Heartiest congratulations to Professor Phang Sock Yong from SMU School of Economics for having been conferred the 2014 Celia Moh Professorial Chair.

The Celia Moh Professorial Chair was established in Year 2000 by the late Mr Laurence Moh, former Chairman of Plantation Timber Products, in honour of his wife Celia Moh to commemorate their 40th wedding anniversary. The award serves to promote and recognise the outstanding work of a female faculty member in SMU.

Professor Phang, who was indeed pleased, remarked, “I am deeply honoured by the conferment of this Professorial Chair, and would like to express my gratitude to the university for the encouragement and support for my research. I am also grateful to the late Mr Laurence Moh for establishing the chair to especially recognise and inspire female faculty members.”   Professor Phang is the first full time faculty member at SMU to hold the Celia Moh Professorial Chair.

Professor Phang, who joined SMU in 2000, obtained her PhD degree in economics from Harvard University in 1989.  At SMU, she teaches courses on Urban Economics and Economics of Regulation and Competition Law.

Her contributions to SMU span over several areas. In 2001, she chaired the Economics Department at the Business School to plan for the establishment of the School of Economics and Social Sciences (SESS).  She subsequently served as Associate Dean of SESS from 2002 to 2005 and was Interim Dean of the School of Economics from 2010 to 2011. She was also Acting Director of the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics from 2010 to 2011. In recognition of her contributions to SMU, Professor Phang was in 2012 awarded the Public Administration Medal (Bronze).

Working on key areas of housing and transport economics, Professor Phang focused on the impacts of government policies on these sectors. She is the author of the recently published book Housing Finance Systems: Market Failures and Government Failures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) as well as Housing Markets and Urban Transportation (McGraw Hill, 1992). She has also published numerous articles on housing, transport, and public private partnerships in books and scholarly journals which have been widely cited.

She is one of the co-investigators for a significant research project at SMU on economics of ageing, which was recently awarded under the Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund for Tier 3 Programme.

Professor Phang has served on a global basis, having been a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and various government organizations in Asia on projects involving land and housing reforms, housing finance systems, motor-vehicle polices, cost-benefit analysis for rail projects, appraisal frameworks for mega infrastructure as well as economic regulation of public transport and airports.

While on sabbatical leave, she has held visiting appointments at Harvard University and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

In Singapore, Professor Phang has served as board member of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the Land Transport Authority, and the Public Transport Council. She has been a Commission Member of the Competition Commission of Singapore since 2005 when it was established.  She is also a member of the Energy Market Authority’s Gas Network Code Modification Panel as well as advisory board member of the Centre of Liveable Cities and the Land Transport Authority Academy.  

[Featured Photo: Professor Phang Sock Yong (centre) is the first full time faculty member at SMU to hold the Celia Moh Professorial Chair.]