FOOD SECURITY AND LOW‐INCOME HOUSEHOLDS IN THE MALAYSIAN EAST COAST ECONOMIC REGION: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

This research, conducted to analyze the level of food security among poor and low‐income households in the east coast economic region of Malaysia, uses primary data of 460 families from the E‐Kasih poor households database, based on a cluster random sampling technique. Food security levels were measured using the United States Agency for International Development Household Food Insecurity Access model. Findings indicate that 52.8% of households are food secure, 23.3% mildly food insecure, 14.3% moderately food insecure, and 9.6% are severely food insecure. These findings are very important to assist policymakers to achieve Vision 2020 and the targets of Malaysian National Plans regarding food security, socioeconomic development, and the alleviation of poverty. The involvement of private sector and community‐based organizations are important to combat short run, seasonal, and event‐related risks, as well as for the development of appropriate mitigation and adaptation options to ensure sustainable food security at household level in Malaysia.     

Impact of conservation agriculture technology on household welfare in Zambia

This article examines the determinants and impact of conservation agriculture (CA) technology adoption on farm household welfare in Zambia. To account for selection bias from both observable and unobservable factors, an endogenous switching regression model is employed to estimate the impact of the technology on continuous outcomes like farm output, throughput accounting ratio (TAR), poverty gap, and severity of poverty. A recursive bivariate probit model is however used for the estimation of impact of adoption on a binary outcome like poverty headcount. The empirical findings demonstrate that the adoption of CA technology increases maize output, and farm TAR and reduces household poverty. Moreover, the results reveal that farmers’ years of schooling, social networks, access to credit, extension services, and machinery as well as soil quality positively influence adoption of CA technology.     

Explaining consumers’ willingness to be environmentally friendly

Theoretical and empirical evidence from the environmental psychology and related literatures are used to develop a model for explaining consumers’ willingness to perform environmentally friendly behaviour. Environmental concern and perceived psychological consequences of environmentally friendly behaviour are posited as key determinants of willingness. Hypothesized antecedents of these are also included in the model, which is tested using structural equation modelling on data from a sample of 232 consumers collected in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The results indicate that the key determinant of willingness is perceived psychological consequences, which in turn is significantly determined by past behaviour. A hypothesized effect of environmental concern on willingness is not significant, although concern is itself significantly determined by perceived psychological consequences. Other positive determinants of concern are environmental knowledge and perceived seriousness of threats to the global environment. Substantive and methodological implications of the findings are outlined and discussed.     

Islamic financing and bank risks: The case of Malaysia

We examine whether Islamic financing can explain three important bank risks in a country with a dual banking system: credit risk, interest‐rate risk, and liquidity risk. Using Malaysian data, we find that commercial banks with Islamic financing have significantly lower credit and liquidity risks but significantly higher interest‐rate risk than banks without Islamic financing. There is also evidence that bank size is significantly related to credit risk; the proportion of loan sales to total liabilities and bank size are significant determinants of interest‐rate risk; and off‐balance‐sheet financing, the extent of securitization, loan volatility, bank capital, and bank size are statistically significantly related to liquidity risk. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Islamic takaful: Business models,Shariah concerns,and proposed solutions

Islamic insurance (takaful) is nearly as old as the Islamic banking system and dates back to 1979, when the concept was launched in Sudan and later in Saudi Arabia. Yet, unlike its banking counterpart, takaful has been covered less in the literature on Islamic finance, and its workings are not fully understood. Shariah scholars have raised a num‐ber of concerns about the Shariah permissibility of the business models employed in the industry. This article examines the basic principles of takaful and then analyzes the mechanics of the two models most commonly used in the industry— namely, the mudarabah system that was developed by the Malaysians and the wakala (agency) system that is now being used by most takaful operators and has achieved tremendous popularity and acceptance in recent years even in countries where the mudarabah model was earlier implemented. Shariah scholars have, however, expressed some misgivings about both approaches, but because of its wider acceptability among Shariah scholars in the case of the wakala approach, this is more urgent. With regards to the mudarabah model for risk management, there are major discrepancies that have been highlighted by Shariah scholars effec‐tively rendering it inappropriate to apply this for insurance contracts. For this reason, the article outlines a third model, a wakala with waqf fund, that seeks to remain within the wakala framework while incorpo‐rating modifications that may render it more acceptable from a Shariah perspective. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Modeling and forecasting of stock index volatility with APARCH models under ordered restriction

This article examines volatility models for modeling and forecasting the Standard & Poor 500 (S&P 500) daily stock index returns, including the autoregressive moving average, the Taylor and Schwert generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH), the Glosten, Jagannathan and Runkle GARCH and asymmetric power ARCH (APARCH) with the following conditional distributions: normal, Student's t and skewed Student's t‐distributions. In addition, we undertake unit root (augmented Dickey–Fuller and Phillip–Perron) tests, co‐integration test and error correction model. We study the stationary APARCH (p) model with parameters, and the uniform convergence, strong consistency and asymptotic normality are prove under simple ordered restriction. In fitting these models to S&P 500 daily stock index return data over the period 1 January 2002 to 31 December 2012, we found that the APARCH model using a skewed Student's t‐distribution is the most effective and successful for modeling and forecasting the daily stock index returns series. The results of this study would be of great value to policy makers and investors in managing risk in stock markets trading.     

Monetary policy rules for a developing country: Evidence from Pakistan

This paper estimates forward-looking monetary policy rules to examine the interest rate setting behavior of the State Bank of Pakistan. Considering the external constraints on monetary policy, core inflation and a country-specific measure of the output gap, we demonstrate that the State Bank of Pakistan reacts to changes in inflation, the output gap and the federal funds rate.     

The Impact of the UK Price Codes on Accounting Functions in Organisations: A Power Perspective

The literature on pricing has hardly used the concepts of organisation theory to emphasise the internal factors that seem to influence the mechanics of pricing decisions. It is this missing theme to which this article attempts to draw attention by arguing that pricing decisions are influenced by organisational subunits ‘power which is not necessarily constant over time. This was made possible by examining the impact of the Price Commission, which operated in the UK between 1973 and 1979, on companies’ pricing decision making processes.     

The consequences of transfer of training for service quality and job satisfaction: an empirical study in the Malaysian public sector

The significance of transfer of training to organizations has been acknowledged by many studies. However, the consequences of transfer of training, particularly for employees, have still not been adequately explored. The present study was conducted to address this gap. Specifically, it explores the relationship among transfer of training, service quality and job satisfaction. Data for this study were collected through surveys of employees, their supervisors and their colleagues. Data were analysed using structural equation modeling. The findings reveal that transfer of training is positively and significantly associated with both service quality and job satisfaction.