partly dependent on the economic policy which the government adheres to. To understand the position taken so far by Indonesia on the various issues listed in the agenda of the ongoing trade talks, multilateral and otherwise, one needs to feature the basic economic problems preoccupying Indonesia today and in the immediate future.

    Among those problems, the ones related to employment should perhaps be ranked first for various reasons. First, Indonesia's labour force is currently growing by 2.8 per cent or by 1.9 million people annually. Secondly, a large number of Indonesians were underemployed in 1985, estimated at about 23 per cent of the labour force. This calls for a growth rate which is much higher than the low 1.9 per cent and 3.2 per cent recorded in 1985 and 1986 respectively and a restructuring away from agriculture and mining (which in 1986 contributed 24 per cent and 18 per cent respectively to Gross Domestic Product) towards manufacturing whose share remained as low as 13.5 per cent in 1986 despite the rapid expansion since the early 1970s. Assuming an employment elasticity of GDP of 0.32 as estimated by the World Bank, the Indonesian economy needs to grow by about 8 per cent annually in order to generate sufficient employment for the new entrants to the labour force alone.

    The exact contribution of export performance to overall employment generation in Indonesia is unknown. Using the labour coefficient of the input-output table, however, one can estimate the employment in the export sector. It increased from just 2.1 million in 1980 to 5.3 million in 1986. While the share of export in employment is much lower than its share in GDP, employment in some sub-sectors and some regions is strongly dependent on export.

  • V - Other Aspects of Motherhood Postponement

  • Stella R. Quah
  • Book:
    Between Two Worlds
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    21 October 2015
    Print publication:
    01 January 1988, pp 37-38

  • Summary

    The main emphasis of this discussion is on the aspects of modernization and tradition as reflected in the wives' attitudes and behaviour concerning the meaning of marriage in their lives and motherhood postponement. Such aspects have been dealt with in the preceding pages. The original study included several other aspects assumed to be associated with the decision to delay parenthood, for example, the wife's perception of the decline in her own fertility and her perception of health risks for mother and child in late pregnancies. As these two are secondary aspects in the context of this presentation, it is sufficient to describe only the most salient findings.

    As originally assumed, the perceptions of health risks and diminished fertility influenced, albeit weakly, the decision on postponement. Forty per cent of the women who did not see major health risks waited for three years or more to have their first child, compared to only 28 per cent of those who did believe that it was risky for their own or their babies' health to postpone the first child. It was also found that women who saw age and declining fertility as the main disadvantages of delayed motherhood, were more likely to believe that health risks were high, compared to wives for whom the major disadvantages of postponement were mounting family or in-laws pressure to have a child or marital problems (when the husband disagreed with the wife's desire to postpone having the first child).

    Finally, some background characteristics of the wives had an impact upon the postponement decision. One such characteristic was the educational level of the wife and the couple's monthly income: the higher the level of formal education and income, the more inclined the wives were to use contraceptives. The influence of education upon parenthood decisions is well documented; the wife's education has been found to influence not only the timing of the first child but also the spacing of subsequent children.

  • IX - Conclusion

  • Soon Teck Wong
  • Book:
    Singapore's New Education System
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    18 November 2017
    Print publication:
    01 January 1988, pp 33-40

  • Summary

    WHILE it is tempting to argue that the improvements in educational attainment following the implementation of the NES are entirely due to streaming, it would be simplistic to do so. The NES merely provided the system by which education could be made more effective. For the system to work, commitment, dedication, and professionalism are required of principals and teachers. In addition, it would have been impossible to implement the NES without appropriate curricula for the new courses being developed. Had the Ministry of Education implemented the NES without obtaining at the same time the commitment and dedication of the professionals, and without developing the necessary curricula and teaching materials, the NES wouid have met with little success.

    It should be stressed that concomitant with the implementation of the NES was the expansion of the tertiary institutions as well as the various training institutions to cater to the educational and training needs of pupils leaving the school system at all levels. The provision of a wide range of educational and training opportunities outside the school system together with the provision of the range of differentiated curricula called for by the NES required tremendous additional resources. That these resources were made readily available could be seen from the rapid increase in public expenditure on education which rose from about $550 million in the financial year 1979/80 to about $1.8 billion in the financial year 1985/86. The high priority accorded to education emphasized the importance of education as an instrument for national development.

    With the successful implementation of the NES, the Singapore education system has reached a new phase in its development. The Singapore education system, like the education system of any nation in a process of rapid development, had to cater to the demands of each stage of development. Thus, in resolving the problem of providing access to education to all children in the initial stage, the “double session” system of using one school building for two sets of pupils was introduced. The need to promote national cohesiveness in the mid-1950s gave birth to the 1957 Education Ordinance to enable the government to gain control over all schools, particularly the Chinese schools. The high education wastage experienced in the 1970s prompted the Goh Report which gave birth to the New Education System.

  • 1 - Economic Trends in the United States and Their Implications for ASEAN

  • from PART I - ECONOMIC TRENDS
  • Book:
    ASEAN-U.S. Economic Relations
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    21 October 2015
    Print publication:
    01 January 1988, pp 3-23

  • Summary

    It was long thought that although other countries were dependent on the world economy, the United States was not. This clearly is no longer true, and in fact, may never have been true to the degree generally believed. In the future, the United States will be prosperous only to the extent that it can earn its way in world markets. If the world economy can make rapid progress, then the United States will do quite well. However, if the world economy is in the midst of a period of slow growth — as seems to be the case — then the U.S. economy will be lethargic.

    The crucial dependence of the United States on the world economy was recognized for policy purposes and formalized by the Group of Five (G-5) industrial countries at their meeting on 22 September 1985. Indeed, that meeting at the Plaza Hotel in New York was of such importance as to mark a change in the international monetary system. It was agreed that the U.S. dollar should depreciate in value, in particular against the Japanese yen and German deutschmark. The importance of that agreement comes from the recognition that the United States could not make economic progress with an overvalued dollar, and that depreciating the dollar could be better accomplished by international co-operation than by the United States acting on its own.

    Efforts to improve macro-economic co-ordination were carried a step further at the Tokyo Economic Summit in 1986. While actual co-ordination was not accomplished, the mere consideration of mechanisms to help bring this about was an advance. The implication of this mechanism for all countries, and ASEAN in particular, will be noted subsequently.

    Econometric models of the U.S. economy indicate that the outlook for 1986-87 is for GNP to grow at a rate of about 2.5 per cent. Since 2.5 per cent is also believed to be the rate of growth of potential income in the United States, the short-and the medium-term growth paths are seen to correspond.

  • II - Inequalities in the Tax Impact of Compulsory Retirement Savings

  • Antal Deutsch, Hanna Zowall
  • Book:
    Compulsory Savings and Taxes in Singapore
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    21 October 2015
    Print publication:
    01 January 1988, pp 18-38

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Many countries allow a limited accumulation of tax-sheltered retirement savings during the working life of the taxpayer. On retirement, these savings are usually converted to a stream of annuity payments taxable in the hands of the recipient. In Singapore, where substantial retirement savings are compulsory for all employees, tax treatment is even more beneficial. All contributions to the Central Provident Fund (CPF) are fully excluded from chargeable income for tax purposes, and the benefits emerging on retirement are not taxable. Because the Singapore personal income tax has a progressive rate structure, a dollar of deductions has a different value in each tax bracket. It is obvious, therefore, that the gains from the combination of the CPF deduction and the income tax system must vary with income. Chanoch Shreiber and Wee Chow Hou each published findings showing very substantial variations in rates of return on savers' CPF contributions, depending on their income bracket.

    This chapter reports the results of a study using Wee Chow Hou's methodology, with a modified interest rate assumption for the CPF, along with contemporary income tax rates and contribution rates to the CPF. Our results show that rates of return of CPF savers have decreased considerably, but continue to vary directly with incomes, and inversely with the length of the accumulation period. The largest declines occurred for the highest income groups and for the shortest accumulation periods.

    Method

    Wee Chow Hou examines the case of fourteen taxpayers whose “chargeable income” for tax purposes corresponds to the lower limit of each non-zero tax-bracket under the rules then prevailing. He calculates their employer-employee CPF contributions, and accumulates these forward at the then prevailing CPF interest rate of 6.5 per cent to 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, and 35 years. Each resulting terminal value is then compared, at an unknown return rate re, to a corresponding sacrifice stream consisting of contributions net of the tax savings occasioned by the favoured treatment of CPF contributions and accumulations.

  • VI - Public Reaction to Streaming

  • Soon Teck Wong
  • Book:
    Singapore's New Education System
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    18 November 2017
    Print publication:
    01 January 1988, pp 19-20

  • Summary

    THE streaming of pupils into different courses evoked strong emotional response. This was not withstanding the fact that pupils were at the time already being streamed according to ability into different classes.

    Two major arguments were advanced against streaming. First, pupils streamed to a lower course, say the Monolingual course, would have reduced access to higher education. This argument derived from an egalitarian philosophy which did not recognize differences in human ability, thereby equating “equality of opportunity” with “equality of outcome”. It had as its implicit assumption that opportunity lies in exposure to a given curriculum. Hence, the higher the curriculum made available to a particular child, the greater would be his opportunity. However, this ignored the fact that most of the pupils streamed to the lower course would have left school prematurely under a rigid education system which sought to impose a curriculum not appropriate to their needs. Greater equality of opportunity would, in fact, be accorded to these pupils if they were allowed to follow a course specially designed for them.

    Second, as errors in streaming could not be avoided entirely, a child wrongly streamed to a lower course would, in addition to becoming demoralized, suffer from the social stigma associated with the lower course. The Goh Report had, in fact, recognized that for the NES to be implemented successfully, streaming had to be as accurate as possible. The Report had therefore recommended that the first streaming be undertaken only after three or four years of primary schooling, and that intelligence tests be developed to provide the opportunity for those with potential to prove themselves. In addition, there was to be provision for lateral transfers across courses to cater for late developers and to allow errors in streaming to be remedied. Where there were reasonable doubts as to the appropriate course for a particular child, his parents should be provided with the option to decide the course his child would be streamed to.

    Hence, when the NES was implemented in the secondary schools, a fairly wide option band (about 10 per cent of those who passed the PSLE) was created. Pupils with PSLE results falling within this band could opt for either the Express course or the Normal course.

  • Japanese Experiences in Technology Transfer

  • from PART TWO - SECTION 2: JAPANESE EXPERIENCES IN TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
  • Book:
    Technology and Skills in ASEAN
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    09 November 2017
    Print publication:
    01 January 1988, pp 135-150

  • Summary

    Introduction

    While technological innovation has been at the foundation of industrial development and economic growth in any society, it has only been in Japan and other late starters of industrialization that the government has recognized the importance of national technology policies to accelerate the pace of technological innovations in the country for non-defence purposes. In Japan, as in other countries, scientists and engineers have for generations worked on the principles that govern the physiological and biological worlds, contributing to the development of new technologies as well as to the improvement of existing technologies.

    Private-sector entrepreneurs and industrialists have organized research and development laboratories where scientists and engineers have experimented with new or improved technologies with a view to developing new products, new production processes, and new materials. In Japan and other late starters of industrialization, however, the governments have come to assist the private sector to introduce innovations in strategic sectors in order to improve their productivity, diversify their production and thus strengthen their competitiveness in the international markets.

    Entrepreneurs and industrialists have for years been aware that technological innovation would not be forthcoming unless there was an economic climate conducive to it. High rates of economic growth would tend to accelerate technological innovation, while low or negative rates of growth would not. Government economic policies contributing to higher rates of economic growth have thus been welcomed by Japanese entrepreneurs and industrialists interested in technological innovations. They have also exhibited their enthusiasm over the government's incentives for promoting technological innovation in the private sector.

    In view of a higher degree of risk involved and a larger amount of investment outlays required for innovative activity in strategic sectors, the need for such incentives has increased enormously in recent years and there has been a greater appreciation in the private sector for the government's initiatives of undertaking innovation, particularly in collaboration with the private sector.

  • V - Conclusions

  • Book:
    Growth Pattern of Burmese Agriculture
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    27 November 2017
    Print publication:
    01 January 1988, pp 40-41

  • Summary

    The findings in Chapters III and IV can be summarized as follows:

  • All four forms of productivities were increasing since the first year of the Second FYP, that is, from 1974/75. The growth in productivities started at a very slow pace but gained momentum at the end of the Second FYP. However, the momentum of growth lasted about four years, slowing down at the end of the Third FYP up to 1985/86. The same pattern is found in the case of agricultural production, which confirms the strong influence of productivity on production.

  • Growth throughout the decade of study was contributed by land-saving, labour-saving, and cost-saving types of technology. Complementarity among these types of technologies are found. Thus, in general, it can be said that the general level of technology is increasing throughout the decade. Furthermore, the highest contribution to growth comes from the land-saving type of technology. Thus, the preference pattern of the present growth pattern seems to be the land-saving type of technology.

  • Among all factors contributing to the land-saving type of technology, fixed capital and current capital seemed to be the two dominant moving forces. Out of these two factors/inputs, fixed capital — comprising tractors, draught cattle, and government capital sectoral expenditure — is supposed to be more significant than current capital including state current expenditure, fertilizers, and chemical inputs.

  • Of the inputs utilized in the study, fixed capital seems to have contributed the highest share in raising land productivity at the present level of technology. The return to scale of fertilizers and other components of current capital has been declining, which suggests that fertilizer consumption may be approaching diminishing returns although it still has a share in the contribution. This means that the impact of the “Whole Township Special Rice Production Programme”, of which fertilizers and HYV seeds are the main components, is declining. Unless other “less significant” components of the package such as motive power (in the form of tractors and draught cattle), water management, and infrastructure (in the form of government expenditure) are expanded, the stagnant situation will linger on. Since the base is already high, unless the government gives timely emphasis on fixed capital and incentives (such as price reform), the performance of the agricultural sector will become sluggish and may lead to undesirable consequences in the future.

  • VI - Conclusion

  • Stella R. Quah
  • Book:
    Between Two Worlds
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    21 October 2015
    Print publication:
    01 January 1988, pp 39-41

  • Summary

    In the analysis of parenthood decisions, most studies agree that the most important predictors of the age at which a wife would have her first child are her age at marriage and the number of years she has been married. These two are demographic aspects of childbearing. In this investigation, the same two demographic aspects, particularly the number of years married, appear as the key predictors of actual postponement. When all the assumed factors tested in this study were analysed jointly (through a procedure called factor analysis), the data revealed that these two demographic aspects, that is, age at marriage and years of marriage, explained 29 per cent of the variation (the highest proportion explained by any one variable in this study) in the number of years of postponement: wives who married later had the shortest delay (maximum two years) in having their first child. Wives who married at a younger age could afford to wait three years or more.

    Such findings are informative. Yet, in the sociological inquiry into attitudes and feelings, one still needs to identify what other aspects (in addition to age and length of marriage) influence a person's decision on the timing of the first child. Hence, the objective of the preceding discussion has been to identify the influence of non-demographic factors and to explore the assumption that postponement is a choice made under certain circumstances, depending on the wife's perception of marriage, marital satisfaction and husband's agreement, for example.

    The conversations with the 233 wives in this study revealed two main aspects of their situation as wives and mothers. The search for the first aspect was carefully charted by including, as variables in the study, all aspects of marriage and family life assumed to be relevant. The general finding is that a wife would be very likely to choose delaying her first child if she believes that postponing their first child would give her and her husband a unique opportunity to enjoy their marriage (defined in modern terms); that such postponement would not create conflict between the spouses (spouses would agree on this); and that she would not be risking pregnancy complications or loss in fertility.

Page 768 of 798