All 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.

Rosmaria Jaffar · Chek Derashid · Roshaiza Taha ·Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business ·2021 ·JEL: H25, H26, M41

The purpose of this study is to examine the level of aggressive tax planning (ATP) among companies listed in the Access, Certainty, Efficiency (ACE) Market of Bursa Malaysia. On top of that, this study also investigates the relationship between company characteristics, ethnicity, and ATP. This study uses a balanced pooled sample of 105 firm years-observations for the period from 2014 to 2018. These samples were selected to provide new insight into this market and to explore the attitude of small firms toward ATP in Malaysia. The data was retrieved from DataStream and the downloaded annual reports. The finding shows that profitability and financial distress have a significant relationship with ATP. Other variables including size, capital intensity, inventory intensity, leverage, and ethnicity, were not determinants of ATP. The result in this study may assist the reader in understanding the nature of companies in the ACE market, particularly on its behavior toward tax planning. A strict requirement is needed to be adopted in the sample selection process, thus limiting the sample size. Further, since the previous study focused on large companies, the discussion of this paper will provide new insight into the nature of tax planning within the small- and medium-sized companies in Malaysia.

Muhammed Abdul Khalid · Li Yang ·Journal of Asian Economics ·2021

In this paper, by combining information obtained from national accounts, household surveys, and fiscal data, we document the evolution of income inequality in Malaysia, not only at the national level (for the period of 1984–2014) but also by ethnic group (for the period of 2002–2014). To our knowledge this is the first attempt to produce inequality measurements of Malaysia, which are fully consistent with the national accounts. Our research shows that despite Malaysia’s exceptional economic growth rate, its growth has been inclusive. For the period of 2002–2014, the real income growth for the bottom 50 % is the highest (5.2 %), followed by the middle 40 % (4.1 %), the top 10 % (2.7 %) and then the top 1 % (1.6 %). However, while average growth rates are positive across all ethnic groups (Bumiputera 4.9 %, Indians 4.8 %, and Chinese 2.7 %), the highest growth of real income per adult accrued to the Bumiputera in the top 1 % (at 8.3 %), which sharply contrasts the much lower growth rate of the Indians (at 3.4 %) and negative income growth rates of the Chinese (at −0.6 %). Despite the negative growth rate, the Chinese still account for the lion’s share in the top 1 %. In 2014, 60 % of the adults in the top 1 % income group are Chinese, while 33 % Bumiputera, and 6 % Indians. We conclude that in this period, Malaysia’s growth features an inclusive redistribution between income classes, but with a twist between racial groups.