NUS academics distance themselves from study on civil servants’ home purchases near unannounced MRT stations

Prof Pan, who is vice-provost for graduate education at NUS, said her name appeared by “mistake”. “I only found out about the paper today and have asked the authors to remove my name from the acknowledgements,” she said.

CNA has contacted the authors of the paper: Tomasz Piskorski of Columbia University, Jian Zhang of the University of Hong Kong and Amit Seru and Chun Zhao of Stanford University.

CNA has also contacted all the other academics named in the acknowledgements to find out more about their input and involvement in the study.

Among these were four academics whom the authors said they had discussions with and “benefited immensely” from. They are University of Chicago’s Chang-Tai Hsieh and Luigi Zingales and Harvard University’s Li Shengwu and Jesse Shapiro. 

Prof Hsieh, whose research interests are in areas such as growth and development, said he had discussed the paper at a conference previously. However, he questioned the results of the study. Among other things, he argued that since private housing is typically farther from the MRT stations compared with public housing, the “gain” from inside information on the locations of unannounced MRT stations would be “much smaller”.

Prof Zingales is a professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the University of Chicago, while Prof Shapiro is a professor of economics and business administration at Harvard. Prof Li, the estranged nephew of Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, is a professor of economics at Harvard. CNA has contacted them but has yet to receive replies. 

At least 16 other academics, including the five from NUS, were thanked by the authors for their “helpful comments”. Some of the research by these academics was also cited in the bibliography. 

The working paper, titled Do Social Norms Substitute for Enforcement? Evidence from Public Officials’ Home Purchases in Singapore, was published by the Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research this month.

The authors matched private property transactions from legal filings in Singapore against the Singapore Government Directory Interactive to identify civil servants, then examined purchases near unannounced MRT stations around announcement dates as a “proxy for access to privileged location information”.

“We find clear evidence of informed trading by civil servants: purchase intensity near planned MRT stations is higher for civil servants than for matched controls, with the difference concentrated one to two years before public announcements,” they alleged.

The Public Service Division said on Monday that it was reviewing the paper’s data and methodology.

“We take any integrity concerns extremely seriously. We are currently reviewing the data and methodology within the paper and will refer to CPIB (Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau) if there is a material basis to do so,” a spokesperson said.