Kiasunomics

Are realtors in Singapore motivated to act in the best interest of their home buyers, given the current way properties are sold? Professor Sumit examines property transaction data with Professor Song Changcheng over the past 15 years to determine if the most attractive deals are indeed made by realtors because of their greater access to information. They also discuss the effectiveness of dual-agent negotiations verses a single-agent arrangement.

Exploring never before studied data of private hire and taxi ride prices with Singapore Management University’s Associate Professor Cheng Shih-Fen, Professor Sumit examines the range of factors influencing passenger behaviour, and how pricing may not be the key determinant of which private hire option commuters choose during peak timings. With this insight, the duo hopes to inspire higher levels of savviness in commuters, particularly after work hours and on weekends.

Do humans naturally opt to take the train on weekdays to shorten their work commute instead of the bus, and do they tend to work longer if their travelling time is longer? In this episode, Professor Sumit shares insightful research observations from studying EZ link card data of over 150 million bus and train trips, to understand how time, money and urgency influences the Singapore commuter’s mode of public transportation.

In this episode, Professor Sumit examines one of the most stressful topics on the minds of parents of pre-schooling children in Singapore – the mainstream primary school registration system. He dives into the layers beneath this process, and how school branding has impacted housing prices.

In this flag-off episode, the brains behind the Kiasunomics book series, Professor Sumit Agarwal and Associate Professor Ang Swee Hoon engage in hearty banter other about how the podcast series came about, and how they hope to bring research insights to the masses through bite-sized discussions.

In this episode, Professor Sumit and Visiting Assistant Professor Fan Mingxuan continue their discussion on Singapore’s water conservation policies. Specifically, they delve into a water policy that introduced a tariff on usage, and the impact of the announcement on different citizen profiles.

Water conservation has always been a priority in Singapore’s national resource management, having insufficient natural sources to sustain the country’s population. In this episode, Professor Sumit chats to Visiting Assistant Professor Fan Mingxuan from the NUS Department of Real Estate about the effectiveness of plumbing methods and public housing infrastructure upgrades in supporting this national cause.

Singapore has on several occasions dealt with serious air pollution crises arising from the haze generated from widespread fires in neighboring countries. In this episode, Sumit shares his findings from the study of electricity and water usage in Singapore during these periods of severe air pollution, and about how this exerts additional strain on the state’s resources. 

The world tackles the real crises of consumerism depleting the world’s natural resources to a point of leaving little to the future generations. In this episode, Professor Sumit looks at the creative campaign ideas Singapore devised, particularly one that inspired children to educate their parents about sustainability.

Associate Professor Song Changcheng joins Professor Sumit once again to discuss the importance of Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to a country’s economic growth, and the effectiveness of Singapore’s policies in lowering the barriers to entry for budding entrepreneurs.