Topic (I): The Relationship between Tourism Development and Economic Growth in Small countries: Evidence from Singapore

This study investigates the causal relationships between international tourism development and the economic growth of a global city–state – Singapore – drilling into the temporal details of the tourism-economy nexus in small countries. Many studies have examined whether the tourism-led growth hypothesis or the economy-driven-tourism growth hypothesis holds in large developed and emerging countries with mixed and inconclusive results. Still, relatively few studies examine small countries’ tourism-economy nexus and the temporal details of the nexus have not been adequately researched. We looked into the tourism-economy nexus in Singapore using quarterly data from 1991Q1 to 2020Q4 and the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model, with the long- and short-run dynamics and the feedback loop of the nexus considered. Our statistical findings show that international tourism development leads the economic growth by two quarters in Singapore. Also, there are both ‘consistent’ and ‘contemporaneous’ positive feedback loops between tourism development and economic growth, but those loops cannot last for more than a quarter. From the economic perspective, our study reveals that encouraging tourism activities may accelerate the post-COVID economic recovery of some small countries that rely on tourism. Yet, continuous input is required to sustain the tourism-economy synergy.

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Topic (II): Examining the Employment Experiences of the PVTGs under the MNREGS in Palamu India

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme (MGNREGS) is a large-scale employment initiative that debuted in the Indian subcontinent's rural areas in 2006. This gigantic initiative aims to eliminate rural poverty and unemployment together, targeting a wide range of mainstream rural workers and disadvantaged groups such as Adivasis, the elderly, vulnerable groups such as women, and differently-abled people. India is home to 107 million indigenous people who are referred to as Scheduled Tribes (ST) or Adivasis, and within this category of the indigenous population (ST) in India, there is a special sub-category known as the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) due to their poor social, economic, and health outcome. Taking the disjuncture between work and labour, this paper explores the experiences of PVTGS who participate in the minimum 100 days of work programme under MGNREGS. Based on 43 in depth interviews with the beneficiaries of MGNREGS in Jharkhand, India, the paper explores the meanings that PVTGs attach to their participation in MGNREGS and to what extent such participation furthers the inclusion of this otherwise isolated social group into Indian society.

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