Insights for a post-Brexit era: marketing the UK as a study destination – an analysis of Arab,Chinese, and Indian student choices

ABSTRACT

Britain’s scheduled exit from the European Union (‘Brexit’) has long-term ramifications for strategic marketing. Faced with new challenges and uncertainty, UK universities are increasingly looking beyond EU borders to recruit international students. In this context, we draw upon country-of-origin theory to categorise the factors that influence non-EU international student decisions to select an overseas study destination and institution. Based on the results of a survey with 317 Arab, Chinese, and Indian students attending UK universities, we identify eight factors that influence international student decisions to study in the UK (social safety, education quality, entry obstacles, environment, recommendations, knowledge of host country, work and immigration, and meeting new cultures). The results address gaps in the literature, offering new insights that will help practitioners and academics to better understand how international students select a country and university as a study location.     

Financial stability of Islamic banking and the global financial crisis: Evidence from the Gulf Cooperation Council

Using a sample of 76 banks from the Gulf Cooperation Council region, we use accounting- as well as market-based measures of financial stability to examine whether Islamic banks outperformed conventional banks in the time of financial shocks during the period 2000–2013. We find that the difference between the two banking types was initially not significant during the GFC. However, when the financial shock spread to the real economy during the later phases of the crisis, Islamic banks suffered a significantly higher level of financial instability than conventional banks. This result holds true for large banks but not for small Islamic banks. Small Islamic banks demonstrated a relatively better handling of the economic downturn than large Islamic banks, supporting the argument that Islamic banks are more stable when they operate at a small scale but lose this stability when they increase their scale of operations. Hence, while Islamic banks may have escaped the consequences of highly volatile financial instruments, they were not spared from a major shock in the real economic sectors.     

The Nature of Urban Land

A bstract . Considerations about land interpose into almost every aspect of urban life. They may not be the only factor determining a city's well-being but appropriate land policies are necessary to bring about prosperity and equity. Contemporary accounts of the 'urban crisis' and of urban problems reveal the pervasiveness of land issues. Use of one urban land parcel has bearing on the usability of neighboring sites, which makes land a community resource. Urban land may be defined as land used or expected to be used for urban activities. Its attributes include location, space, property, clustering, heterogeneity and immobility and indestructibility. Neo-classical theorists, by stressing accessibility and ignoring externalities and other attributes of land, achieved only an unrealistic understanding of it. Most land economists are institutionalists , their theory encompassing long-validated concepts about the nature of land. The neo-Marxian approach has many points of congruence with the institutionalist one. Empirically investigated, urban land is found to be different from economic goods and hence its production, allocation and disposition must proceed at least like other public goods.     

WOULD AUSTRALIA–NEW ZEALAND BE A VIABLE CURRENCY UNION? EVIDENCE FROM INTERSTATE RISK‐SHARING PERFORMANCES

In this article, we first measure the potential welfare gains from perfect risk sharing among Australian states and New Zealand regions under possible unification. We show that New Zealand regions reap moderate gains from perfect risk sharing when they form a union with Australia, whereas for Australian states, the gains are somewhat similar to what they have attained at the intranational level. Second, we measure the extent of interstate risk sharing and intertemporal smoothing between the two countries. We are able to observe a substantial degree of intertemporal smoothing among Australian states and New Zealand regions, either alone or jointly, thus confirming the permanent income hypothesis. Further, unique to the risk‐sharing literature, we decompose the aggregate (nondiversifiable) output shocks into positive and negative components, in order to assess the strength of risk‐sharing mechanisms across business cycles. The study finds a virtual absence of risk sharing when Australia and New Zealand face negative aggregate fluctuations, raising doubts about the feasibility of the union, particularly during economic downturns. (JEL F41, F36)     

Monetary and fiscal policies' effect on agricultural growth: GMM estimation and simulation analysis

The concept of sustainable economic growth is closely linked with the agricultural growth. This is especially true in the context of under-developed countries. Pakistan is a typical under-developed country that has huge labor force employed in conventional rural economy and more than half of the population relies on agriculture for subsistence. The study examines the agricultural growth through developing a model using the data from agricultural sector of Pakistan for the period 1972–2010. The model is primarily based on input–output reduced form structural equations approach. It is then estimated by GMM, validated and used for deterministic simulation analyses. Finally the validated model is used to critically analyze the impact of fiscal, monetary and energy policies on the agricultural output. We conluded that recent fiscal and monetary policies should be continued, while the energy policy needs to be modified in order to improve the agricultural GDP and reduce the rural poverty situation in the country.     

Testing for the Feldstein-Horioka hypothesis in Asia using wavelet analysis

We investigate the Feldstein-Horioka (1980) puzzle using a novel time-frequency approach. The wavelet-based retention and correlation coefficients are estimated for a cross-section of 15 Asian countries over the period 1972–2016. The countries are grouped as OCED countries (Japan and South Korea), least developed countries (like Bangladesh and Nepal), the large countries (like India and China), and the small countries (like Sri Lanka and Pakistan). Our approach reveals some interesting insights on the relationship between investment and saving rates and investment and current account deficits.