Academic Proceeding

There has been a tremendous growth in the number of empirical research on happiness by economists in the past decade. The present study is in the right direction as it explores a relatively intriguing area of research on the 'economics of happiness'. The purpose of this study is to find the existence of linkages between happiness and several economic variables. A cross-sectional econometric analysis is employed to examine the impact of the economic variables of income (Gross Domestic Product per capita), health care expenditure and pollution (proxies by CO2 emissions) on happiness across 42 countries in 2006. The findings indicate that a significantly positive relationship exists between happiness and income while pollution has a negative impact on a nation's well being. The level of health care expenditure however, does not have a significant impact on happiness. The study concludes with an examination of policy implications of the findings.

The Insolvency department (MdI) statistical releases indicate total bankruptcy cases as at September 2013 is 251,209 bankrupt filed (The Star, 2013) and recent bankruptcy record exhibits that the declared bankrupt cases are getting younger as comparing to past years record which worries by Bank Negara. The increase in personal bankruptcy case reflects erosion in credit evaluation process and this has lead the banks to be cautious and to tighten their lending process and loan approval. The purpose of this research study is to examine the causality factors towards personal bankruptcy in Malaysia. The concept of financial numeracy has emerged recently in personal financial management to explain the antecedents and consequences of financial numeracy. The result found significant on the mediation factors on financial numeracy and financial management outcome effects towards personal bankruptcy. Hence, the mediation outcome also found support on this research proposed theoretical framework

The economic theory on crime behavior proposed by Becker (1968) suggests that an increase in the number of policemen can deter crimes. However, recent studies found a positive relationship between police personnel and crime rates. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of police personnel on 15 categories of crime rates in Malaysia for the period of 1973 to 2005 by using the vector error-correction model. Our results suggest that 8 categories of crime rates support Becker’s crime economic theory, while 6 categories of crime support the ‘long-run natural rate of crime’ hypothesis

This paper investigates the long run Granger causality between defense spending and economic growth for 20 selected Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) by employing the Error-Correction Model (ECM) framework using annual data for the period 1960 to 2005. defense spending (milex) is measured using the ratio of defense spending to gross domestic product (GDP); while economic growth (rgdpc) is proxy by the real GDP per capita. The results of our study indicated that one way long run Granger causality was found running from economic growth to defense spending for Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Togo and Turkey. On the other hand, one way long run Granger causality was found running from defense spending to economic growth was found for Iran, Mauritania and Nigeria. However for the rest of the OIC countries, the results suggested no relationship between defense spending and economic growth.

The paper "Demographic transition and economic growth nexus: the case of Malaysia" presented at 6th International Borneo Business Conference (IBBC) 2014, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.

Malaysian firms have been reported to involve in Asset-Backed Securities since 1986s where Cagamas is a pioneer. This research aims to examine the factor of influencing the primary market spread and measure financial performance of RCE Marketing as case study. Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression analysis are applied for the study period 2007-2012. The result shows two determinants influence or contribute to the primary market spread and are statistically significant for the case study for RCE Marketing. The financial performance shows that this company is resilient during global financial crisis. RCE Marketing also shows better profitability capacity and dividend payments to their investors.

The paper "Determinants of spread in Islamic securitisation market: empirical evidence from Malaysia" presented at 16th Malaysian Finance Association Conference (MFA2014) at Sasana Kijang Central Bank of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.

This study was conducted to investigate whether paddy cultivation in Malaysia do indeed contribute to increased CO2e. Johansen (1991) co-integration method was used to investigate the relationship between these variables, and the result clearly shows that they are highly co-integrated or literally means that they (both variables) share long term time trending patterns. The long run relationship is further investigated based on granger causality and vector error correction model (VECM), and the result again clearly shows that paddy production indeed granger causes the increased CO2e. Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (DOLS) method was also employed to check the robustness and consistency of the findings and the results are consistent and robust with the VECM estimations. The findings of the study clearly show the dire needs for the government to invest more on the R&D in the paddy production sector in order not to deteriorate further the environment albeit CO2e while securing the food security.

This research paper attempts to empirically examine the short-run and long-run causal relationship between income level, energy consumption and carbon emission. Trade openness and urbanization is also included to act as control variables.

This study is set out to investigate the linkages between economic growth and human capital by gender and level of education. The panel data was averaged at 7 points based on a sample of 62 countries spanning over the years 1970 to 1999. The Dynamic Panel System Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) was employed on an Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) to analyze the effect of gender on the economic growth, which is the best method given the short time period and large cross sectional characteristic. Control variables such as gross capital formation, export volume, population and year effects were also decoded in order to obtain a more accurate and robust result trend. The data relating to economic variables of interest was extracted from the World Development Index 2007 and the data relating to human capital was taken from the study done by Barro and Lee (2000). The indicators for human capital include number of secondary school graduates and high school graduates according to gender. Findings reveal that females with high school as their highest education level, significantly contributed towards the economic growth, contributing approximately 3.35%. However the results also point out that the male secondary school graduates contributed to the countries’ development more significantly as compared to the female, whereby the formers’ contribution towards the economic development is approximately 5%, ceteris paribus. These results further strengthens the ideology that human capital is indeed an important component, at different levels, and it is this vital component which drives economic growth. An adequate and efficient form of funding or investment is required in order to improve the education industry, which will consequently benefit every other industry thus strengthening the economy.

This study investigates the linkages between economic growth and human capital. It employs the dynamic panel system GMM estimators, focusing on secondary school and higher school education as the proxy for human capital. The data was averaged to 7 points based on a sample of 62 countries spanning from year 1970-1999. The data was extracted from the World Development Index 2007 and study by Barro and Lee (2010). The results are particularly interesting, contrary to the expectation; only the high school graduates affect the growth while the secondary school graduates show insignificant. With disaggregation of countries based on the stages of economic development, high school show greater effect. These results further strengthens the grounds that human capital is indeed an important component and acts as an engine for economic growth.

This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between crime and economic variables such as income, unemployment, inflation, interest rate, and also the political violence, both domestic and regional. The main motivation of the study was to have a better understanding of crime, finding and suggesting alternative way of approaching crime. We analyzed 21 countries, with data spanning from 1960 to 2001. We started our study on this objective by adapting model and framework that was introduced by Viren (2001) based on Becker (1968), Block and Heineke (1975) and we made slight modification by rephrasing it in order to not only capture the long run relationship but also the short run adjustment. We employed panel-error-correction based cointegration (Persyn and Westerlund (2008)) to analyze and estimate the model. A number of important findings were extracted from the analysis in accordance to the objectives of this study. Firstly, it determines the negative long run relationship between income and crime, positive long run relationship between inflation and crime, unemployment and crime as well as lending rate and crime. As for the political violence variable, domestic political violence seems to be negatively related; on the contrary regional political violence is positively related. We believe this be attributed to the spillover effect. All the signs are as anticipated and justified in this study and are concurrent with most of the past literatures.

The paper "Is our macroeconomic policy right? A simple test" presented at International Conference on Contemporary Issues in Accounting and Finance 2015 (CoCiAF 2015), Sarawak, Malaysia.

The paper "Is there a link between migration and human development? The case of Malaysia and selected countries" presented at 6th International Borneo Business Conference (IBBC) 2014, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.

The paper "Primary market spread determinants government staff Islamic personal financing" presented at 6th International Borneo Business Conference (IBBC) 2014, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.

In recent years, globalization has brought about the importance of English language especially in developing countries. It is believed that English proficiency is integral to human capital development and economic growth. The purpose of this study is to determine the link between English language proficiency and earnings via economic growth in developing countries. The study used the percentage of English language proficiency, per capita income, foreign direct investment and unemployment to conduct an analysis on fifty-three (53) developing countries. The model was regressed cross sectionally and White standard error was employed to remove traces of heterogeneity. As expected, it is found that there are significant relationships between (1) English language proficiency and income per capita; and (2) foreign direct investment and income per capita. The results have important policy implications for the countries desiring to achieve higher earnings and improvement in the overall standard of living.

This study examines the long-run relationships and short-run dynamic interactions between stock returns and its determinants comprising of GDP per capita, inflation and happiness, over the period 1973 to 2012. The study applies the dynamic heterogenous panel estimation techniques of Mean Group (MG), Pooled Mean Group (PMG) and the Dynamic Fixed Effects (DFE) to analyse a set of macro panel data on selected OECD countries to establish the possible causal relations between these variables. The results of this study show evidence that income has a favourable impact on the stock market, while inflation dampens stock returns. Interestingly, the study also revealed that happiness is not significant in determining stock returns in these selected countries, indicating that the market participants are rational economic beings who always act in self-interest, making optimal decisions by trading off costs and benefits weighted by statistically correct probabilities as per the tenets of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH).