The Market Performance of Socially Responsible Investment during Periods of the Economic Cycle – Illustrated Using the Case of FTSE

The debate about socially responsible investment (SRI) portfolio performance compared with its non‐SRI counterparts remains inconclusive. This paper contributes to the debate by adding a new approach, examining the issue of a full economic circle through economic boom, recession and recovery. We compare stock performance of two value‐weighted investment portfolios: FTSE4Good (SRI portfolios) and FTSE 350 (conventional portfolios) from 2004 to 2011 including 2007 to 2009 financial crash. The results indicate the SRI portfolio performed better and recovered its value quicker in post‐crisis than the non‐SRI portfolio, indicating that SRI portfolios are more resilient to economic turmoil and market shocks. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Asymmetric Effects of Exchange Rate Changes and the J‐curve: New Evidence from 61 Malaysia–Thailand Industries

Research on the impact of currency depreciation on the trade balance is now moving in a new direction by incorporating nonlinear dynamic adjustment of the exchange rate and by using a nonlinear approach to error‐correction modeling and cointegration. Using these advances, researchers find not only more evidence of the J‐curve effect, but also new evidence of asymmetric effects of exchange rate changes on the trade balance. We contribute to this line of research by using monthly trade flow data from 61 two‐digit industries that trade between Malaysia and Thailand, and show that not only does currency depreciation have favorable effects on the trade balance of more industries, but the long‐run effects are asymmetric in 26 out of 61 cases. In line with current literature, our nonlinear model performs much better than the linear model when industry level data are used.     

Asymmetric effects of exchange rate changes on the Malaysia-China commodity trade

Previous research that considered the response of the trade balance between Malaysia and China to exchange rate changes used a linear model and did not find any significant long-run link. Suspecting that the results suffer from aggregation bias as well as ignoring nonlinear adjustment of the exchange rate, we consider the trade balance of 59 industries that trade between the two countries and use a nonlinear ARDL model to show that almost a third of the industries are affected by ringgit depreciation against the yuan, in an asymmetric manner. The largest industry, which accounts for more than 25% of the trade, is found to benefit from ringgit depreciation while not being hurt by appreciation. In total, 15 industries that account for 40% of the trade enjoy this property.     

Foreign exchange market pressure and stock market dynamics in emerging Asia

International Economics and Economic Policy - This study investigates connections between currency and stock markets for the Asian emerging economies using a novel approach that considers exchange...     

A measure of authorship by publications

Measuring publication success of a researcher is a complicated task as publications are often co-authored by multiple authors, and so, it requires comparison of solo publications with joint publications. In this paper, like Price (1981), we argue for an egalitarian perspective in accomplishing this task. More specifically, we justify the need for an ethical perspective in quantifying academic author by identifying certain ethical difficulties of some popular contemporary indices used for this purpose. And then we show that for any given dataset of research papers, the unique method satisfying the ethical notions of identity independence and performance invariance must be the egaliatarian E-index proposed by Bose, Pal, and Sappington (2010) and Price (1981). In our setting, this egalitarian method divides authorship of joint projects equally among authors and sums across all publications of each author.     

Co-ordinated environmental regulation: controlling non-point nitrate pollution while maintaining river flows

Environmental policy often addresses multiple targets, yet much economic analysis of pollution control is based on a single-target objective. In this paper, we present an analysis of policies to control non-point source nitrate pollution in the presence of minimum river flow restrictions. A non-linear bio-physical economic optimisation model of an intensively cultivated Scottish agricultural catchment was constructed. The presence of minimum river flow controls in the catchment was found to reduce nitrogen pollution. However, by themselves, river flow controls were found not to be a cost effective means to reduce non-point pollution. We quantify the improved social welfare from coordinating the environmental regulation of river flows and pollution, and determine the conditions under which such coordination is beneficial. The paper also investigates whether the benefits of such coordination can be sustained under wetter (winter) weather conditions implied by current climate change predictions.     

Exchange-rate variability and industry trade flows between Malaysia and Japan

This research investigates the exchange-rate risk sensitivity of Malaysian bilateral trade flows with its important trading partner, Japan. To this end, bounds testing approach to co-integration is applied using industry level data over the monthly period 2000–2013. Findings suggest that above the one-third of the total co-integrated export (43.86%) and import (34.54%), industries experiences the ringgit/yen variability effect in the short run. However, this effect sustains in relatively less number of export (14.03%) and import (32.73%) industries in the long run. It is interesting to note that exchange-rate risk boosts trade flows in the majority of these affected industries.     

Does exchange-rate uncertainty matter in the Malaysia–E.U. bilateral trade? An industry level investigation

Due to ambiguity in the past literature, researchers have examined exchange rate volatility effect on trade using disaggregated data in recent years. Previous research has focused more on aggregated data having aggregation bias which has led to unnecessarily over-generalized findings. This study investigates the impact of exchange rate volatility on the Malaysian bilateral trade flows with European Union using industry level data. Our empirical findings, based on auto-regressive distributed lag framework, suggest that many import and export industries experience exchange rate volatility influence in the short run, while a very small number of industries show this effect in the long run. Moreover, the adverse impact of financial crisis (2007–2008) is more prevalent on import industries compared to export industries.     

Consumer Protection in Islam: The Case of Pakistan

Consumers whether in an Islamic State or otherwise face similar problems that need to be taken care of by the government and the individuals themselves. Islam as a religion gives a comprehensive framework for conducting business and protecting the consumers' rights. Apparently, this framework seems similar to the commercial laws but glaring differences between the two exist: commercial laws are a relatively new phenomena and are made by humans for the sake of convenience only. Islamic law on the other hand, provided such guidelines 1500 years ago which are based on divine principles set by Allah. Moreover, there is no reward in complying with the commercial laws but Allah promised the believers rewards both in this world and the Hereafter for complying with Islamic principles.
Pakistan is an Islamic State but the area of consumer protection has remained neglected so far. This paper explores how an environment can be created in Pakistan whereby the interests of consumers are best protected under the teachings of Islam. The Qur'anic principles are delineated with reference to: guidelines for Muslim businessmen and consumers; the role of state and institutions.     

A new perspective on the third-country effect: The case of Malaysia–US industry-level trade

Cushman suggested that impact of exchange rate volatility declines after the inclusion of the third-country effect. Like Cushman, when we use a linear analysis, we confirm his results. However, when we engage in asymmetric effects of exchange rate volatility which requires including nonlinear adjustment of volatility measures, the findings show more support to both exchange rate volatility influence and the third-country effect. Therefore, we propose that in examining exchange rate volatility effect on trade, consideration must be given to not just asymmetric effects of exchange rate volatility but also asymmetric effects of the third-country effect. We demonstrate these findings using monthly data from 54 Malaysian industries that export to the US and 63 Malaysian industries that import from the US.