All Research

Judhiana Abd. Ghani · Bhajan Grewal · Abdullahi D. Ahmed · Norashidah Mohamed Nor ·Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia ·2019

By using fiscal datasets from 1990 to 2010 in Malaysia, a panel Dynamic-OLS (DOLS) is employed to investigate the extent to which fiscal decentralisation can support state level economic growth as proposed in the Market preserving federalism (MPF) theory. Despite having a more centralised federalism system, the result strongly shows that a fiscal decentralisation variable, (i.e. a composite ratio of decentralisation) has significant coefficient and positive relationship with state economic growth. This implies that a certain degree of fiscal decentralisation in Malaysia is able to contribute to states’ economic performance by adopting fiscal decentralisation simultaneously on both dimensions of revenue and expenditure. This validates the view that decentralisation is a multi dimentional measure. The study shows that Malaysia also would be able to benefit from a system of federalism which empowers state governments to make policies for their jurisdictions and to compete with one another for better services and higher investment. Hence, competition is the mechanism that creates incentives that result from satisfying the MPF conditions and subsequently leading to the achievement of higher state economic performance.

Sze Ying Loo · Mukaramah Harun ·Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies ·2019

This study examines the effects of global economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on Malaysia's macroeconomic indicators. Three substantive findings emerged from our inquiry based on a multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model: (1) Domestic uncertainty - in nominal and real terms - seems to have no material impact on the macro-economy after controlling for global uncertainty. (2) Fluctuations in the global EPU are more important than domestic uncertainty in predicting a country's macroeconomic variables, particularly output and CPI-based inflation. The macroeconomic variables carry signs as per theoretical expectation. (3) The model predicts that external shocks exhibit a much larger impact on macroeconomic variables than those shocks originating from domestic markets. The results have deepened our insight on how the real variables correlate with external uncertainties and the fitful recovery in the recent past.

J.S. Keshminder · Gurmit Kaur Bariam Singh · Zainora AB. Wahid · Mohammad Syafiq Abdullah ·Malaysian Journal of Consumer and Family Economics ·2019

Green Sukuk serves as an alternative form of finance which is equipped with both climate mitigation and Shariah compliance features compared to conventional finance. Acknowledging the superiority of green Sukuk to raise funds to mitigate climate change, the World Bank took the lead to promote it globally by making Malaysia the premier green Sukuk hub. This study seeks to assess the development of green Sukuk from the aspect of issuance and Shariah principle used in Malaysia since its inception in 2014. The study reveals that the development in the green Sukuk market is slow but is robust in moving from the energy industry to the building industry, while Shariah contracts used are based on the issuers' underlying assets. The study concludes that the green Sukuk market is still small and liquidity constraint makes it difficult for investors to gain access. For the government to increase green Sukuk issuance, information about the performance, challenges, risks, and opportunities in the realm of green Sukuk must be made available to both issuers and investors.

Nur Sa’adah Muhamad · Syahnaz Sulaiman · Khairul Akmaliah Adham · Mohd Fuaad Said ·Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities ·2019

Halal tourism, which arises from the growth in the number of Muslim travellers world-wide and the rapid development of halal industry, is defined as the engagement of any object or action by Muslim travellers that conforms to the Islamic teachings and facilitates the practice of the religion. As such, the application of halal concept in tourism, including in its development and marketing, must be guided by the Islamic principles. With the purpose to understand the current state of knowledge and practice, we reviewed the literature on halal tourism that has been published in high-tier academic journals. Based on the review, we identified the emergent themes and the knowledge gaps for future research. Among others, we found that the industry is booming with increased participations from Muslimminority countries. However, there seems to be variations in the practice, perhaps due to the complexity of the market needs. The implementation of halal tourism by Muslimminority countries is the most pressing issue due to the need to ensure that the process and the service offered strictly comply with the requirements of Islamic teachings, while at the same time, to ensure that the countries are able to develop their halal sectors into competitive industries. Understanding the implementation of halal tourism is an important agenda for future research to ensure that the service provided addresses the fundamental issue of Muslims’ obligations to adhere to the Islamic teachings in all aspects of their lives including while travelling.

Junaina Muhammad · Mohamed Hisham Dato' hj Yahya · Sabarina Mohammed Shah · Mohammad Mizanur Rahman ·Asian Economic and Financial Review ·2018

Islamic financial market is the growing innovation of global financial market which moves together with conventional and sectorial counterpart in many countries. As the fastest growing investment component, Shariah compliant stock index in Bursa Malaysia has picked up positive momentum and attracted more attention to the investors, policy makers, issuers and researchers. The main objective of this study is to investigate the co-movement between Shariah compliant stock and sectorial stocks indexes performance in Bursa Malaysia using a standard time series techniques. For understanding a long run and short run co-movement among the Shariah compliant stock index, composite stock index and sectorial stock indexes, a co-integration approach, Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) have been applied respectively in this study. In addition, Granger causality test have been adopted to determine the lead-lag relationship. The findings show that in the long run, Shariah compliant index stock price and sectorial indexes stock price move together but in short run, speed of adjustment varies among the variables. Ganger causality test shows that there are bidirectional, unidirectional and no causality relationships between Shariah compliant and sectorial indexes.

Tulus Suryanto · Muhammad Haseeb · Nira Hariyatie Hartani (Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)) ·International Journal of Supply Chain Management ·2018

Over all businesses are ever changing competition environment, organization are always required to make modification internally and externally to compete globally successfully into marketplace. Supply chain management is key sources for firms to gaining superior performance. The basic purpose of this paper is to examine the level of association between the two indicators management support and their organization learning with the concept of green supply chain management environment. Supply chain is globally increasingly important concerns for all business and challenge for them are logistics management. Total quality management (TQM) and environmental management come from firm’s experiences and procedure of organizational learnings. This study computed positive significant relationship with organizational learning mechanism; support of organization and GSCM practices adopted controlled variables from organizations size, regulations of country perspective, cost pressure by organization, practices of industry at different levels. Over all findings and implications of logistics management are discussed.

Mui-Yin Chin · Chin-Hong Puah · Cia-Ling Teo · Justina Joseph ·International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy ·2018 ·JEL: F18; F43; Q43

In light of the deterioration of environmental quality, this study aims to identify the determinants of CO2 emissions in Malaysia using the autoregressive distributed lag and the decomposition-type threshold methods. This study signifies that economic growth is the main contributor to CO2 emissions which is in line with the theory of the Environmental Kuznets Curve curve. Meanwhile, this study also confirms that vertical intra-industry trade between Malaysia and China together with the bilateral FDI from China to Malaysia are the significant determinants of CO2 emissions in Malaysia. As such, this study suggests that the Malaysian government should monitor the implementation of the green growth strategy to enhance the sustainability of the economic and trade growth without compromising environmental quality

Stany Wee Lian Fong · Tan Pei Kian · Yeo Sook Fern · Soh Long Quan ·International Journal of Supply Chain Management ·2018

Travellers today tend to believe more on peer reviews in selecting tourism products and services instead of information provided by the businesses. With the rise of communication technologies such as Web 2.0, there is pool of opinions on hotels, tourism destinations, and even travel services that are expressed from the perspective of consumer consumption in the internet. As online review becomes an important source for travellers to evaluate the quality of hospitality services, only hoteliers that take advantage of online review are able to attract the attention of travellers that utilize the digital channel for information searching. The increment of hotels and rooms in Malaysia has somehow exceed the increment of tourist arrivals in the recent years. Hoteliers are worried that the supply would go beyond the demand in the future with the continuous growth of hotels but average occupancy rate remains at 62 to 63 percent. Thus, this study aims to examine the causal relationship between the attributes of the online consumer reviews and the online hotel booking intention specifically in Malaysia context. 200 survey responses were collected from local travellers that have at least once booked hotel through online method. The results show that usefulness (t = 3.478, p < 0.01), valence (t = 2.462, p < 0.05), and timeliness (t = 2.145, p < 0.05) of the online consumer review significantly affect the online hotel booking intention in Malaysia. This findings provide an insight to hoteliers on how to manage and improve the online consumer reviews that are accessible.

Md Fauzi Ahmad (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Khor Chun Hoong (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Norhadilah Abdul Hamid (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Norliana Sarpin (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Rozlin Zainal (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Ahmad Nur Aizat Ahmad (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Mohd Fahrul Hassan (Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)) · Mohd Nasrun Mohd Nawi (Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)) ·International Journal of Supply Chain Management ·2018

New product design and process design are vital aspects for a company to survive in in global competition market. Product design determines in the success of a company through how product design can accomplish in today's marketplace and customer needs. Nevertheless, many new products which have been developed from research and development fail to compete in global market due to product performance issue such as quality, cost and delivery. Besides, many new product design is not capable to match with the process design and machine capability in production process. The objective of this paper is to identify the relationship between new product design and new product process design towards new product performance in manufacturing industry. Random sampling techniques have been used by distributing questionnaire to 400 companies in Malaysia manufacturing sector. 80 companies had replied with the respond rate of 20%. The result shows that the extent level of new product design and process design are moderate and high level respectively. Furthermore, there is a significant relationship between new product process design and new product performance (r(80) = 0.570, p < 0.05). However, there are no significant relationships between new product design and new product performance (r(80) = 0.092, p > 0.05). The study is important to gain insight on the effect of new product design and new product process design towards new product performance.

Mohammad Sharif Karimi ·International Economic Journal ·2018 ·JEL: C22; O11

In this study, we examine the nonlinear relationship between international tourism arrival and economic growth of Malaysia by using asymmetric models over the periods 2000:1–2015:4. The results show that the tourism arrival is positively related to Malaysia’s economic growth in the long run, but there is no short-run relationship and other traditional growth factors such as trade, exchange rate and Consumer Price Index are important for economic growth in the case of Malaysia. This implies that tourism can be one of the important factors for Malaysia’s economic growth in the long run and development and can be used to stimulate the overall economic growth and hence, policy-makers should pay greater attention towards promoting inbound tourism.

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.

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.

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.

Shui Ling Wong · Saliza Ibrahim · Norazlin Abdul Kadir · Salbiah Mohd Salleh ·Applied Health Economics and Health Policy ·2019

Background High medicines prices are a barrier to medicines access, and their impact is greater in developing countries. Objective This study assessed the availability, prices and affordability of medicines in public and private sectors in Malaysia to understand the pharmaceutical environment and guide policy recommendations. Methods This nationwide cross-sectional study adapted the World Health Organization/Health Action International (WHO/HAI) methodology. A total of 87 premises from both public and private sectors participated in this study. Data on 50 medicines were collected to analyze availability, prices and affordability. Medicine prices were compared against the international reference prices (IRPs), and affordability was assessed by daily income level. Results In the public sector, the average availability of generics (74.8%) was higher than that of the originator brand name products (19.4%). However, in the private sector, the availability of originator brands was higher (52.2%) than generics (49.1%). Procurement prices in the public sector were up to 1.5 times the IRPs, but up to 8.4 times in the private sector. The study also observed large price variation across medicines in the private sector. Median retail mark-ups in private hospitals (generics 166.9%; originators 51.0%) were higher than in retail pharmacies (generics 94.7%; originators 22.4%). Generics were generally affordable, but originator brands were unaffordable. Conclusion Current policies on generic medicines need to be strengthened to improve the availability and use of generics in the country. High medicine prices and large price variation in the current free market suggest that coherent pricing policies and regulations are needed to safeguard the accessibility and affordability of medicines for the people.

Muhamad Azhar Nor Sabli · Mohd Fahmy-Abdullah · Lai Wei Sieng ·International Journal of Supply Chain Management ·2019

This aim of this study is to measure the technical efficiency score and identify the factors that affect the technical efficiency in plastic manufacturing firm in Malaysia for the year 2015 using the two stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. The first stage involves calculating the efficiency score through the DEA using firm-level data, provided by the Department of Statistics, Malaysia. In the second stage, Tobit Regression Analysis was used to identify the significant factors affecting the efficiency of the plastic industry. The determining factors are the labor-ratio, training expenses, educational level ratios, wage rates, information and communications technology expenses and firm size. The results show that average efficiency score is moderate rate. Information and communication technology (ICT) expenditure, wage rate, research and development expenditure and education level are significant factors of the efficiency factor of a plastic product manufacturing firm. The implication of this decision suggests that firms need to emphasize significant factors to enhance firms' efficiency.