Research

Muhammad Najit Sukemi · Madeline Berma · Shamsul Amri Baharuddin · Faridah Shahdan ·Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia ·2018

Affirmative action is a mechanism of conflict resolution in situation of ethnic tensions and socio-economic imbalances. In Malaysia, affirmative action was implemented through a New Economic Policy (NEP) from 1970 to address economic imbalances and wealth inequality among ethnics through the distribution of the equity with the goal of 30% Bumiputerasowned and 40% non-bumiputera owned. After 40 years of implementation, the goal of equity distribution still yet to be achieved. However, does the implementation of affirmative action affects the distribution of wealth for each ethnic groups? Thus, this study aims to evaluate the influence of affirmative policies to the distribution of wealth between ethnic groups in Malaysia. This study will use equity data for ethnicity holdings for a period from 1969 to 2012 and will be tested using the Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The findings show the implementation of affirmative action has significant influence in affecting the distribution of wealth between ethnic groups in the short term and the long term. The study also proves the wealth distribution between ethnic groups was distributed through growing economy rather than through the acquisition of the other ethnic ownership, especially Chinese ethnic was later and transferred to the Bumiputeras.

Noryati Ahmad · Wan Evva Wan Suriea · Ummu Naziha Mohd Ariffin ·Malaysian Journal of Consumer and Family Economics ·2019

In Malaysia, the insurance industry is operated by conventional insurance companies and Islamic insurance companies (or better known as Takaful.). Even though the nature of business of these two types of companies is almost similar however at operational and investment level, Islamic insurance companies must be in tune with the Shariah principles. Policyholders, investors and regulators are interested in the performance of these companies. Hence, this study aims to investigate the determinants of investment performance of Islamic and conventional insurance companies in Malaysia. Company-specific factors (company size, solvency margin and liquidity) and macro factors (GDP, interest and profit rates, equity returns and inflation) are independent variables employed in the study. A panel regression was estimated on 11 Islamic and 14 conventional insurance companies in Malaysia from the year 2006 to 2015. Interestingly empirical findings revealed that only liquidity and lagged GDP statistically significant relationship with the investment performance of Islamic insurance companies. On the other hand, in addition to liquidity and lagged GD, the investment performance of conventional insurance companies is also statistically and significantly influenced by interest rate and equity returns. These findings provide policyholders, investors as well as regulators with pertinent information related to an appropriate decision made on Islamic and conventional insurance companies.