A.H. Baharom

Economic impact of natural disasters' fatalities

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to find the meaningful relationship between the economic impact of the natural disaster and economic condition. Design/methodology/approach - The paper employed cross-sectional analysis to investigate the relationship between economic condition namely, gross domestic product per capita (GDPpc); gross domestic product per capita squared (GDPpc Findings - Results clearly indicate that there seems to be meaningful relationship between the economic impact of natural disasters and economic conditions. Practical implications - The paper provides some evidence on the important role of economic condition in minimizing the impact of natural disasters. Originality/value - The paper incorporates a comprehensive list of explanatory variables in accounting for natural disaster fatalities.

Crime and economic conditions in Malaysia

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of economic conditions on various categories of criminal activities in Malaysia for the period 1973-2003. Design/methodology/approach - The autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing procedure was employed as the main tool. Dynamic ordinary least squares was also used to check the robustness of the results. Findings - The results indicate that murder, armed robbery, rape, assault, daylight burglary, and motorcycle theft exhibit long-run relationships with economic conditions, and the causal effect in all cases runs from economic conditions to crime rates and not vice versa. In the long-run, strong economic performances have a positive impact on murder, rape, assault, daylight burglary, and motorcycle theft, while on the other hand, economic conditions have negative impact on armed robbery. Research limitations/implications - Further researches using other macroeconomic variables and also other countries are encouraged. Practical implications - The important implication of this result is that real gross national product per capita is an exogenous variable and it is, therefore, useful for fiscal policy variable. Government of the day should seriously consider the results of this study in any crimefighting policies that are formulated. Originality/value - An economic viewpoint of criminal activities in Malaysia.

The impact of human development on natural disaster fatalities and damage: panel data evidence

Abstract Countries with high levels of human development should be able to reduce the impact of natural disasters in terms of the total numbers of people killed and affected, and damage. In this study we investigate the impact of human development indicators such as income per capita and human capital (education level) on natural disaster fatalities (total deaths, total affected and total economic losses) in 79 selected countries. Using dynamic panel data analysis, we found that the level of economic development plays an important role in mitigating the impact of natural disasters such as droughts, earthquakes, extreme temperatures, floods, storms, volcanoes, landslides and wildfires. Other factors that are found to determine the number of natural disaster fatalities include population, population density, unemployment, investment, government consumption, openness, education and corruption. Using the dynamic panel data model, we found that education, investment, government consumption and openness display an inverse relationship, while population and population density have a direct positive relationship.

Mitigating Shadow Economy Through Dual Banking Sector Development in Malaysia

Theory argues that as long as the shadow economy is of sufficient size, the leakage or loss of tax revenue through tax evasion will also be substantial. In this chapter, we provide new estimates of the size of the shadow economy in Malaysia for the period 1971–2013. Further, we relate the shadow economy to its determinants as measured by the misery index. This chapter reveals that the relationship between the shadow economy and financial development in Malaysia exhibits an inverted U-shaped curve. The chapter concludes that the Malaysian government should embark on programs that can reduce the size of the shadow economy, relying on its dual banking system of Islamic and conventional banks.

Intertemporal changes in the antecedents of migration in 1990-2000 period

Purpose - – The purpose of paper is to investigate and determine the intertemporal changes in linkages between migration (both emigration and immigration) and economic conditions in during 1990-2000 period. Design/methodology/approach - – The paper employed cross-sectional analysis to investigate the relationship by employing data on immigration and emigration and as for economic condition the paper employed macro-variables such as real income differential (real gross domestic per capita), price level differential (consumer price index) and distance among the countries. Two different points of time were regressed cross-sectionally, with White standard being employed to remove traces of heterogeneity, albeit, 1990 and 2000. Findings - – Results clearly indicate that there are significant changes in terms of the relationship of chosen variables with migration over time. The results provide some evidence on the important role played by these variables in influencing migration throughout the period in question. Research limitations/implications - – Data covered is limited to 24 countries. The results from these countries alone are not sufficient to address the full impact of migration. Originality/value - – The study covers the traditional topic of migration with an econometric approach, with some empirical regression and findings.

Testing for Service-Led and Investment-Led Hypothesis: Evidence from ‘Chindia’

This study examines the meaningful relationship between economic growth, and service sector contribution and domestic investment in two major Asian economies, namely India and China. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing procedure is employed to analyze the impact of the selected variables namely (1) contribution by the service sector, (2) (4) domestic investment on economic growth and vice versa. The period of interest is 1960-2005 using annual data. The empirical results demonstrate that for the case of India, there is (1) a unidirectional causality from domestic investment to economic growth and (2) from economic growth to services. As for China, only unidirectional causality from services sector to economic growth is detected, while no meaningful relationship was found between domestic investment and economic growth.