Sustainability
Climate mitigation and adaptation today stands at the forefront of pressing concerns that require a concerted response from the global community. More than 140 countries have already made commitments to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and here in Singapore, the Government has set an interim milestone through the Singapore Green Plan 2030.
Yet our agenda extends beyond the physical environment to also address responsible investing, green finance, economic inequality, access to education and healthcare, and various other issues pertaining to wellbeing, social equity and the human condition.
Our data-driven research on sustainability enables the Institute to engage in prevailing dialogues of the day, drive thought leadership and support policymakers through information-based decision making.
Latest research findings
The displacement effects of going green based on Fan, Gao and Tang's 2022 study "The unintended consequences of coal fired power plant closures: evidence from China".
Going green in a sector could inadvertently shift the carbon footprint somewhere else along the supply chain. In their study, Fan at al. investigate how closed plants shifted the burden of production to other existing plants to meet the high demand for energy.
"Doing good before doing well - the future of investing" based on Zheng (2023)'s working paper “Climate Policy and Sustainable Investments around the World”.
Zheng's study finds that the underlying motivators for sustainable investments are nonpecuniary considerations of climate mitigation and adaption. In this regard, firms choose to do good first, and financial rewards follow up as a consequence.
"Taxing the rich for redistribution – outcomes and implications" based on Agarwal, Qian, Yeung and Zheng (2022)'s study "Taxing the rich to finance redistribution – evidence from a permanent tax increase in Singapore".
Agarwal, Qian, Yeung and Zheng (2022) investigate how a permanent income tax increase in Singapore impacted the affluent and elevated consumption for the low-income groups, with implications for policymaking pertaining to mitigating income inequality.