Chor Foon Tang

Electricity consumption, income, foreign direct investment, and population in Malaysia: New evidence from multivariate framework analysis

Purpose - This study attempts to re-investigate the electricity consumption function for Malaysia through the cointegration and causality analyses over the period 1970 to 2005. Design/methodology/approach - The study employed the bounds-testing procedure for cointegration to examine the potential long-run relationship, while an autoregressive distributed lag model is used to derive the short- and long-run coefficients. The Granger causality test is applied to determine the causality direction between electricity consumption and its determinants. Findings - New evidence is found in this study: first, electricity consumption, income, foreign direct investment, and population in Malaysia are cointegrated. Second, the influx of foreign direct investment and population growth are positively related to electricity consumption in Malaysia and the Granger causality evidence indicates that electricity consumption, income, and foreign direct investment are of bilateral causality. Originality/value - The estimated multivariate electricity consumption function for Malaysia implies that Malaysia is an energy-dependent country; thus energy-saving policies may have an inverse effect on current and also future economic development in Malaysia.

Small sample evidence on the tourism-led growth hypothesis in Lebanon

This paper investigates the contribution of tourism to economic growth in Lebanon for the time period of 1995–2010. The presence of long-run and causal relationships is investigated applying the bounds testing approach to cointegration and Granger causality tests. Because of the small sample (T = 16), econometric approaches and critical values used for testing receive special attention. Additionally, a number of diagnostic tests are utilised to ensure that the model is suitable and correct. Interestingly, our results reveal that tourism and economic growth are cointegrated. The Granger causality test indicates that the tourism-led growth hypothesis is valid for Lebanon. Therefore, policy initiatives promoting tourism ought to be further developed and implemented to stimulate economic growth and development for the economy of Lebanon.

Will Inflation Increase Crime Rate? New Evidence from Bounds and Modified Wald Tests

This paper employs the modified Wald (MWALD) causality test to re-examine the relationship between crime and its determinants (inflation and unemployment) in the United States from 1960 to 2005. Bounds test approach is employed to investigate the existence of a long-run relationship. The empirical evidence suggests that inflation and crime rates are cointegrated with a positive relationship. Moreover, the causal link is from inflation and unemployment to crime.

The savings-growth nexus for the Malaysian economy: a view through rolling sub-samples

The purpose of this study is to re-investigate the savings-growth nexus for the Malaysian economy using bounds testing approach to cointegration and Toda and Yamamoto (1995) and Dolado and Lütkepohl (1996) – TYDL Granger causality test. This study covered the sample period from 1971:Q1 to 2008:Q4. The cointegration results suggest that the variables are moving together in the long run and the TYDL Granger causality results indicate that the relationship between savings and economic growth is bilateral. In addition, the rolling sub-samples TYDL Granger causality test exhibited a relatively stable causal relationship running from savings to economic growth in Malaysia particularly before the onset of Asian Financial Crisis in 1997/1998.

An exploration of dynamic relationship between tourist arrivals, inflation, unemployment and crime rates in Malaysia

Purpose - The main purpose of this study is to examine the dynamic relationship between tourist arrivals, inflation, unemployment and crime rates in Malaysia. This study covered the annual data from 1970 to 2008. Design/methodology/approach - The multivariate Johansen-Juselius cointegration test is employed to examine the potential long-run equilibrium relationship. While the Granger causality test within the vector error-correction modelling (VECM) framework is applied to determine the causal relationship between crime rate and its determinants. Findings - The Johansen-Juselius cointegration test result reveals that the variables are cointegrated and the dynamic ordinary least squares estimator suggest that unemployment, inflation and tourist arrivals are positively related to crime rates in Malaysia. For Granger causality, in the long-run tourist arrivals, inflation and unemployment rates Granger cause crime rate in Malaysia. However, in the short run we find bilateral causality between unemployment, crime and tourist arrivals. Finally, the variance decompositions and impulse response functions analyses implied that unemployment, inflation and tourist arrivals are important in explaining the variation in crime for Malaysia. Originality/value - The estimated crime rate function for Malaysia demonstrated that promoting supply-side economy and also increases the numbers of police and patrolling duties in the potential crime areas will reduce the crime rate in Malaysia and in the same time attract more tourist arrivals to Malaysia.

An Examination of the Government Spending and Economic Growth Nexus for Malaysia Using the Leveraged Bootstrap Simulation Approach

Abstract The main objective of this study is to re-examine the government spending-growth nexus for Malaysia from the perspective of disaggregated government spending. The yearly data from 1960 to 2007 is used in this study. This study applied the bounds testing for co-integration and the leveraged bootstrap simulation approaches to examine the relationship between three different categories of government spending and national income in Malaysia. It is found that government spending on education and defence are co-integrated with national income. Nevertheless, there is no evidence of co-integrating relation between government spending on health and national income. The MWALD causality test shows strong evidence of unidirectional causal relationship running from national income to the three major government spending in Malaysia. However, bilateral causality evident exists only between government spending on health and national income.

Does financial development reduce environmental degradation? Evidence from a panel study of 129 countries

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of financial development on CO2 emission in 129 countries classified by the income level. A panel CO2 emission model using urbanisation, GDP growth, trade openness, petroleum consumption and financial development variables that are major determinants of CO2 emission was constructed for the 1980–2011 period. The results revealed that the variables are cointegrated based on the Pedroni cointegration test. The dynamic ordinary least squares (OLS) and the Granger causality test results also show that financial development can improve environmental quality in the short run and long run due to its negative effect on CO2 emission. The rest of the determinants, especially petroleum consumption, are determined to be the major source of environmental damage in most of the income group countries. Based on the results obtained, the investigated countries should provide banking loans to projects and investments that can promote energy savings, energy efficiency and renewable energy to help these countries reduce environmental damage in both the short and long run.

Old Wine in New Bottles: Are Malaysia's Tourism Markets Converging?

The primary objective of this study is to re-examine the convergence hypothesis for Malaysias tourism markets for the period January 1995–December 2008. This study employs the recently developed Kapetanios (Journal of Time Series Analysis, 2005, 26(1), 123–133) m-breaks unit root test to assess the possibility of convergence of Malaysias tourism markets. The results, however, suggest that Malaysias tourism markets are not consistently converging and only five of the selected markets support the convergence hypothesis. In addition, eight out of 10 selected markets are subjected to more than two structural breaks. According to these findings, the existing tourism marketing policies conducted by Tourism Malaysia may not be effective at capturing certain tourism markets.

A revisitation of the export-led growth hypothesis in Malaysia using the leveraged bootstrap simulation and rolling causality techniques

According to the neoclassical growth theory, export expansion could stimulate economic growth because it promotes specialisation and raises factor productivity. Thus, many developing countries depend heavily on export-orientated businesses to accelerate economic growth. Nevertheless, the causality evidences on the export-led growth hypothesis remain elusive and controversial. Two primary empirical questions emerged in the international trade and development literatures are: (a) Does the export-led growth hypothesis still valid? (b) Why causality evidences are inconsistent among studies? In light of these, the present study attempts to contribute to the export-led growth literature by using the Malaysian data set. This study covers the monthly data set from January 1975 to August 2010. To achieve the objectives of this study, we employ the leveraged bootstrap simulation causality test and also the rolling regression-based causality tests. The leveraged bootstrap simulation causality results suggest that exports and output growth are bilateral causality in nature. However, the rolling causality results demonstrate that the causality inferences for export-led growth hypothesis are unstable over time. For this reason, policy initiative to promote exports may not always stimulate economic growth and development in Malaysia. Therefore, balancing policy is urged to ensure that the economic growth in Malaysia can be materialised.

Dynamic inter-relationships among tourism, economic growth and energy consumption in India

Abstract This study attempts to explore the dynamic causal and inter-relationships among tourism, economic growth and energy consumption in India. This study covers the annual data from 1971 to 2012. This study applies the cointegration and generalised variance decomposition methods to verify the relationship. The bounds testing approach to cointegration and the Gregory–Hansen test for cointegration with structural break consistently reveal that energy consumption, tourism and economic growth in India are cointegrated. We find that tourism and economic growth strongly affects energy consumption in the long-run. Additionally, we also find that tourism and economic growth in India are inter-related, but the causal effect of tourism on economic growth is stronger than the other way around in both the short- and long-run. Therefore, this study concludes that the tourism-led growth hypothesis is valid but the energy-led growth hypothesis is invalid in India. With such findings, we can confirm that tourism is an important catalyst of growth to the Indian economy. Therefore, policy-makers should promote and expand tourism industry in order to sustain the process of economic growth and development in India.