Research

Kunal Sen · Matthew Tyce ·Structural Change and Economic Dynamics ·2019

Both Malaysia and Thailand were seen to be part of the miracle growth economies of East Asia and fast moving into high income status in the early 1990s. Following the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) of the mid 1990s, both countries have observed prolonged growth slowdowns. In this paper, we offer a political economy explanation of the growth slowdown in Malaysia and Thailand in their post AFC phases. We argue that the nature of the political settlement in these two countries determined a growth strategy that was predicated on offering open deals in the export-oriented manufacturing sector that were accessible to most firms, while at the same time, offering closed deals to politically connected firms in the natural resource and services sectors. As the political settlement moved to a vulnerable authoritarian one in both countries, such a dualistic deals strategy became patronage based over time and detrimental to growth.

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.

Suharnomo Suharnomo · Fathyah Hashim ·Journal of Asia Business Studies ·2019

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effect of job motivation and commitment on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of Indonesian and Malaysian employees. Organizational and national cultures are introduced as moderators and OCB as a mediator to investigate their relationships in the context of job performance. Design/methodology/approach The sample was drawn from employees using a purposive sampling method. A total of 264 valid questionnaires were obtained from employees. The data were analyzed using regression analysis. Findings The results show that job commitment and job motivation positively affect OCB in Indonesia but not Malaysia. The results also reveal that job motivation affects OCB in both countries. In Indonesia, organizational culture and national culture partially moderate the influence of job commitment and motivation on OCB, except the commitment to the organization's culture. However, roles of these moderators in job commitment and motivation are not evident in Malaysia. The result of this study also shows that OCB affects performance in Malaysia but not Indonesia. Practical implications The results of this study can be used to explore Indonesian and Malaysian employees. Although the culture of these two countries is originated from the same roots which cause many similarities among them, there are differences in terms of OCB and employee’s performance that can affect organizational performance and also ways in dealing business with Indonesian and Malaysian companies. Originality/value This study is one of the first studies to examine cross-cultural dimensions in two Southeast Asian countries. The findings contribute to the current OCB literature by confirming the roles of OCB and culture in the effects of job motivation and commitment on job performance.

Lindsey Hiebert · Robert Hecht · ShanSoe-Lin · Rosmawati Mohamed · Fatiha H. Shabaruddin · Syed Mukhtar Syed Mansor · Maznah Dahlui MD, MPH · Amirah Azzeri · Scott A. McDonald ·Value in Health Regional Issues ·2019

Background In Malaysia, more than 330 000 individuals are estimated to be chronically infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV), but less than 2% have been treated to date. Objectives To estimate the required coverage and costs of a national screening strategy to inform the launch of an HCV elimination program. Methods We designed an HCV screening strategy based on a “stepwise” approach. This approach relied on targeting of people who inject drugs in the early years, with delayed onset of widespread general population screening. Annual coverage requirements and associated costs were estimated to ensure that the World Health Organization elimination treatment targets were met. Results In total, 6 million individuals would have to be screened between 2018 and 2030. Targeting of people who inject drugs in the early years would limit annual screening coverage to less than 1 million individuals from 2018 to 2026. General population screening would have to be launched by 2026. Total costs were estimated at MYR 222 million ($58 million). Proportional to coverage targets, 60% of program costs would fall from 2026 to 2030. Conclusions This exercise was one of the first attempts to conduct a detailed analysis of the required screening coverage and costs of a national HCV elimination strategy. These findings suggest that the stepwise approach could delay the onset of general population screening by more than 5 years after the program's launch. This delay would allow additional time to mobilize investments required for a successful general population screening program and also minimize program costs. This strategy prototype could inform the design of effective screening strategies in other countries.

Kyunga Na · Young-Hee Kang ·Journal of Open Innovation: Technology Market and Complexity ·2019

This study aims to investigate the effects of product and process innovations on manufacturing firm performance in Southeast Asian emerging markets. To this end, using a cross-national sample of 2324 manufacturing firms from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) dataset of 2015, we test the effects of product and process innovations on the sales growth of manufacturing firms in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This study finds that product innovation is positively related to sales growth while new operating technologies are negatively associated with sales growth. For high-tech firms, product innovation is positively related to sales growth. The findings imply that in Southeast Asian emerging markets, governments and manufacturing firms can enhance performance by investing in product innovation.

Moau Yong Toh ·Journal of Asian Economics ·2019 ·JEL: G21; G28

This paper examines the effects of bank capital ratios on liquidity creation and business diversification for Malaysia. Annual data are analyzed for 28 commercial banks for the period 2001⬜2017. We observe that the average equity capital and capital adequacy ratios trended upward over the period from 11 to 17% and from 19 to 27%, respectively. In connection with higher bank capital ratios, we find a general shift in bank focus away from traditional lending and deposit taking activity that creates liquidity for the economy toward fee-based services and other transactional business. More nuanced patterns emerge when banks are differentiated by size, stock market listing, and domestic versus foreign ownership. In particular, while traditional on-balance sheet liquidity creation is reduced across the board in connection with higher capital ratios, off-balance sheet liquidity creation (e.g., credit commitments) declines more selectively for larger, listed, and domestic banks. We infer that smaller, non-listed, and foreign owned banks have a competitive advantage in providing the more personalized services needed for off-balance sheet liquidity creation. Further, while an increase in business diversification in connection with higher capital ratios is broadly observed, the increase is not uniformly evident for larger and domestic banks.

Md Fauzi Ahmad (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Siti Norziah Ismail (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Mohd Fahrul Hassan (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Chan Shiau Wei (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Norhadilah Abdul (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Ahmad Nur Aizat Ahmad (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Mohd Nasrun Mohd Nawi · Nor Aida Abdul Rahman ·International Journal of Supply Chain Management ·2019

Green Factory is a management tool for eliminate environment burden such as waste, chemical and pollution. Economic development grew too fast has effected major impact to environment. Carbon dioxide, loss of biodiversity, degradation of natural resources, global warming, ozone layer depletion and deforestation have effected on the environment. Based on world statistics, Malaysia has produced 29 million tonnes carbon dioxide and ranked 26th (0.66%) of the 215 countries in the world. 110 world leaders including Malaysia has agreed to work for reducing carbon dioxide gas in the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit 2009. Five main criteria for Green Factory have been identified; (1) Solar power generation systems, (2) Fuel cells system, (3) Cogeneration systems, (4) Air conditioning units and (5) Recycling system. A study was conducted to manufacturing companies that adopted Green Factory practices to assess its their green practices for minimizing environmental problems. The samples were 300 companies in Malaysia. Finally, 20% response rate has been received, with 60 respondents. Based on descriptive result, recycling shows the highest level of practices, followed by solar power cogenerations system, air conditioning units and fuel cells system. This study result shows Green Factory has significant relationship with environment performance (r=0.684, P<0.05) and business performance (r=0.510, P<0.05). Overall, the survey result shows green factory practices has significant impact on Malaysia manufacturing companies. In conclusion, Green Factory can be used as effective tool for improving not only for environment performance but also for business performance.

Shahanif Hasan · Aza Azlina Md. Kassim · Mohamad Ali Abdul Hamid ·International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues ·2020 ·JEL: G3, M42

In recent decades, there has been a noticeable increase in the practice of earnings management (EM) as a proxy for financial reporting, especially real activities, with effect on the quality of financial statements. The role of the audit committee in mitigating EM remains ambiguous because of inconclusive findings. Therefore, this study examines the moderating effect of audit quality and audit committee on financial reporting quality, also known as real earnings management in Malaysian companies. The results show that corporate governance mechanism such as financial accounting expert, meeting and indicate significant results with real EM while, audit committee independence and size, shows an insignificant result on real EM. In addition, the results show that audit quality of the audit committee leads to less aggressive EM practice in real activities. The findings also show that audit quality and audit committee has a significant role in restricting the real EM. Audit quality is found to significantly moderate the relationship between audit committee with financial reporting governance practices in ensuring credible accounting information

Miao Zhanga · Md Aslam Mia ·Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy ·2020 ·JEL: D22 F23 L60 O14

With cognizance to firms’ heterogeneity in an industry, this paper employs the most recent, unpublished and large-scale firm-level data of 14,687 manufacturing firms in Malaysia in 2015 to revisit the drivers of manufacturing exports. Applying the OLS and logistic regressions, we observed a strong positive relationship between a firm’s labor productivity and export intensity. Firms’ foreign ownership, size and age are positively connected to their export competitiveness. The incorporation of location variables into the regression reveals that firms in the Southern peninsula of Malaysia (e.g., Johor) have a positive effect and demonstrate the highest probability to engage in export activities. Our study is informative to trade policymakers on the key drivers of manufacturing exports, providing references to not only Malaysia, but other economies in Eastern Asia and developing nations.

Joseph Deutsch · Jacques Silber · Guanghua Wan · Mengxue Zhao ·Journal of Asian Economics ·2020 ·JEL: D31 – I31

Using data on household consumer durables from the Asian Barometer Survey, this paper examines the evolution of inequality, poverty and welfare in six countries of South East Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. We start by deriving the most common order of acquisition of these durables, using first an algorithm proposed by Paroush (1965), and then Item Response Theory. We also compute the frequency distribution of the number of durables owned by households. We then use these results to compute inequality, poverty and achievement or welfare indices adapted to the case of ordinal variables. Our empirical results confirm the existence of an order of acquisition. The results show that inequality was higher in Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines and lower in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. A similar classification of countries was obtained when computing multidimensional poverty indices. Finally, using the welfare or achievement index recently introduced by Apouey et al. (2019), we found that welfare was generally higher in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia and lower in Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines

Ahmad Fakrul Ramli · Zarina Ab Muis · Wai Shin Ho · Ahmad Muzammil Idris · Aminullah Mohtar ·Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy ·2019

The energy sector has grown significantly over the years, causing an increase in carbon emission that has led to serious global warming problems. Consequently, electric vehicles (EVs) have become a favourable solution in the transportation sector due to their green technology attributes. This paper aims to apply the Carbon Emission Pinch Analysis (CEPA) method to the transportation sector in Iskandar Malaysia. The modified CEPA method is applied by constructing a composite curve for transportation modes and the total carbon emission was plotted in order to study the minimum electricity requirement that needs to be generated to implement the use of EVs. Road and rail transportation were considered in the transport composite curve based on the current policies available and to achieve the new carbon emission target by the year 2025. The alternatives available to reduce carbon emission in Iskandar Malaysia include increasing public transport modal share; fuel switching from petrol and diesel to natural gas and biofuels; and increasing transport efficiency via plug-in hybrid and EVs. Four scenarios were established and evaluated based on economic and environmental aspects. As a result, Scenario 4 which considered all policies available (transport management, fuel switching and fuel efficiency) have showed the most promising fuel mix for future transportation demands. An estimated total amount of 0.25 TJ of electricity is needed for EV implementation with a total estimated cost of RM 1.3 billion. The total carbon emission for this scenario is 1101.96 kt-CO2. This research can benefit the Government, town planners, or policy makers, for preliminary energy planning.

Abdul Rahim Ridzuan · Shahsuzan Zakaria · Bayu Arie Fianto · Nora Yusma Mohamed Yusoff · Nor Fatimah Che Sulaiman · Mohamad Idham Md Razak · Siswantini · Arsiyanti Lestari ·International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy ·2021 ·JEL: G10, F62

This study offers new insights for policymakers to reduce income inequality, thus ensuring economic growth which greatly benefits the poor segment of population and directing financial sector to provide easy access to financial resources for lower income group at cheaper cost. Bound test was applied to examine the long-run and short-run relationships based on the sample period beginning from 1970 until 2016. The results confirmed the existence of a long-run relationship between the variables. Financial development in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand had successfully reduced income inequality, however, a different effect was recorded in the Philippines where income distribution was worsened. Furthermore, economic growth brought positive effect to income distribution in Malaysia and Indonesia, but not for Thailand and the Philippines. Inflation, trade openness and foreign direct investment, provided mixed results for all countries. Among the policies recommendation for this paper are there should be more easy accessibility for entrepreneurs to reach the wide range of financial services including conventional and Islamic financial products, the expansion of capital market, as well as giving proper attention to the financial sector. Besides, granting the access to capital markets for low income groups or underprivileged individuals might be helpful to them either by developing entrepreneurial skill or involvement in productive activities and receive better salaries. This policy will give insight to the policymakers to strengthen their financial institutions, especially during the pandemic of Covid-19

Haniruzila Hanifah · Hasliza Abdul Halim · Noor Hazlina Ahmad · Ali Vafaei-Zadeh ·Journal of Asia Business Studies ·2019

Purpose Innovation has become an approach to create value for the customer to remain competitive in the market. However, previous research on innovation performance particularly among Bumiputera small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) had received little intention. Hence, Bumiputera SMEs need to inculcate the innovation culture to generate innovation performance. As such, the purpose of this study is to examine the ambidextrous orientation and innovation strategy on innovation culture, and how innovation culture could mediate the relationship between ambidextrous orientation and innovation strategy and innovation performance. In addition, this study also examines the role of government support as the moderator between innovation culture and innovation performance. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 140 Bumiputera SMEs and analyzed using partial least square-structural equation modeling via Smart PLS. Findings Findings indicated that ambidextrous orientation (alignment and adaptability) and innovation strategy (proactive creativity strategy and growth risk orientation strategy) had a significant impact on innovation culture. Besides, innovation culture mediated the relationship between alignment, proactive creativity strategy, growth risk orientation strategy and innovation performance. Surprisingly, innovation culture does not significantly mediate the relationship between adaptability and innovation performance. However, government support plays an important role to support innovation culture and innovation performance in Bumiputera SMEs. Originality/value This study makes both theoretical and practical contributions, especially in identifying the significant role of Bumiputera SMEs in creating an innovation culture. Besides, it explained government support as an important role in strengthening the relationship between innovation culture and innovation performance. The findings of the study will provide great help to Bumiputera entrepreneurs in formulating innovation culture in Malaysian SMEs.

Basu Govindaraju · John Jeyasingam · Md. Mamun Habib · Uvarani Letchmana · Sasidevi Ratnam ·International Journal of Supply Chain Management ·2019

This empirical study employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate the impact of sustainable practices on sustainable performance of higher education institutions. Firstly, the sustainable performance survey is designed to investigate its main influencing factors among the pool of constructs includes; economic, environment, social and top management support factors. Secondly, based on the SEM, the levels of sustainable performance of the universities are quantified in accordance with factors. The findings were supported by empirical evidence, as the study established that only economic and environment factors have significant positive relationship and impact sustainability performance. This paper provides a greater understanding of the interactions between key elements of sustainable practices associated with university performance provision.

Salawati Sahari · Santy Mayda Batubara ·Asian Economic and Financial Review ·2019 ·JEL: G10; G14; G15.

Indonesia and Malaysia are Southeast Asiancountries thathave similargrowthratesin business performance. Both countrieshave experiencedthe global financial crisis and recoveredfrom the economicdownturn. This study examinedthe performance based on intellectual capital of Indonesianand Malaysiancompanies listed on the Indonesianand MalaysianStock Exchangesfrom 2013 until 2016using an analysisbased on the “Independent Sample t –test” to evaluate the Intellectual Capital value which consists of the variablesValue Added Capital Employed (VACA), Value Added Human Capital (VAHU), and Structural Capital Value Added (STVA), (Pulic, 1998). Based on the Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC)TM approach, the studyfound several performance differences between Indonesianand Malaysiancompanies involving the capital employment (VACA), human capital (VAHU), structural capital (STVA) and also a significant decline in company performance.