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.

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.

The study investigates the extent to which mergers lead to efficiency. The data covers the period 1993-2004, which includes the pre- and post-merger years. This study attempts to evaluate technical efficiency, efficiency change, technical change, and productivity of commercial banks, finance companies, and merchant banks by using a non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Malmquist Index approach as the framework for the analyses. It is found that: (i) on an average, productivity across banking institutions increased at an annual rate of 5.8% over the study period; (ii) the results also indicate that almost all of the productivity growth comes from technical change rather than improvement in efficiency change, which contributes to 6.1% of productivity growth, while the latter accounted for 0.2% decline; and (iii) the merger process led to productivity improvements whereby it is observed that the productivity of Malaysia's banking sector has been improved after the implementation of merger program.

This paper investigates the technical efficiencies of rubber product manufacturing industry in Malaysia. We employed Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). Secondary data from 313 firms that manufacture rubber product was obtained from the Annual Survey Of Manufacturing Industries 2004 by Department of Statistics Malaysia. Variables that are included in this are such as capital (RM), labor, and energy. Results clearly show that the mean technical efficiency of manufactured rubber product industry in Malaysia is 0.70328 or 70.33 percent. Majority of the firms are also fairly efficient in the use of available resources. Some technical assistance such as training programs for the proprietors of the firms and financial support such as subsidies could be offered to boost their production level as rubber is indeed an important component of the manufacturing industry in Malaysia.

Economists recognized that exchange rate have a significant impact on trade. In this study we employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing procedure to analyze the impact of exchange rate on tomato’s export and import for Malaysia. The period of study covers 1997-2007 using quarterly data. Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) was used rather than conventional exchange rate since this study covers the trade between Malaysia and the rest of the world. Our results indicate that both the export and import of tomatoes exhibit significant long-run relationships with REER. Causal effects in both cases are bidirectional. However, while the sign is economically correct for the relationship between REER and export, the same cannot be said for the relationship between import and REER.

This study was conducted to explore the varying volatility of world rice price for the period 1961 to 2008 using monthly data. The paper provides estimates of two GARCH models, namely, GARCH and EGARCH which were used to capture the stochastic variation and asymmetries in the world rice price. The results indicate that EGARCH model gives better estimate of the volatility of world rice price. Furthermore the EGARCH model was able to describe the asymmetric volatility in the world price of rice. It was further discovered that the positive shocks (good news) is more dominant than the negative shock (bad news).

This study was undertaken to explore the relationship between export and import, in the category of Forestry domain for Malaysia, which includes sub domain (1) industrial roundwood; (2) wood pulp; (3) wood fuel; (4) paper and paper board; (5) sawn wood; (6) recovered paper and (7) wood base panel. Johansen (1991) cointegration method was employed and the period of the study covers annual data from 1961 to 2007. The results clearly show that the export and import of forestry domain is highly cointegrated. This shows trade is indeed sustainable in the domain of forestry and a sign of good trade policies adapted and implemented by the relevant authorities Bi-directional granger causality could also be detected based on VECM (vector-error correction model) method. Imports seem to positively and significantly affect exports, both in the long run and short run, vice versa.

The world price of rice in 2008 reached its highest record last May but declined in August in the same year. The storm clearly caused a global panic about a rice shortage, which led several producing countries including India, Vietnam and Egypt to bar rice exports. Can we get past 2008 hangover safely, or is there another storm brewing. Rising prices and a growing fear of scarcity have prompted some of the world's largest price producers to announce drastic limits on the amount of rice they export. The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world's population has almost doubled on international markets in the last three months.