Quality-Labeled Vegetable Consumption in Malaysia: Factors Affecting Attitude and Purchase Intent

The rising rate of foodborne diseases has caused not just consumers but also food producers to become increasingly concerned about food safety. As a result, the government of Malaysia, together with relevant bodies, have introduced quality-assurance agencies to certify food products that are produced, processed, and handled with methods that are acknowledged by the certification agencies as clean and safe for consumption. This study aims to identify the factors influencing consumer purchasing behavior toward quality-labeled vegetables. A survey was conducted using a self-administered questionnaire and distributed randomly to consumers in public places in the Klang Valley. Four hundred and sixteen respondents were approached. The results indicate that most of the respondents are aware of food quality labels. Using factor analysis, four latent factors that influence consumer attitude toward quality-labeled vegetables were identified, and the importance of quality attributes (sensory, health, safety, and social attributes) in shaping those attitudes was also shown.     

Decision theoretic estimation using record statistics

We consider the problem of estimating the scale parameter θ of the shifted exponential distribution with unknown shift based on a set of observed records drawn from a sequential sample of independent and identically distributed random variables. Under a large class of bowl-shaped loss functions, the best affine equivariant estimator (BAEE) of θ is shown to be inadmissible. Two dominating procedures are proposed. A numerical study is performed to show the extent of risk reduction that the improved estimators provide over the BAEE.     

The Middle-Eastern marriage pattern? Malthusian dynamics in nineteenth-century Egypt

Malthus predicted that fertility rises with income and that people regulate fertility via regulating marriage. However, evidence on the Malthusian equilibrium has been mostly confined to Europe and East Asia. We employ Egypt's population censuses of 1848 and 1868 to provide the first evidence on the preindustrial Malthusian dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa. At the aggregate level, we document rural Egyptian women having a high fertility rate that is close to the Western European level, combined with low age at marriage and low celibacy rate, that are closer to the East Asian levels. This resulted in a uniquely high fertility regime that was probably offset by the high child mortality. Next, we provide individual-level evidence on the positive correlation between fertility and income (occupation). We find that the higher fertility of rural white-collar men is attributed to their marriage behaviour, and not to marital fertility. Specifically, white-collar men's higher polygyny explains 45 per cent of their fertility advantage, whereas their higher marriage rate and lower wife's age at marriage explains 55 per cent. Therefore, polygyny was an additional factor that led to a steeper income–fertility curve than in Western Europe by enabling the rural middle class to out-breed the poor.     

The role of biomass energy consumption and economic complexity on environmental sustainability in G7 economies

This paper empirically examines the effect of biomass energy consumption and economic complexity on environmental sustainability in G7 economies. The current study attempts to report a comprehensive analysis of biomass energy and economic complexity on ecological and carbon footprints and carbon emissions. We employ data from 1990 to 2019 and adopt robust panel econometric techniques that account for the analysis's cross-sectional dependence. We conduct cointegration analysis, pooled ordinary least squares (OLS), system generalized method of moments (GMM) and conditional quantile model for our empirical analysis. The empirical findings show that both biomass energy consumption and economic complexity are detrimental to the ecological footprint and carbon footprint. Additionally, we find that globalization positively affects the environment, while we find some evidence that bureaucratic quality improves environmental quality. Finally, in line with other research, we find that economic growth has detrimental effects on the environment. Our results suggest that policymakers should be more cautious in promoting biomass as a clean energy source and that the G7 economies should take advantage of their leading position in innovation to invest more in sustainable practices and investment.     

Foreign Direct Investments,Renewable Electricity Output,and Ecological Footprints: Do Financial Globalization Facilitate Renewable Energy Transition and Environmental Welfare in Bangladesh?

Asia-Pacific Financial Markets - Phasing out fossil fuel dependency to adopt renewable energy technologies is pertinent for both ensuring energy security and for safeguarding the well-being of the...     

The use of digital footprints in the US mortgage market

We study the rise of digital footprint (DF) users in the U.S. residential mortgage market. The proportion of lenders that use a borrower's DF has witnessed remarkable growth from 6% in 2013 to 34% in 2018 in a short span – according to our analysis. We show that the use of DFs can significantly reduce a lender's overall risk and that the use of DFs can result in considerable societal benefits, by reducing the overall discriminatory forces. In sum, we provide evidence that the informational advantage associated with using a borrower's DF far outweighs that of existing traditional lending methods.