My Contact
Wong Wei Kang
Department of Economics
National University of Singapore
AS2, 1 Arts Link,Singapore 117570
Email: ecswong at nus.edu.sg; Fax: 6775 2646
Research on Economic Growth
Summary: Use gravity model
to identify trade and telephone traffic's effects on cross-country
income and productivity levels. Find that telephone
traffic has a quantitatively larger effect on income per worker and TFP
than trade.
2. Wei-Kang Wong, OECD Convergence: A Sectoral
Decomposition Exercise, Economics
Letters., 93(2), November 2006, pp. 210-214.
Summary: Decompose OECD convergence into sectoral contributions. Find that while productivity growth in services and agriculture contributed significantly to convergence, the contributions from employment shift and productivity growth in manufacturing are nost statistically significant.
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
1.
Parental Valuation of Priority Admission to Primary Schools: The Effects of Academic Reputation and Choices
Summary: Using a distance-based admission policy for primary
school registration, we find that HDB flats that give priority to more schools yield significantly higher
price premium, but only for top schools and good schools, not for
normal schools.
2. Melvin
Koh and Wei-Kang Wong, The
Channels of Conditional
Convergence During 1960-2000: Allowing for Variable Capital Shares
Across Countries
3. Eddie Sue and Wei-Kang Wong, The
Political Economy of Housing Prices: Hedonic Pricing with
Regression Discontinuity (Nov 2009; Being Revised)
Other Writings
Story
Telling in the Teaching of Macroeconomics: An Economist's Tales (March 20, 2005). Paper for presentation
in the
FASS-CDTL symposium: Innovative Approaches to University Teaching and
Learning
Summary: Tell the Reverse Causation Trilogy: I. The Dawn of a
New Day;
II: The IMF Strikes Back! III: Return of the White Wizard.
Other Stuff