IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/serxxx/v52y2007i01ns0217590807002567.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Foreign Labor And Economic Growth Policy Options For Singapore

Author

Listed:
  • WENG-TAT HUI

    (Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, 469C Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259772, Singapore)

  • AAMIR RAFIQUE HASHMI

    (Department of Economics, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260, Singapore;
    Department of Economics, University of Toronto, 150 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 3G7, Canada)

Abstract

Prior to the Asian economic crisis in 1997, Singapore's official projected medium-term GDP growth target was set at 7% per annum. Since then, the targeted growth rate has been reduced to 5%. This paper examines the implications of the 5% growth target on the labor requirements of the Singapore economy. It is shown that the projected resident labor force will not be able to keep pace with the increased labor demand and the share of foreigners in the labor force will increase significantly even under the most favorable scenario. Some implications of the increased dependence on foreign labor in Singapore are discussed. With permanent immigration fixed at the current level, various policy options and their effects on the demand for foreign labor are considered. These include improving labor productivity, raising the total fertility rate, increasing labor force participation of older workers and lowering the targeted rate of economic growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Weng-Tat Hui & Aamir Rafique Hashmi, 2007. "Foreign Labor And Economic Growth Policy Options For Singapore," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 52(01), pages 53-72.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:serxxx:v:52:y:2007:i:01:n:s0217590807002567
    DOI: 10.1142/S0217590807002567
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217590807002567
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0217590807002567?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean-Marie Grether & Jaime de Melo & Tobias Müller, 2015. "The Political Economy of International Migration in a Ricardo–Viner Model," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Developing Countries in the World Economy, chapter 17, pages 411-437, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Card, David, 2001. "Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows, and the Local Labor Market Impacts of Higher Immigration," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 22-64, January.
    3. Johansen, Soren, 1995. "Likelihood-Based Inference in Cointegrated Vector Autoregressive Models," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198774501.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ducanes, Geoffrey. & Abella, Manolo I., 2008. "Labour shortage responses in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia : a review and evaluation," ILO Working Papers 994112283402676, International Labour Organization.
    2. Saffiah Mohd Nor & Geetha Subramaniam & Zahariah Sahudin, 2023. "The Effects of Foreign Labor on Labor Productivity in Construction Industries," Information Management and Business Review, AMH International, vol. 15(2), pages 116-127.
    3. Wen-Hsin Huang & Yen-Ju Lin & Hsien-Feng Lee, 2019. "Impact of Population and Workforce Aging on Economic Growth: Case Study of Taiwan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-13, November.
    4. Ahmad Ahsan & Manolo Abella & Andrew Beath & Yukon Huang & Manjula Luthria & Trang Van Nguyen, 2014. "International Migration and Development in East Asia and the Pacific," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 20437, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gordon H. Hanson, 2009. "The Economic Consequences of the International Migration of Labor," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 179-208, May.
    2. Harry P. Bowen & Jennifer Pédussel Wu, 2013. "Immigrant Specificity and the Relationship between Trade and Immigration: Theory and Evidence," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 80(2), pages 366-384, October.
    3. Noel Gaston & Douglas R. Nelson, 2013. "Bridging Trade Theory And Labour Econometrics: The Effects Of International Migration," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 98-139, February.
    4. Crown, Daniel & Faggian, Alessandra & Corcoran, Jonathan, 2020. "Foreign-Born graduates and innovation: Evidence from an Australian skilled visa program✰,✰✰,★,★★," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(9).
    5. Arturas Juodis, 2013. "Cointegration Testing in Panel VAR Models Under Partial Identification and Spatial Dependence," UvA-Econometrics Working Papers 13-08, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Dept. of Econometrics.
    6. Lisbeth Funding la Cour, 1995. "A Component® based Analysis of the danish Long-run Money Demand Relation," Discussion Papers 95-18, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    7. Levent, Korap, 2007. "Modeling purchasing power parity using co-integration: evidence from Turkey," MPRA Paper 19584, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Ottaviano, Gianmarco & Peri, Giovanni, 2008. "Immigration and National Wages: Clarifying the Theory and the Empirics," CEPR Discussion Papers 6916, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Darrian Collins & Clem Tisdell, 2004. "Outbound Business Travel Depends on Business Returns: Australian Evidence," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(2), pages 192-207, June.
    10. Christian Schoder, 2012. "Effective demand, exogenous normal utilization and endogenous capacity in the long run. Evidence from a CVAR analysis for the US," IMK Working Paper 103-2012, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    11. Muhammad Shahbaz & Vassilios G. Papavassiliou & Amine Lahiani & David Roubaud, 2023. "Are we moving towards decarbonisation of the global economy? Lessons from the distant past to the present," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 2620-2634, July.
    12. David Card & Christian Dustmann & Ian Preston, 2012. "Immigration, Wages, And Compositional Amenities," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 78-119, February.
    13. Simonetta Longhi & Peter Nijkamp & Jacques Poot, 2010. "Meta-Analyses of Labour-Market Impacts of Immigration: Key Conclusions and Policy Implications," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 28(5), pages 819-833, October.
    14. Njangang Henri & Nembot Ndeffo Luc & Nawo Larissa, 2019. "The Long‐run and Short‐run Effects of Foreign Direct Investment on Financial Development in African Countries," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 31(2), pages 216-229, June.
    15. Lego, Brian & Gebremedhin, Tesfa & Cushing, Brian, 2000. "A Multi-Sector Export Base Model of Long-Run Regional Employment Growth," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(2), pages 192-197, October.
    16. Ali MNA & Moheddine YOUNSI, 2018. "A monetary conditions index and its application on Tunisian economic forecasting," Journal of Economics and Political Economy, KSP Journals, vol. 5(1), pages 38-56, March.
    17. Franses, Ph.H.B.F. & Paap, R., 1999. "Forecasting with periodic autoregressive time series models," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI 9927-/A, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    18. Gabriel J Felbermayr & Wilhelm Kohler, 2014. "Immigration and Native Welfare," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: European Economic Integration, WTO Membership, Immigration and Offshoring, chapter 10, pages 335-372, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    19. Hauser, Shmuel & Kedar-Levy, Haim & Milo, Orit, 2022. "Price discovery during parallel stocks and options preopening: Information distortion and hints of manipulation," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 59(PA).
    20. Jean Gabszewicz & Ornella Tarola & Skerdilajda Zanaj, 2016. "Migration, wages and income taxes," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 23(3), pages 434-453, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:serxxx:v:52:y:2007:i:01:n:s0217590807002567. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ser/ser.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.