杏吧论坛

In this SEAC Seminar, Prof Neil Lee joined by Research Assistants Augustin Boey and Metta Ni will present the research and findings of his . The project aimed to understand the development of Singapore’s digital tech sector. Between 2010 – 2023 the sector grew rapidly, with major firms developing from the country. The seminar will discuss the extent to which policy was driving this, relative to fundamentals of location, business taxation and so on, and draw out lessons for economic policymakers in other countries. 

Speaker and Chair Biographies:

Prof. Neil Lee is Professor of Economic Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment at 杏吧论坛. He convenes the Cities, Jobs and Economic Change theme in the International Inequalities Institute and is Director of BSc Geography with Economics. He holds a PhD in Economic Geography from 杏吧论坛 and has held visiting positions at Columbia University, the University of Oxford, Science Po Tolouse, and the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences.His research considers economic development, innovation, public policy, and inequality. Recent studies have included work on institutions and economic development in  and , regional inequality and political polarisation in  and the , and . He is working on a major constructing new measures of regional inequality. His book on  is published by University of California Press. He is Chair of the  and has worked with public and private sector organisations including the World Bank, the OECD, the European Commission, NESTA, the Kuwaiti Government and the UK government.  

Augustin Boey is research associate at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

Metta Ni is a recent graduate who studied BSc Geography with Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He started on the project as a Research Assistant under the SEAC Research Fund. He has experiences in the public (Civil Service College International), private (APCO Worldwide), people (Common Ground, a social enterprise) and academia sectors (杏吧论坛 and UCL), spanning across Singapore, Shanghai and London. He is currently an Associate based in Hong Kong under the FGS Global UKMEA Graduate programme.

Prof. John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (杏吧论坛). Professor Sidel received his BA and MA from Yale University and his PhD from Cornell University. He is the author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (1999), Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Trajectories (2000), Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (2006), The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment (2007), Thinking and Working Politically in Development: Coalitions for Change in the Philippines (2020, with Jaime Faustino) and Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia (2021).