Seen and heard this week

Seen and heard this week is a weekly column highlighting thought leadership from the NUS community

In a commentary in The Business Times on 17 May, Mr Pranay Gupta, Research Consultant at the Centre for Asset Management Research and Investments at NUS Business observed how people in almost every developed country do not seem to have enough assets to fund their retirement because society makes saving difficult compared to spending. Mr Gupta suggested ways to make spending and saving of equal convenience and importance, for instance by servers at shops nudging people into saving, and doing away with financial jargon in the investment industry by focusing simply on target gain and maximum loss.

Year 3 undergraduate Koh Wei Shao from the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine was featured in a report on the Ministry of Health’s Health and Life-skills Outreach programme in The New Paper on 17 May. Wei Shao shared how he chose to give up a career in medicine to become a nurse so that he could interact more with patients and help them with their problems.

In another commentary, Practice Professor Kishore Mahbubani from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Senior Advisor at the NUS Office of the Vice President (University & Global Relations) wrote about the world’s most important bilateral relationship — between US and China — and how it has become a source of uncertainty and instability plagued by misperception. In the piece published in The Straits Times on 18 May, Prof Mahbubani said that this was apparent in the brewing trade war between the countries, where US President Donald Trump’s administration asserts that China is to blame for America’s trade deficit while failing to see the benefits of a China guided by economic rationality which has improved the quality of life of American workers. He added that a trade war would hurt both the Americans and Chinese.

Read more about the NUS community in the news.