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.

Malaysia has witnessed strong sustained growth over the last three decades, growing at an average annual rate of 5.8%. This sustained growth performance has been accompanied by significant structural shifts in the economy, reflecting the transformation of the Malaysian economy amid the changing global and domestic environment.

Malaysia has a long history of internationally valued exports, being known from the early centuries A.D. as a source of gold, tin and exotics such as birds’ feathers, edible birds’ nests, aromatic woods, tree resins etc. The commercial importance of the area was enhanced by its strategic position athwart the seaborne trade routes from the Indian Ocean to East Asia.

The gig economy represents a relatively contemporary phenomenon that remains insufficiently examined or documented in academic literature. The term "gig economy" pertains to labour markets characterised by short-term, intermittent, on-demand, and predominantly task-oriented employment arrangements. Due to its non-traditional nature, part-time employment typically lacks the comprehensive benefits and safeguards associated with full-time employment. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the gig economy market, we utilise the partial least squares structural equation modelling technique. This approach allows us to specifically examine the factors that significantly contribute to the low insurance penetration among the gig economy workforce. In order to achieve our objective, we have gathered data from a total of 374 participants. Our research indicates that gig workers are facing a significant lack of coverage, and they express a willingness to enrol in a flexible and customised takaful product.

The present study attempts to investigate whether shadow economy and the tourism sector are related. In the European countries, Schneider reported that 20 to 25 per cent of the shadow economy is represented in the tourism-related industries – wholesale and retail, automotive and motorcycle sales and maintenance; transportation, storage and communications; and hotels and restaurants. For the tourism sector, the services given by operators (unregistered and/or underreporting) operate in the shadow economy will ultimately wiped off the map of high quality tourist destinations and destroyed the development of the tourism industry itself. This study examines the short-run and long-run relationships between international tourism receipts and shadow economy for 149 countries over the period 1995-2008. We use a generalized one-step error-correction model (ECM) in combination with a system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to explore the long-run relationship between these two variables. Our results suggest that tourism receipts and shadow economy are cointegrated. This implies that shadow economy and the tourism industry worldwide are related in the long-run. The long-run elasticities indicate a negative impact of the shadow economy on the tourism sector suggesting that increase in shadow economy activities will adversely affecting the tourism industry.

This study examines the impact of financial development on bank risk-taking, measured as bank capitalization and bank income diversification. We observe the relationship using annual bank-level data from countries with dual-banking systems. The dataset spans from 2000 to 2014. Our results suggest that the impact of financial development on bank capitalization is heterogeneous across Islamic and conventional commercial banks. Moreover, the effect is different across listed and unlisted banks. However, on average, the response of income diversification to financial development is similar across most specifications. Additionally, bank risk is found to be countercyclical, suggesting that bank risk increases in good times. On average, these results (countercyclical evidence) hold across bank types (Islamic and conventional) and ownership structure (listed and unlisted). However, these results are contingent on the size (small vs. large) factor. The results are robust to alternative proxies of financial development.

This study uses time-series analysis to investigate the long-run relationships and short-run dynamic interactions between beer consumption and the independent variables of income level (Gross Domestic Product per capita), wealth (proxied by money supply, M2) and total exports in Malaysia over the period 1961 to 2009. The study applies the multivariate cointegration methodology to establish the possible causal relations between these variables. The cointegration test and the vector error correction model demonstrate the evidence of a positive long-run relationship between beer consumption and the income level while wealth and exports have a negative impact on beer consumption in Malaysia. The long-term elasticity coefficients of the independent variables on beer consumption display relationships that are theoretically grounded. Further innovative analysis using variance decompositions lends evidence of the dominant influence of income level and exports in forecasting variance in the consumption of beer in Malaysia. The study concludes with an examination of policy implications of these findings.

In this study we attempt to determine the long-run relationship between budget deficit and inflation in thirteen Asian developing countries, namely; Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, India, South Korea, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Nepal and Bangladesh. Using annual data for the period 1950-1999 our Granger causality within the error-correction model (ECM) framework suggest that all variables involved (budget deficits, money supply and inflation) are integrated of order one. Our ECM model estimates indicate the existence of a long-run relationship between inflation and budget deficits. Thus, we conclude that budget deficits are inflationary in Asian developing countries

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the various existing models of waqf in practice and determine their applicability within the context of Malaysia. This study was undertaken to investigate the practicality, feasibility, and potential success of implementing a centralized database for the administration of waqf. The research process involved extensive desktop research and thorough benchmarking analyses. Additionally, the study delved into the identification of obstacles and challenges. To provide comprehensive insights, case studies were meticulously compared and contrasted. The findings of this study indicate that the establishment of a centralized national Waqf database would significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of Waqf operations and administration. Furthermore, it would contribute to the enhancement of integrity and transparency within the system. Following this line of thought, the adoption of such a system aligns with the principles of maqasid al-Shariah, ultimately safeguarding the reputation of Islam.

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 purpose of this paper is to explore the potential benefit, challenge and obstacles in the standardization and harmonization of fatwa in Islamic finance industry. This paper is also intended to formulate strategies to release the standardization and harmonization of fatwa. This study employs qualitative approach and reviews literatures that are relevant to the research objective. The finding indicates that the potential benefit of harmonization of fatwa are efficient and manageable regulation and control, IFIs will have a set of reporting and guideline standards, contribute to IFIs's growth, enhance public and IFI's confidence, and lead to greater transparency. Meanwhile, the challenges to harmonize the fatwa can be divided into four main problems, technical, governance, human resource, and regulation. Technical problems comprise difference of opinion in ijtihad and fatwas, the absence of consensus (ijma'), and national cultural specificities. Governance consist of international fatwa bodies are only followed by selected member countries, difference in sharia compliance governance model among countries, and difference level of Islamic finance industry growth among countries. Human resource involves lack of inclusivity, lack of professionals, personal/group interest. Finally, regulation be made up of lack of support from regulators, enforcement problem, and lack of legal system. This study also purposes some important strategies to release the standardization of fatwa and some recommendations for future studies.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol (an international and legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, emissions worldwide) allowing industrialised countries with a greenhouse gas reduction commitment (called Annex 1 countries) to invest in projects that reduce emissions in developing countries as an alternative to more expensive emission reductions in their own countries. The most important factor of a carbon project is that it establishes that it would not have occurred without the additional incentive provided by emission reductions credits.

We examine the impact of competition and portfolio diversification on banking stability for conventional and Islamic banks in Indonesia. We find that the Islamic banking sector is less stable, when compared to the conventional banking sector. Competition in the banking sector reduces stability, while diversification enhances it. We find that competition negatively impacts the Islamic banks, but diversification has no impact on these banks. An interesting finding is that competition and diversification complement each other in enhancing the stability of the Indonesian banking sector. These findings carry an important policy implication for the banking sector of Indonesia.

Globally, the awareness about sustainability has increased due to the lingering environment, social and governance-related issues. In this perspective, the role of social media and consumer awareness are important since they influence the corporate sector to care for sustainable development. Banks, being very important to the economy, contribute to sustainability through their internal (through governance, data security, etc.) and external (through environment-friendly loans , financial inclusion, etc.) practices. These practices are collectively called as environment, society, and governance (ESG) sustainability. ESG practices by banks are important since they operate on public funds, have interconnections with the businesses and at times bailed out at the expense of taxpayers. An intriguing question, though, is whether these ESG activities impact bank profitability and risk. Further, as identified in the literature, there are certain moderators such as competition and institutions which may impact the ESG-profitability and ESG-risk relationship. We investigate these relationships for Organization for Islamic Countries (OIC) and Non-OIC countries. Specifically, we employ data of 341 banks from 65 countries, further divided into Non-OIC (54 countries, 295 banks) and OIC countries (11 countries, 46 banks). ESG data has been used for the years 2007-2016 while the dynamic panel model has been estimated using the Generalized Methods of Moments technique ...

A normative definition views crime as deviant behavior that violates prevailing norms-cultural standards prescribing how humans ought to behave normally. This approach considers the complex realities surrounding the concept of crime and seeks to understand how changing social, political, psychological, and economic conditions may affect the current definitions of crime and the form of the legal, law enforcement, and penal responses made by society. In the United States since 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has tabulated Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) annually from crime data submitted by law enforcement agencies across the United States. Officials compile this data at the city, county, and state levels into the UCR. United States overall crime rate is displayed in two indices. The violent crime index comprises forcible rape, robbery, murder and assault. The property crime index consists of burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. The crime rate is measured by the number of crimes being reported per 100,000 people.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of economic conditions on various categories of criminal activities in Malaysia for the period 1973‐2003. The autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing procedure was employed as the main tool. Dynamic ordinary least squares was also used to check the robustness of the results. The results indicate that murder, armed robbery, rape, assault, daylight burglary, and motorcycle theft exhibit long‐run relationships with economic conditions, and the causal effect in all cases runs from economic conditions to crime rates and not vice versa. In the long‐run, strong economic performances have a positive impact on murder, rape, assault, daylight burglary, and motorcycle theft, while on the other hand, economic conditions have negative impact on armed robbery. Further researches using other macroeconomic variables and also other countries are encouraged. The important implication of this result is that real gross national product per capita is an exogenous variable and it is, therefore, useful for fiscal policy variable. Government of the day should seriously consider the results of this study in any crimefighting policies that are formulated.

This study investigates the relationship between crime and socio and macro economic variables such as income, unemployment, inflation, interest rate, and also the political violence, both domestic and regional. The main motivation of the study is to have a better understanding of crime as well as finding and suggesting alternative ways of approaching crime. We analyzed 21 countries, with data spanning from 1960 to 2001.We adopted the model and framework introduced by Viren (2001) based on Becker (1968), Block and Heineke (1975). However, we slightly modified by rephrasing it in order not to only capture the long run relationship but also the short run adjustment. We employed the panel error- correction based cointegration (Persyn and Westerlund (2008)) to analyze and estimate the model. A number of important findings are extracted from the analysis in accordance to the objectives of this study. Firstly, we discover a 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 might 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 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.

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

The purpose of the present study is to determine whether there is long-run relationship between crime rates and unemployment rate in Malaysia for the period 1973 to 2003. The autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing procedure was employed as the main tool to infer cointegration or the long-run relationship between unemployment and the crime rates. The results indicate that the unemployment rate, and crime rates: total crime rate, violent crime (murder, robbery, and assault), and property crime (daylight burglary, night burglary, and motorcycle theft) are cointegrated. The estimated long-run coeffi cients suggest that unemployment rate has negative effect on violent crime, murder, robbery, assault, and motorcycle theft. The paper shows that jobless population in Malaysia as a result of recession tend to remain in or near homes and neighborhoods and this likely will reduce the occurrence of crime.