Entrepreneurial intention and startup preparation: A study among business students in Malaysia

Intention, as the starting point of pursuing self-employment and creating new ventures, is crucial before actually establishing a business enterprise. Entrepreneurship is understood to be an essential ingredient for enhancing a country's economic competitiveness, growth, and sustainability while confronting the escalating challenges of globalization, such as increasing unemployment. This study provides empirical evidence on the factors influencing entrepreneurial intention and startup preparations among university students in Malaysia. The findings provide scholars and academic policymakers with insights into the effectiveness of Malaysia's entrepreneurial education as designed and practiced by public universities. The Malaysian government should apply these findings to fortify existing policies and programs and formulate new ones to support graduate entrepreneurs, while universities and other higher education institutions should provide high-quality entrepreneurial courses and programs to young Malaysians to foster an inclination toward entrepreneurship.     

Do Institutions Matter for Foreign Direct Investment?

Using a panel of 69 countries during 1981 and 2005, we investigate the role of institutions in determining foreign direct investment (FDI). We find that institutions are a robust predictor of FDI and that the most significant institutional aspects are linked to propriety rights. Using a novel data set, we also study the impact of institutions on FDI at the sectoral level. We find that institutions do not have a significant impact on FDI in the primary sector but that institutional quality matters for FDI in manufacturing, and particularly in services.     

Religious obligations to travel: first-generation Pakistani migrants from Newcastle-upon-Tyne

This article analyses the religious travel experiences of members of the first generation of the Muslim Pakistani diaspora living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK drawing upon qualitative interpretations collected from semi-structured interviews. Religious travel for first-generation Muslim Pakistanis is influenced by Islamic principles and practices associated with obligations to travel to meet with friends and relatives. Religious obligations to travel are considered as a key factor influencing visiting friends and relatives (VFR) mobilities at a local and national level. The religious obligation associated with VFR travel is examined in view of one of the five pillars of Islam, which is salah (prayer), which stimulates various mobilities. Central to the analysis of religious-orientated (VFR) journeys are the conceptual underpinnings of obligations situated in the mobilities paradigm, which give rise to understandings of spiritualities of place. Religious obligations to travel unite the Muslim diaspora in various local (in Newcastle-upon-Tyne) and national (UK) settings. The contribution of this paper is, therefore, to advance the understanding of the relationship between Islam and travel, and add to existing knowledge of the journeys of Muslim travellers in the context of VFR travel. We conclude by suggesting further avenues of research concerning religious obligations to travel.     

Revisiting the risk/return relations in the Asian Pacific markets: New evidence from alternative models

This paper examines the risk/return relations in eleven Asian Pacific stock markets and explores if the 1997 Asian financial crisis significantly influenced market behavior in the region. We use a plain vanilla time-series regression approach as well as various GARCH models. Although results significantly vary across model specifications, the overall evidence from GARCH models supports a significantly positive risk/return relation in several markets but only prior to the Asian financial crisis. These results accord with Glosten et al. (1993) and Harvey (2001) and suggest that the relative risk aversion is sensitive to both model specifications and structural breaks.     

Impact of formalisation of property rights in informal settlements: Evidence from Dar es Salaam city

This paper aims to study the responsiveness of the informal property market and management systems towards the introduction of land registration for informal settlements in Tanzania. City governments are increasingly recognising the need to strengthen legal rights for the urban poor as a means to bring them more effectively into the urban economy and ensure better provision of water, sanitation and other primary services. The research focuses on Tanzania and in particular two case studies within Dar es Salaam. The findings of the work suggest that the introduction of residential licenses whilst potentially assisting in creating legal certainty has not resulted in the financial sector accepting them as full security against loans. Accessing credit by the poor however has not yet been fully realised resulting in some further hurdles for the financial sector to overcome. Finally, and of some significance is the registration of property in the informal settlements has provided the opportunity of formal property transactions within these settlements.     

The impact of foreign direct investment and trade on economic growth Taking China, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines ＆ Thailand for example

In this study the authors make efforts to survey the impact of foreign direct investment and trade on the economic growth of five East Asian countries, China, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. Using an augmented production function （APF） growth model, the authors apply panel data Method and data span is from1980 to 2006. The required data are extracted from World Development Indicator 2008. The result shows that a co-integration relationship between growth and its determinants in the APF model is supported. Firstly, the study shows that with the increasing the inflow of foreign direct investment, positive impact on growth in Thailand, Korea and China is proved. However, this impact is negative in Philippine and Malaysia. Also the impact of trade on economic growth has the same result with FDI impact in sign. Further, the impact of labor force on growth is not significant in these countries and the effect of gross fixed capital on growth is positive and has a very high impact on selected countries.     

Cross-sectional determinants of bank performance under deposit dollarization in emerging markets

Dollar-denominated deposits and loans could increase financial fragility in emerging market banking systems. This currency mismatch does not only increase banks' currency risk when the proportion of dollar-denominated loans with respect to local-denominated loans increases but also it increases their clients' default risk if depreciation occurs. This paper investigates the profitability of 36 dollarized banking systems. Results suggest that after controlling for some macroeconomic and institutional variables, dollarization, as the currency mismatch hypothesis suggests, depresses bank performance and lowers bank profitability. Results also show that the effect of institutions more than offsets the negative impact of dollarization on banks' profitability.     

Experience, information asymmetry, and rational forecast bias

This study examines whether it is ever rational for analysts to post biased estimates and how information asymmetry and analyst experience factor into the decision. Using a construct where analysts wish to minimize their forecasting error, we model forecasted earnings when analysts combine private information with consensus estimates to determine the optimal forecast bias, i.e., the deviation from the consensus. We show that the analyst??s rational bias increases with information asymmetry, but is concavely related with experience. Novice analysts post estimates similar to the consensus but as they become more experienced and develop private information channels, their estimates become biased and deviated from the consensus. Highly seasoned analysts, who have superior analytical skills and valuable relationships, need not post biased forecasts.     

Evaluating the Effect of Affinity Card Programs on Customer Profitability Using Propensity Score Matching

Affinity card programs have become popular in recent times and account for one fifth of all credit card accounts. There is no research that links affinity card programs to customer profitability. Moreover, little is known about what type of affinity card programs would lead to higher profit. Using a large proprietary dataset we answer the above questions. We also apply propensity score matching, a relatively new technique, to control for selection bias in addressing the above issues. Contrary to previous research and common belief, we show that affinity card customers are no more profitable than non-affinity card holders. We also show that sports-based affinity programs are the least profitable and surprisingly, alumni-based affinity programs also do poorly relative to other types of affinity. On the positive side, affinity card customers are lower risk and help to lower the average risk of the portfolio of customers.     

Wages, inflation, and mortgage design

By virtue of creating asset-liability mismatch, conventional long-term, fixed-rate mortgage loans inherently introduce excess interest risk to the financial systems. Considering that inflation is in part the reason for this excess interest risk, it seems natural to redesign mortgages in such a way that over time mortgage payments could, at least in part, reflect inflation. In this paper, I show that by allowing payments to adjust to inflation, particularly that of wages, by incorporating a prespecified growth rate into mortgage payments, mortgage loans become more affordable while bank interest spreads become less volatile, making the banking system less unstable.