Baharom Abdul Hamid

Good governance and crime rates in Malaysia

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to relate the quality of governance with crime in Malaysia. The study also identifies the best good governance tool to fight against crime in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach - – The study uses time-series data on crime rates and six measures of governance: voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption. In this study the authors employed the popular autoregressive distributed lagged modeling approach to estimate the long-run model of crime and governance. Findings - – The authors test the hypothesis that good governance lowers crime rates (total crime, violent and property crimes). The results suggest a negative relationship between crime rates and good governance in Malaysia. This suggests that good governance reduces crime rates in Malaysia. Research limitations/implications - – The limitations of this study is the short time-series used in the analysis which is from 1996 to 2009. Practical implications - – This study provides evidence that the practice of good governance, for example, lower corruption, good policing and judicial system can mitigate crime in Malaysia. Social implications - – The implementation of good governance will protect property right of individuals, business sector and the society as a whole, and this will enhance prosperity of a nation. Originality/value - – This study provide the first empirical evidence that linking between crime and good governance in Malaysia.

Marketing Effectiveness of Islamic and Conventional Banks: Evidence from Malaysia

The study aims to address marketing effectiveness of both Islamic banks and conventional banks (CBs) by using a modified “chain-of-effect” framework. Against current literature, which is based on customer surveys, reports do not include marketing activities by the Islamic banks (IB); this study adopts a bank perspective to explore the IB’s behavior in this regard. Applying fixed-effect panel regression on the quarterly data of five IBs and five CBs in Malaysia, the study aims to explore the influence of marketing efforts on performance (both financial and nonfinancial) and if such relation varies by the type of banks in Malaysia. The findings of the study show that IBs are performing well in using marketing efforts to generate meaningful financial and nonfinancial performance.

Intertemporal changes in the antecedents of migration in 1990-2000 period: the case of Malaysia and Asia-Pacific countries

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.