Publications

Towards fairly apportioning sale proceeds in a collective sale of Strata Property

Edward TI

Cake-cutting is a longstanding metaphor for a wide range of real-world problems that involve the division of anything of value. Unsurprisingly, where owners of a strata scheme wish to end the strata scheme and collectively sell their development, one of the most contentious issues may be the apportionment of sale proceeds. In Singapore, this problem is compounded in mixed developments which have both commercial and residential elements as well as in developments with different sized units, often with disproportionate strata share values; even differing facings and the state of one’s unit may attract disenchantment when trying to apportion proceeds. This article critically analyses how New South Wales (NSW) and Singapore allocate proceeds pursuant to a collective sale of strata property. In this respect, the Strata Schemes Development Act 2015 (NSW) and Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) are significantly clearer than Singapore’s Land Titles (Strata) Act (Cap 158) as the latter does not prescribe any statutory formula for apportionment. In examining the jurisprudence and respective strata frameworks, this article proposes how proceeds in a collective sale could be more fairly apportioned.

TI, Edward S. W.. Towards fairly apportioning sale proceeds in a collective sale of Strata Property. (2020). University of New South Wales Law Journal. 43, (4), 1494-1520.

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Geography, trade, and internal migration in China

Lin MA and Tang YANG

This paper quantitatively studies the local welfare impacts of inter-city migration in China. We structurally estimate a trade model with endogenous migration decisions using data from 279 prefecture-level cities. The results suggest that inflows of migrant workers increase welfare in the destination cities between 2000 and 2005 despite their negative impacts on congestion and nominal wage. The positive local impacts of migration depend crucially on the endogenous firm entry. The positive impacts in the destination cities also spill over to the neighboring cities through inter-city trade, often leading to higher welfare gains in the nearby cities than the destination cities themselves. We also show that further relaxing the Hukou restrictions in the largest Chinese cities is welfare-improving to the local residents.

Lin Ma, Yang Tang, Geography, trade, and internal migration in China, Journal of Urban Economics, Volume 115, 2020, 103181, ISSN 0094-1190, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2019.06.004.

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What is the value of built heritage conservation? Assessing spillover effects of conserving historic sites in Singapore

Shin Bin TAN and Edward TI

Quantifying the economic benefits of built heritage facilitates the formulation and assessment of conservation policies and programs. There is however a lack of empirical research about the economic value of built heritage in Asian cities. This lack is problematic, given the rapid pace of demolition and redevelopment of historic landscapes in Asian cities. This study seeks to reduce the current gap in built heritage research by examining whether real estate premiums are generated by the designation of buildings as ‘conserved’ in Singapore, a city-state in South East Asia. Using 20 years of housing transaction data, and controlling for building, neighborhood and year fixed effects, we found that conservation designation had a positive impact on average sale prices per square meter of built area that was largest at residential locations between 800 m to 1.6 km from the conserved site. Findings also suggest that lower-cost public housing resale units gained a substantially smaller premium compared to private housing units. While our findings suggest an economic justification for building conservation programs in Asian cities, they also raise questions about such programs potential impact on neighborhood gentrification, and the need for appropriate taxation policies to ensure horizontal equity between property owners.

Tan, Shin Bin and TI, Edward S. W.. What is the value of built heritage? Assessing spillover effects of conserving historic sites in Singapore. (2020). Land Use Policy. 91, 1-24.

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Compensating Regulation of Land: UK and Singapore Compared

Edward TI

The paper aims to analyse and compare how UK and Singapore deal with compensation with respect to regulation of land (short of a physical taking). The purpose is to determine whether the non-compensation in each jurisdiction is justified. A comparative method using case law, statutes and secondary material across both jurisdictions (as well as some US case law) is adopted. Both the UK and Singapore do not provide compensation when land is affected by regulation, so long as a physical taking has not occurred. Partly because of the abolition of development rights in the UK since 1947, this position may be justified. Conversely, Singapore’s Master Plan seeks a great deal of public reliance and advertises development potential, and non-compensation is not defensible. There is very limited analysis on regulatory effects of land in the UK, and virtually none in Singapore. This would also be the first attempt to compare this aspect of the UK and Singapore’s planning regime.

TI, Seng Wei, Edward. Compensating regulation of land: UK and Singapore compared. (2019). Journal of Property, Planning and Environmental Law. 11, (2), 135-150.

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Collective best interests in strata collective sales

Edward TI

New South Wales’ (NSW) strata regime has had considerable global influence, inspiring many jurisdictions across and beyond the commonwealth. Both Singapore and British Columbia, Canada have adopted NSW’s strata model. That being said, these jurisdictions have permitted a collective sale by a supermajority of owners for some two decades while NSW only recently enacted legislation allowing for a strata scheme to be redeveloped or collectively sold via a 75% majority. This marks a significant milestone as it departs from the orthodox position requiring unanimity. Given the newness of the legislative amendments, there is no jurisprudential guidance regarding the content of a strata renewal committee’s duty in NSW. Through a comparative analysis of British Columbia and Singapore, this paper suggests how NSW could articulate the duty of care imposed on the strata renewal committee when effecting a collective sale. Being only the second State in Australia to permit strata renewal by a supermajority, the issues raised by the paper may be of some interest in coming years.

TI, Edward S. W.. Collective best interests in strata collective sales. (2019). Australian Law Journal. 93, (12), 1025-1039.

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Monthly spending dynamics of the elderly following a health shock: Evidence from Singapore

Terence C. CHENG, Jing LI, and Rhema VAITHIANATHAN

We use novel longitudinal data from 19 monthly waves of the Singapore Life Panel to examine the short-term dynamics of the effects health shocks have on household health and non-health spending and income by the elderly. The health shocks we study are the occurrence of new major conditions such as cancer, heart problems, and minor conditions (e.g. diabetes, and hypertension). Our empirical strategy exploits unanticipated changes in health status through the diagnosis of new health conditions, combined with an individual fixed effect framework. We find that major shocks have large and persistent effects while minor shocks have small and mainly contemporaneous effects. We find that household income reduces following a major shock for males but not females. Major health shocks lead to a decrease in households’ non-health expenditures that is particularly pronounced for cancer and stroke sufferers, driven largely by reductions in leisure spending. The financial impact of major shocks on medical saving account balances occur to those without private health insurance, while the impact is on cash balances for privately insured individuals.

CHENG, Terence C.; LI, Jing; and VAITHIANATHAN, Rhema. Monthly spending dynamics of the elderly following a health shock: Evidence from Singapore. (2019). Health Economics. 28, (1), 23-43.

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The Impact of In-house Unnatural Death on Property Values - Evidence from Hong Kong

Zheng CHANG and Jing LI

The occurrence of in-house unnatural death could negatively affect the value of housing property. This study evaluates the geographic and temporal scope of the impact of unnatural death on property values in Hong Kong. By exploiting the spatial and intertemporal variation of the shock in a difference-in-differences approach, we find significant negative externalities of unnatural death incidence on neighborhood housing values. On average, units in which an unnatural death occurred experience a 25% drop in value following the death. Nearby units on the same floor also show a significant price drop of 4.5%. Prices of units on other floors of the same building decline about 2.6%. Units in other buildings of the same estate observe a price decline of about 1% on average. However, the price for nearby estates within 300 meters shows a positive impact of 0.5%, suggesting a very localized sorting mechanism. Temporally, price evolution after death incidence follows a U shape. Housing prices continue to decline up to 4–5 years after deaths and recover gradually afterwards. We also document the heterogeneity of the impact by the type of death incidence (murder, suicide, or accident) and the type of homebuyers (local buyer, investment firm, and other buyers). We find that the negative externalities of death incidence are largely due to a severe stigma effect, rather than channels through the revealed crime risk or the price contagion effect.

CHANG, Zheng and LI, Jing. The impact of in-house unnatural death on property values: Evidence from Hong Kong. (2018). Regional Science and Urban Economics. 73, 112-126.

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Strategic Sequential Bidding for Government Land Auction Sales - Evidence from Singapore

Sumit AGARWAL, Jing LI, Ernie TEO, and Alan CHEONG

This paper studies the extent to which equilibrium auction prices are pushed up sequentially due to strategic bidding behaviors in government land auction sales. Using a unique dataset that covers the universe of tendering prices submitted by all developers for all residential land auction sales in Singapore, we find that a tenderer’s bids are significantly higher where there was a previous land parcel sold within two years and located within four kilometers. The elevated price margin decreases with time and geographic distance. Tracking sequential bids submitted by same developers over time, we find that the incumbent winner of a previous auction often participates in subsequent nearby land sales but does not necessarily win the sites. We argue that the incumbent deliberately bids up the subsequent land prices to gain pricing advantages to their own parcels.

AGARWAL, Sumit; LI, Jing; TEO, Ernie; and CHEONG, Alan. Strategic sequential bidding for government land auction sales – Evidence from Singapore. (2018). Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. 57, (4), 535-565.

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The Impact of the Cost of Car Ownership on House Price Gradient in Singapore

Naqun HUANG, Li JING, and Amanda ROSS

This paper examines the extent to which a change in the cost of car ownership affects the house price gradient with respect to distance from the central business district (CBD). Theory suggests that if the cost of car ownership increases, then people will shift towards other modes of transportation, thus reducing house prices farther away from the CBD. However, the cost of car ownership is likely to be endogenous and correlated with various unobserved factors that also contribute to a change in the house price gradient. To obtain causal effects, we exploit a unique feature of Singapore’s car registration process. All cars in Singapore must have a Certificate of Entitlement (COE), but the number available is restricted based on the traffic concerns of the government and are allocated through a competitive bidding process. We use the number of COEs available each quarter as an instrument for the price of a COE, as the quota is likely to be correlated with the price of the COE but not the price of housing at various distances from the city center. We find that when the price of a COE increases, the price of housing closer to the city center increases, suggesting that increases in the price of a car cause individuals to increase their willingness to pay to locate closer to the CBD.

HUANG, Naqun; LI, Jing; and ROSS, Amanda. The impact of the cost of car ownership on house price gradient in Singapore. (2018). Regional Science and Urban Economics. 68, 160-171.

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The Impact of Agglomeration Economies on Hospital Input Prices

Andrew FRIEDSON and Jing LI

This paper examines the extent to which agglomeration of the hospital service industry enhances the productivity of producing health care. Specifically, we use a large set of private insurance claims from the FAIR Health database to show that an increasing spatial concentration of hospital services results in a decreased cost of obtaining intermediate medical services. We explicitly test whether the reduced cost at concentrated locations arises from the ability to share intermediate service providers. The identification relies on state variation in medical lab technician licensure requirements, which influence the cost of intermediate services only through the cost of running a lab. Our findings suggest that agglomeration of the hospital service industry attracts specialized medical labs, which in turn help to reduce the cost of producing laboratory tests.

FRIEDSON, Andrew and LI, Jing. The Impact of Agglomeration Economies on Hospital Input Prices. (2015). Health Economics Review. 5, (38), 38-52.

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