Wei-Kang's Website

3. Wei-Kang Wong, Economic Growth: A Channel Accounting Exercise, The B.E. Journals in Macroeconomics : Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 (Topics), Article 4, January 2007.
Summary: Provide empirical evidence that TFP growth, not aggregate factor accumulation, is what drives conditional convergence.

4. Wei-Kang Wong, Comparing the Fit of the Gravity Model for Different Cross-Border Flows, Economics Letters, 99(3), June 2008, pp.474-477.
Summary: Find that the gravity model works well for trade and telephone traffic, with a more ambiguous fit for M&A flows. Find evidence that the values for M&A are missing non-randomly.

Research on Behavioral Economics

1. Wei-Kang Wong, Nominal Increases and the Perception of Likelihood, Economics Letters, 95(3), June 2007, pp.433-437.
Summary: A nominal increases in likelihood has a relatively small effect on individual’s own perception of likelihood, but a large and robust effect on beliefs about the perception of likelihood by others. These beliefs are consistent with actual choices.
An earlier version: Does Money Illusion Still Matter After Some Economics Education?
Summary: Compare the responses of economics and non-economics students with slightly different questions (and find no differences).

2. Wei-Kang Wong, How Much Time-Inconsistency Is There and Does It Matter? Evidence on Self-Awareness, Size, and Effects, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 68(3-4), December 2008, pp.645-656.

Summary: Empirically identify the time-consistent, naifs, sophisticates, and partial naifs in two independent samples of undergraduates. Find that most students behaved time-inconsistently in their midterm preparation and most were at least partially aware of their future time-inconsistency.

3. Jack Knetsch and Wei-Kang Wong, The Endowment Effect and the Reference State: Evidence and Manipulations, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 71(2), August 2009, 407-413.

Summary: Shows that “in a treatment that provides essentially all of the procedural controls that are deemed necessary to control for incentives recognized in standard theory but does not a priori create a large dichotomy between the perceived reference state and the initial entitlement, the participants exhibit a strong reluctance to trade away initial entitlements despite a lack of ownership of this entitlement”, whereas “in a treatment that includes procedures that may control for other incentives but can also be expected to create a large dichotomy between the perceived reference states and the initial endowments, the participants show no such reluctance to trade despite having ownership of the original entitlement” (p.408). Consistent with Koszegi and Rabin (2006), these results suggest that the disappearance of the valuation disparity in Plott and Zeiler (2005, 2007) is more likely to be due to conditions that weaken the perception of reference states rather than success in controlling for classical incentives or subject misconceptions.

4. Weining Koh and Wei-Kang Wong, The Endowment Effect and the Willingness to Accept-Willingness to Pay Gap: Subject Misconceptions or Reference Dependence? Working Paper.

Summary: Do different experimental procedures turn the endowment effect on and off because they induce or eliminate various classical incentives or misconceptions on the part of the participants or because they make the reference states, from which gains and losses are evaluated, more or less salient? This paper attempts to investigate this question.

5. Wei-Kang Wong, Ricardian Equivalence and Consumption Response to Government Transfers: Behavioral Motives Meet Savers and Spenders in the Real World (July 2008) Appendix - Survey Form
Summary: Most recipients spent the transfers under the Progress Package in Singapore. For savers, precautionary saving seems to be the main reason behind their saving decision, followed by the motive of Ricardian equivalence. For spenders, the main motive driving their consumption decision turns out to be the use of rule of thumb (based on either mental accounting or norms), followed by present bias. Future budgetary expectations matter, but less than expected.

Work in Progress