All Research

Muhammad Safuan Abdul Latip · Farhana Tahmida Newaz · Rachel Yong Yuen May · Ahmad Esa Abdul Rahman ·Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business ·2021 ·JEL: Q56, M39, D16, Q01, M59

The study investigated the effect of food safety knowledge, food safety trust and the factors influencing organic food purchase intention in the ‘new normal’ of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study employed non-contrived and cross-sectional methods. The data was collected in Malaysia using convenience sampling. A total of 330 valid questionnaires were analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and PROCESS for hypothesis testing. The study revealed a significant relationship involving food safety knowledge on personal attitude, perceived social pressure, and perceived autonomy. Moreover, organic food purchase intention was found to be influenced by personal attitude, perceived social pressure, and perceived autonomy. Interestingly, trust in organic food safety moderated the relationship between perceived autonomy and organic food purchase intention. The study proved valuable for stakeholders and organic food producers to understand the ‘new normal’ COVID-19 market scenario for a sound understanding of the market and the sustainability of the organic food industry. A new research framework is proposed and validated, related to individual purchase decision in global health issues which is limited in current literature. Hence, the study contributed to a better comprehension of green consumerism mainly in the Asian market.

My-Linh Nguyen · Toan Ngoc Bui ·Economies ·2021

This paper focuses on examining the nonlinear impact of trade openness (TO) on economic growth (EG) in the Asean-6 countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, and Vietnam). In order to achieve the set research objectives, the authors estimate the research model through the fixed-effect panel threshold approach. Unlike previous studies, this paper finds that there is a nonlinear impact of TO on EG, whereby TO has two threshold values. Specifically, before the first threshold value, TO plays an important role in boosting EG. However, this impact level decreases gradually when TO exceeds this threshold value. In particular, when exceeding the second threshold value, the impact of TO on EG is still positive but has a relatively low value. The research results show that if TO increases to a high level (beyond the threshold value) without combining with other complementary policies, this does not encourage high-efficiency EG. In addition, this study also shows that EG is positively affected by domestic investment and negatively affected by financial crisis. The findings in this paper are of great importance for the Asean-6 countries as well as researchers.

Krishna Moorthy · Nik Mohamad Zaki Nik Salleh · Ang Xin Jie · Chan Shu Yi · Lau Shin Wei · Loo Yian Bing · Yee Zhao Ying ·Millennial Asia ·2021

This study examines the social media usage of Malaysian millennials in planning their domestic holidays. This study integrated the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and technology acceptance model (TAM) variables by adding electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM), as it is a crucial factor influencing the travel industry nowadays. Data were collected from 301 Malaysians. The results show that e-WOM is the greatest antecedent influencing Malaysian millennials to use social media in planning their domestic holidays. Local tourism organizations such as Tourism Malaysia could gain an understanding of the issue through this study, and the promotion of local tourism through social media could be developed to reach millennials in Malaysia.

Hon Chung Hui ·South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance ·2021 ·JEL: F31, D72, D73, O38

This article explores the effects of political events on foreign exchange returns in Malaysia. We identify five political events in recent history, namely the 13th General Election (GE13), the imprisonment of a key opposition politician, the scandal from the 1MDB exposé, the appointment of a new Central Bank Governor and the 14th General Election (GE14). Using event studies, our findings show that the imprisonment of the opposition party leader triggered a favourable response from the foreign exchange market. However, market reactions to the 1MDB scandal were largely unfavourable. The GE13 triggered unfavourable market response, while the reverse is true for market reactions to GE14. Market response to the appointment of the new Central Bank Governor was rather positive. The Event Study is the first of its kind that examines the foreign exchange market implications of key political events in Malaysia. There are practical considerations that emanate from these findings.

Nor Salwati Othman · Nor Hamisham Harun · Izzaamirah Ishak ·Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business ·2021 ·JEL: DO1, D91, Q01, Q28, Q55

The government policies and initiatives to guarantee sustainable energy and clean environmental conditions contributed to the introduction of green technology electricity appliances in the market. This study sought to determine the physiological and socio-economics-demographic factors driving residential electricity consumers to use green technology electricity appliances, mainly solar PV, smart meter, electric vehicle, and battery storage technology. By understanding consumer intention, the investors of solar PV, battery storage, electric vehicle, and smart meter can estimate the demand and upscale the market for the corresponding products. For that purpose, the intention to use the solar PV, smart meter, electric vehicle, and battery storage function is developed by utilizing the combination of the theory of planned behavior, technology acceptance, and reasoning action. A reliable and valid structured online questionnaire and stepwise multiple regression are used to identify the possible factors that drive consumer behavior intention. The results show that the social influence, knowledge on RE, and perceived price significantly influence residential consumers’ willingness to adopt the technologies offered. The findings of this study suggest that the involvement of NGOs, public figures, and citizens’ cooperation are all necessary to spread information about the government’s objectives and support Malaysia’s present energy and environmental policies

Fazli Wadood · Mohammed Emad Alshaikh · Fazal Akbar · Maqsood Mahmud ·Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review ·2022

The main objective of this research is to integrate the resource-based view (RBV) to analyse how the relationship between firm performance and entrepreneurial orientation is mediated by outbound innovation among furniture firms in Malaysia.

Peter Rosenkranz · Monica Melchor ·Economic Analysis and Policy ·2022

Past crisis episodes have illustrated the interplay of macroeconomic and financial conditions, including the presence of harmful macrofinancial feedback effects. Meanwhile, financial markets have become increasingly connected and economic and financial cycles more synchronized over time. Against the backdrop of past financial crises and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we document and analyze trends in Asia’s financial interconnectedness over the past 3 decades, as well as its possible role in predicting financial crises. Employing a vector-autoregressive model and a panel probit regression, we find that financial interconnectedness increased across Asia and the Pacific, being particularly pronounced during past crises, including the present COVID-19 pandemic. We also find that increased interconnectedness is strongly and positively associated with the probability of crisis onset.

Tanja Kuzman · Jelisaveta Lazarevic · Milan Nedeljkovic ·Economic Analysis and Policy ·2022

This paper studies the conditionality in the relationship between capital flows liberalisation, macroprudential policies, and credit cycles in emerging market (EM) economies. Using quarterly data for 16 EM economies, we document the effectiveness of broad macroprudential measures in containing credit cycles in the EM economies. More importantly and in line with theory, we find that the effect of liberalisation of capital inflows on the excessive credit dynamics is conditional on the stance of the macroprudential regulation. When the macroprudential framework is tight, the liberalisation of capital inflows does not have a statistically significant effect on the excessive credit dynamics. In contrast, in economies with a lax macroprudential framework, the liberalisation of capital inflows may amplify credit expansion. The results provide a rationale to explain often conflicting findings in the earlier empirical literature.

Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary · Han-Phoumin · Ehsan Rasoulinezhad ·Economic Analysis and Policy ·2022 ·JEL: H81, G21

The main objective of this paper is to identify the determining factors of the optimal credit guarantee ratio in four members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), namely Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia, by employing statistical techniques and the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) approach. The empirical findings prove that the loan default ratio is the optimal credit guarantee ratio’s main determining factor. The empirical findings confirm that the credit guarantee ratio needs to be increased in the ASEAN region to help SMEs survive in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and for the post-COVID-19 economic recovery. The results show that the credit guarantee ratio should vary for different countries based on the macroeconomic climate and for each bank or, in other words, for groups of banks with similar financial soundness. The practical policy recommendations are establishing a regional credit guarantee scheme (RCGS) and evaluating banks’ soundness for setting the optimal credit guarantee ratio.

Sulistiyo K. Ardiyono ·Economic Analysis and Policy ·2022 ·JEL: D22, L2, L6, L8

Numerous studies have explored the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on firms’ financial performance, but the link between such performance and employment has rarely been estimated rigorously. Using the ASEAN-5 firms’ data from Q1-2018 to Q3-2021, this study shows how the pandemic affects firms’ revenue, cost, profitability, and employment heterogeneously across countries. It is argued that while revenue losses are the main challenge, widespread and prolonged restrictions in some countries have created extra complications in idle inventories and labour. In response to the revenue shocks, firms reduce their employment with an elasticity of around 0.10, indicating that a 10 per cent revenue decline is associated with a 1 per cent headcount reduction in the short run. A further examination using event analyses reveals that the path of labour adjustment is diverse across countries and industries, reflecting the degree of pandemic severity and countries’ structural issues.

Evan Lau · Jaime Moll de Alba · Kim-Hing Liew ·Economic Analysis and Policy ·2022

External debt levels have increased dramatically over the past decades. Many Asian developing countries are trapped in unprecedented levels of indebtedness while utilizing a high level of external debt for fiscal activities. This study empirically investigates the impact of such debt levels by estimating the appropriate threshold of external debt to GDP on economic growth for a sample of 16 Asian countries during the years 1980 to 2016. The outcomes indicate that external debt negatively and significantly impacts growth in most of these countries. Debt to GDP threshold construction revealed ten countries with a threshold below 30%, three countries in the range between 30%–60%, two countries in the range between 60%–90%, with only Thailand exceeding a 90% threshold. The fiscal discipline of targeting an appropriate debt to GDP ratio can serve as a guide to optimizing sustainable economic growth for countries in the Asian region. That is, appropriate ratios would allow flexibility in the use of fiscal instruments to counter any future incoming economic shocks.

Chee Yoong Liew; YoungKyung Ko; Bee Lian Song; Saraniah Thechina Murthy ·Journal of Industrial Business and Economics ·2022

We examine the association between directors’ compensation and firm value and investigate whether ownership concentration moderates this relationship by utilising a sample of Malaysian public-listed firms for the period from 2004 to 2014. Using fixed effect regression, we find that the remuneration of executive and non-executive directors is positively related to firm value. However, there is no conclusive evidence on the moderating effect of ownership concentration on the relationship between executive directors’ and non-executive directors’ compensation and firm value. Our findings indicate that executive and non-executive directors’ compensation packages should be linked to firm performance. The implication of this research addresses one of the key issues in corporate finance i.e., whether it is worth compensating directors in emerging markets or not.

Ooi Kok Loang · Zamri Ahmad ·Millennial Asia ·2022

This study examines the existence, tendency and determinants of herding in the Malaysian stock market under market stress from 2016 to 2020. This study adopts ordinary least square and quantile regression models to estimate herding. Three types of measurements are used to capture volatility, which are realized volatility, Parkinson volatility and Garman and Klass volatility. The result shows that herding exists in the Malaysian stock market. Investors are observed to herd stronger in the bearish (down) market condition compared to bullish (up) market condition, especially in the upper quantile (τ > 50%). Realized volatility is found to be significant in every quantile except for the median quantile (τ = 50%) and Garman and Klass’s volatility is significant in the upper quantiles of 0.75 and 0.90. This study assists analysts and investors to formulate better investment strategies. Regulators and policymakers shall also control and regulate the herding behaviour of investors, which can deviate the stocks from their fundamentals. The existence of herding also violates the assumptions of EMH in assuming that investors are rational.

Chi Truong · Jeffrey Sheen · Stefan Truck · James Villafuarte ·Journal of Financial Stability ·2022 ·JEL: C33, E44, G01, G17

This study develops an early warning system for financial crises with a focus on small open economies. We contribute to the literature by developing macro-financial dynamic factor models that extract useful information from a rich but unbalanced mixed frequency data set that includes a range of global and domestic economic and financial indicators. The framework is applied to several Asian countries—Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. Logit regression models that use the extracted factors and other leading indicators have significant power in predicting systemic events. In-sample and out-of-sample test results indicate that the extracted factors help to improve the predictive power over a model that uses only sufficiently long history indicators. Importantly, models that include the dynamic factors yield consistently better out-of-sample crisis prediction results for key performance measures such as a usefulness index, the noise to signal ratio, and AUROC.

Chan Fatt Cheah · Abdul Samad Abdul-Rahim · Mohd Yusof Saari · Niaz Ahmad Mohd Naseem ·Journal of the Knowledge Economy ·2022

This paper aims to investigate the impact of the economic openness and institutional quality in explaining the environmental degradation in Malaysia that covers from 1980 to 2019. By using an innovative autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique, the result indicates that economic openness that is measured through the trade and FDI are unequivocally environmental improving. Meanwhile, the institutional reforms also appeared to actualize the beneficial effect of environmental emission. The findings show that economic openness and institutional quality act as a key driving force to further curb the CO2 emission and in turn to reduce the environmental pollution. This suggests that countries with adequate trade, FDI, and institutional settings like Malaysia are on the right track to reinforce all efforts in bringing down pollution. Therefore, environmental quality can be improved through the greater ability and willingness to enforce environmental regulations and higher trade liberalization process, which is usually associated with higher income, more economic development, and better environment.