Ongoing Research Projects

Domestic Environmental and Climate Change Challenges in China and India: Economic Resilience, Policy Responses, and Societal Adaptation

Grant Period : Apr 2025 - Mar 2026

Faculty : TAN Soo Jie Sheng

Environmental and climate change pose critical challenges for China and India, the world’s two most populous and rapidly industrializing economies. Both nations experience severe environmental pressures—including air and water pollution, deforestation, and climate vulnerabilities—that threaten economic stability and social well-being.

This project examines the differing impacts of these pressures on China and India with a focus on three key dimensions: economic resilience, policy responses, and societal adaptation. By integrating a mixed-method approach that combines econometric modeling, spatial analysis, and policy evaluation, the study aims to provide robust empirical insights into the long-term consequences of climate change and to inform the design of sustainable policy interventions. The findings can significantly contribute to global climate governance debates and offer actionable recommendations for other developing nations facing similar environmental challenges.

The Environmental Determinants of Human Capital and Conflicts in Asia, Africa, and America

Grant Period : Feb 2025 - Jan 2028

Faculty : LIU Tong

This proposed study aims to examine the impact of the environment on human capital and conflicts in Asia, Africa, and America. Extreme temperatures and air pollution have been major threats to public health and the economy. A growing literature shows that exposure to environmental disamenities, such as heatwave, pollution, and abnormal rainfall, are associated with adverse health outcomes including morbidity, mortality, low birth weight, depression, and so on.

However, it remains difficult to causally identify such effects due to empirical challenges in data and methods, while existing studies only focus on several major developed and developing countries. Furthermore, implications from the human capital impacts of the environment receive little attention, such as migration and conflicts (McGuirk and Nunn, 2024). Evaluation of such impacts on a broader scale is crucial for external validity and policymaking.

This study will explore how ambient temperature and air pollution affect human capital, including health and cognition, as well as human conflicts in Asia, Africa, and America. We will use quasi-experimental methods and detailed individual-level data to pin down the effects of exposure to high temperature and air pollution. We hypothesize that extreme temperatures and air pollution will significantly cause losses in human capital and induce tension and conflicts both within and between regions. Our findings will provide useful policy implications for environment, health, and conflicts in developing countries with critical environmental challenges.

Examining the Ethics of Policy Experimentation and Design For ‘Just Transitions’: Levelling the Field

Grant Period : Feb 2025 - Nov 2026

Faculty : Sreeja NAIR

Governments worldwide are heavily investing in efforts towards low-carbon transitions, many of which will involve experimentation with new policy ideas. Given the differential impacts of climate change on the society, it is critical that these policy transitions are ‘just’ i.e. do not exclude or further marginalize communities that are already vulnerable and are driven by the principles of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Ethical considerations are however rarely operationalized in the modern frameworks of environmental, including climate policy design and are similarly underrepresented in the associated scholarship on the policy process.

Our project sets the following research question: How do ethical considerations influence policy experimentation and design for ‘just’ transitions? Using bibliometric analysis and comparative case analysis we will examine the role of issue framing, policy networks and evidence in enabling just transitions.

Sustainable AI: Assessing the Global Environmental Footprint of Data Centres

Grant Period : Feb 2025 - Feb 2027

Faculty : BA Yuhao

This study is specifically designed to examine the environmental and energy consumption impacts of AI on a global scale, with a particular focus on data centers. We aim to assess how data centers influence water and electricity usage where they are located. Additionally, we will investigate the effects of these facilities on air quality and carbon emissions. The research will also evaluate the effectiveness of current energy efficiency and environmental standards applied to data centers. By working on this project, we seek to address a critical gap in academic research and provide policymakers with empirical insights that can inform the development of more sustainable AG governance policies.

The insights derived from this project will serve as essential references for shaping future policies, enabling the development of strategies that effectively mitigate the negative externalities associated with AI. As a pioneering initiative in this field, this study not only establishes an empirical foundation for policymaking but also paves the way for subsequent research. Building upon the findings of this project, future studies could explore the equity implications of AI’s role in economic and climate transitions, assessing potential disparities in AI’s environmental impact across varies sectors, and synergies between addressing AI’s environmental impact and other forms of externalities.

Does Environmental Degradation and Protection in China Affect Migratory Birdsightings Along the East Asian – Australian Flyway?

Grant Period : Jan 2025 - Dec 2025

Faculty : LIU Tong

The proposed study aims to evaluate the impact of environment on migratory birds along the East Asian – Australian Flyway (EAAF) in 2010-2023. The environmental conditions at key stopover sites of migratory birds can play a key role in bird migration and population across borders. Most of the stopover sites in EAAF are located along the coastline of China, which has witnessed dramatic changes in environmental quality in recent years.

Such environmental changes may include the protection or destruction of bird habitats, as well as air quality degradation and improvement over time and space. These variations due to local policy changes in mainland China are exogenous to birds observed elsewhere, including Taiwan and Australia. We will further compare migratory birds with non-migratory birds to document the causal impacts of environment on migratory birds. The findings will provide novel and important implications for scientific research and policy practice.

Demystifying ESG Ratings: Accountability and Consumer Perceptions

Grant Period : Apr 2024 - Mar 2026

Faculty : BA Yuhao

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues have gained significant prominence in guiding policy development, corporate strategies, and investment decisions. Stakeholders typically rely on ratings from established agencies such as S&P Global’s Dow Jones Sustainability World Index and Bloomberg ESG Ratings for informed decision-making.

As ESG-related policies continue to evolve, however, noticeable discrepancies are emerging across rating systems, posing challenges for policymakers, businesses, and investors. Our literature review indicates that these discrepancies could arise from differences in scoring methodologies, benchmark selection, and a lack of theoretical grounding and standardization. Additionally, empirical evidence is limited and fragmented, raising concerns about the transparency and accountability of ESG ratings.

To address these challenges, our study aims to (1) investigate the discrepancies amongst the mainstream ESG rating systems; and (2) evaluate consumer awareness and perceptions of ESG ratings and pertinent policy issues, and how they influence consumer behavior.

Our potential contributions include: (1) enhancing clarity about the reliability and validity of various ESG rating systems; (2) bridging the gap between specialized knowledge and consumer perception of ESG issues, potentially leading to more informed and responsible decision-making; (3) providing crucial insights into developing regulatory frameworks and policies that improve the transparency and accountability of ESG ratings.

Of Dragons and Roosters: Cultural Beliefs and Political Selection in Contemporary China

Grant Period : Jan 2024 - Dec 2026

Faculty : LIU Tong

We study an entirely new mechanism of political selection in modern societies: traditional beliefs. Our empirical setting is China, where past surveys find that more than 50% of the officials hold traditional (e.g., Fengshui) beliefs to varying degrees. With a novel dataset on Chinese officials, we test the argument that (1) political elites tend to select subordinates based on their birthdays, i.e., those that can bring the elites good luck, and that (2) once selected, these subordinates tend to receive more economic resources from the superiors. The research should garner broad interests from both social sciences and humanities.

Assessing the Economic Impacts of Climate Action on Singapore's Older Adults

Grant Period : Nov 2023 - May 2026

Faculty : BA Yuhao

This research aims to evaluate how older adults in Singapore perceive the impact of increasing carbon taxes on their energy consumption and overall well-being. It places a particular emphasis on understanding the distinct challenges faced by the older adults in the context of a changing climate. This project is designed to make valuable contributions to our theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented knowledge concerning Singapore's climate resilience within the framework of an aging society.

Policy Learning Dialogues for Accelerating Green Transitions: Enhancing Policy Design Capacity Building in Southeast Asia

Grant Period : Oct 2023 - Jan 2026

Faculty : CASHORE, Benjamin William

This grant aims to support the Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES, LKYSPP, NUS), to enhance climate policy discourse and planning in Southeast Asia by integrating and accelerating policy design capacity building. The institute's mission is to nuture the learning exercises and dialogues required for generating durable and effective climate and sustainability policy solutions in Asia. We offer this approach as a way to overcome existing and historical relationships among clearly articulated goals, well-intended policy interventions, and suboptimal impacts. We accomplish this task by proposing an interdisciplinary approach to policy design capacity building, which focuses on building necessary analytical, managerial, and technical policy capacity, to ameliorate climate-related policy challenges in Southeast Asia. Our approach is expected to enable policymakers to co-generate and exchange knowledge, share experiences, and develop insights, and through this process, identify novel policy design levers and policy pathways capable of meeting national climate goals. This approach will also identify key learning bottlenecks to which public and private funding could be targetted to alleviate, and to identify places of accelerated learning that might be diffused across ASEAN countries. These efforts, in turn, will generate efficient allocation of private and public funding for both enhancing effective policy desing capacity building, as well as achieving sustainability pathways toward desired outcomes, ranging from effective climate finance, to the acceleration of green technologies and associated skill training required to achieve just transitions.

Political Risks and Business-Government Relations in an Emerging Economy

Grant Period : Aug 2023 to Oct 2030

Faculty : LI Zeren

Businesspeople and politicians make strategic decisions based on risk assessment. While the existing literature primarily focuses on the economic outcomes of macro-level political risks, my research explores the incentives of politicians and firms to establish different forms of business-government relations under various risk conditions. For this research question, I use China as a case study of a dynamic risk environment, examining the conditions under which the party-state controls, cooperates with, or coerces firms, and the corresponding corporate political strategies. I document business-government relations through a mixed-method approach.

Specifically, I collect granular data on business-government interactions, such as revolving-door employment, official visits, equity structures, and records on procurement, subsidies, and taxation, complementing these with in-depth interviews and survey experiment. Using this abundant data, this research provides a micro-foundational understanding of business-government relations in a context of weak institutionalism.

A Grant for the Purpose of Conducting Policy-Relevant Research for PUB and Singapore

Grant Period : Apr 2023 to Mar 2028

Faculty : CASHORE, Benjamin William

There are three themes under the potential deliverables for projects in the funding period of FY23 - FY27.

A: Water Demand Management:
1. Evaluate how attitudes towards climate change and the environment impact water use behaviour
2. Develop measures to increase awareness of how climate change impacts water sustainability and water use behaviour
3. Evaluate how developments and interventions impact water demand
4. Develop measures to reduce water demand

B: Environmental Sustainability:
1. Benchmark and develop measures to reduce PUB's carbon footprint
2. Evaluate the social and economic impacts of PUB's decarbonisation efforts (e.g. solar photovoltaic panels in reservoirs) and recommend engagement strategies to increase public receptiveness and strengthen engagements and partnerships with stakeholders.
3. Understand the impact of green procurement on the water industry

C: Best Practices in Water Management
1. Review the relevance of performance indicators used globally in the water sector
2. Explore global trends and innovations in water management

The River of Cooperation and Competition - The Effects of Upstream Dams on Downstream Countries in the Mekong River Basin

Grant Period : Feb 2023 - Jan 2026

Faculty : Pei GAO

Water has become an increasingly important and contestable natural resource, with conflicts often occurring over major rivers that flow through several countries. In order to gain control of water resources, dams have been a widely used instrument through which countries upstream can either provide a source of hydropower or supply water.

This project is the first attempt to examine the economic and ecological impact of dam construction on international rivers where upstream and downstream coordination between countries is limited. The results of this study can provide policymakers with a more balanced view on the economic and ecological impacts of dams constructed on international rivers.

The Socioeconomic Impacts of Environmental Challenges and Policies in China

Grant Period : Dec 2022 - Nov 2026

Faculty : LIU Tong

Emerging economies face critical environmental challenges in economic development, but there is a lack of causal evidence on how they affect the economy and how policy instruments can address them effectively. The proposed study will evaluate the social costs of major environmental issues in China and explore policies to tackle these issues in three aspects. First, it will examine the impacts of anthropogenic pollution, climate change, and natural disasters on human capital and economic activities. On top of it, the study will continue to estimate the costs and benefits of environmental policies, including government regulation, incentive-based instruments, and information provision against environmental risks. Lastly, the study will further explore the determinants of environmental policies, including political economy and socioeconomic factors, in central and local governments in China. The research will provide novel and comprehensive evidence on these key questions, make important contributions to understanding the welfare implications of environmental policy and regulation, and offer useful insights into policymaking for sustainable development in China and other regions with similar issues.

Policy Experimentation for Addressing Complex Policy Challenges

Grant Period : Feb 2022 - Feb 2027

Faculty : Sreeja NAIR

Policy experimentation and piloting can play a key role in designing innovative solutions for complex environmental policy challenges of the 21st Century. Climate change, food security and water security are some prime examples of environmental policy problems that are complex i.e., involve multiple actors with multiple ideas and interests, operating across several institutional contexts and there is uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding the policy issue. While the potential of policy experimentation is recognized in theory in allowing for improved policy designs to address such complexity, there are challenges in the policy translation of these experiments in practice. The research under the start-up grant will explore factors and policy processes that influence translation of policy experiments to policy practice.

Policy experiments including pilots have also long been recognized as political, hence making a case for exploring the interplay between technical and political aspects of experimentation. This research can give insights to the question as to why policy experimentation is not seen more commonly, or why are not all policies launched as pilots? The research will draw recommendations for governments on ways to better engage actors and create effective avenues for improved design and deployment of policy experiments as well as effective utilization of their results.

Assessing Non-State Governance Involvement and Leadership in the Global Context

Grant Period : Dec 2021 - Nov 2026

Faculty : BA Yuhao

The proposed project aims at providing a comprehensive understanding of involvement and leadership of non-state actors in governance systems on a global scale. Such actors typically include businesses, civil society and nonprofits, and local and regional communities. Specifically, three central research questions will be answered: (1) To what extent are non-state actors involved in governance systems? (2) When and how do non-state actors provide governance leadership? (3) Why and how could non-state involvement and leadership affect governance outcomes? (4) How does non-state governance interact with the political and policy processes in varied contexts? Issus areas include climate change, sustainability, and the environment. Data collection will accommodate both developed and developing contexts.

Upon successfully answering these questions, the proposed project will make three contributions: (1) It will further our understanding of the role and suitability of non-state governance in the aforementioned issue areas. This is particularly important given the increasing challenges facing conventional state- centric arrangements; (2) It will equip scholars and policymakers with new evidence and research agendas in designing, implementing, and evaluating governance solutions. The varied contexts and methods likewise will offer comparative insights; (3) It will add to the school’s thought leadership in environmental and sustainability.

Credit Distribution and Political Connections: A Conjoint Experiment in China

Grant Period : Mar 2021 - Feb 2027

Faculty : LIU Yao, Adam

This project seeks to exploit the conjoint survey experiment technique to study the following question: Does having political connections help firms obtain bank credit in China, if so, what are the mechanisms? While there exists a large body of literature that studies this question in China and other countries, a fundamental inferential challenge remains, i.e., political connection isn’t randomly assigned. By setting this question up in a conjoint survey experimental with real bank officers in China, this study will be the first to provide micro-level causal evidence for this question. Both personal political connections (e.g., whether the hypothetical firm manager is a member of the local people’s congress) as well as institutional political connections (e.g., whether the firm is owned by varying levels of the state) will be randomized to gauge their influence on bank officer’s credit distribution decision.

Ongoing Research Projects

Policy Studies, Public Management and Governance