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Nursing home care is certainly not cheap. Speaking to Perspectives@SMU at a recent CSS Conference, Retirement Readiness: Income adequacy, long-term care and social well-being, Mitchell delivered the bombshell: Nursing home care in the U.S. can cost up to US$100,000 a year.

“Let’s put mom in the retirement home.”

To a lot of people, especially in Asia where filial piety is still a dominant social force, that is one of the most difficult things for an adult with an aging parent to say. However, it could also be the best thing to do for everyone involved.

According to the latest findings of the Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (SInDEx), which was jointly developed by SMU Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics (SKBI) and MasterCard, Singapore consumers are expecting inflation to continue on a downward trend in the next one to five years amid slowdown in big emerging economies like China and Brazil and persistent weakness in the Eurozone. The study found that the headline inflation rate is likely to ease to 3.9 per cent, down from 4.1 per cent recorded in its earlier survey.

The Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (SInDEx) developed by the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics at SMU (SKBI) and MasterCard indicated that the public expects inflation of 3.92 per cent for the year ahead, down from 3.99 per cent in June. This downward trend is partly due to tepid growth in emerging economies, such as China and India, and to moderating imported inflation. Although the general public expects inflation to decrease, their expectations for inflation are still higher than that forecast by the government. SMU Assistant Professor of Finance (Education) and SKBI Programme Director Aurobindo Ghosh noted that headline inflation has come down from the first quarter of 2013 as a result of a slew of government measures to cool the property market and curb car loans, as well as the deleveraging of household debt – the combined effect of which was not expected a year ago.

According to the latest findings of the SKBI-MasterCard Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (SInDEx), which was jointly developed by the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics at SMU (SKBI) and MasterCard, Singapore consumers are expecting inflation to continue on a downward trend in the next one to five years in Singapore and the region. This is partly due to moderation in imported inflation owing mainly to subdued demand and weak growth in regional economies such as China and India.

Singapore consumers are expecting inflation to ease in the next one to five years, according to a survey by the Singapore Management University (SMU) and MasterCard.
 

SMU Assistant Professor of Finance Aurobindo Ghosh, co-creator of SInDEx and Project Director of the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics at SMU, said that the CPI numbers released last week were within expectations, but as inflation expectations are usually rather ‘sticky’, they are slow to react downwards. Singapore is a small and open economy, so it is affected by policies not just in Singapore but across the world, including imported inflation (which affects oil price movements and other commodities) and domestic pressure (such as rental and labour costs). In the medium term, if inflation is anchored, small fluctuations in prices should not affect long-term inflation expectations. From the survey, Singaporeans are generally aware of global economic events like the issue of Quantitative Easing and the impact which tapering will have on their household finances

Director of the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics at SMU and Professor of Economics and Finance Yu Jun, and Distinguished Term Professor of Economics at SMU Peter Philips, together with Professor Yangru Wu at Rutgers Business School, and Dr Shuping Shi at Australian National University, have created an early warning system for the financial industry. They designed the methodology and applied it to the vast amount of diverse data available in the financial markets. Similar to the SARS early warning system, Prof Yu explained that their method sets thresholds to classify the state of the financial market.

According to the Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (SInDEx) released on Monday, consumers polled in December expect overall inflation for 2013 to stand at 3.72 per cent. This is lower than their one-year inflation expectation of 3.85 per cent recorded in September, besides being the lowest level recorded since the quarterly index was first produced in September 2011. Explaining why households seem to have higher inflation expectations, Project Director of the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics at SMU Assistant Professor of Finance (Education) Aurobindo Ghosh, who co-created the SInDEx, said: "The levels of information available to households, policymakers or professional economists could be quite different. While policymakers and economists are more concerned with the macroeconomic outlook and conditions, individual households base their decisions on past experience and their expectations of possible escalating cost of living, particularly for commonly purchased items.

According to the latest poll conducted by the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics at SMU (SKBI), Singapore consumers expect inflation to trend downwards. The survey of 400 respondents was conducted online in December 2013. The SKBI-MasterCard Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (SInDEx) report attributed the decline to property loan curbs, macro-prudential policies as well as weaker imported inflation from ASEAN countries. Consumers' expectations for core inflation, which excludes accommodation and private transportation, also moderated from 3.88 per cent in September to 3.7 per cent in the December survey. Both estimates from the survey are higher than government projections. The Monetary Authority of Singapore expects both headline and core inflation to be in the 2 per cent and 3 per cent range for 2014.