Ismail Ahmad

Information transmission between Islamic stock indices in South East Asia

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the transmission of information (at return and volatility level) as well as the correlation between Kuala Lumpur Syariah and Jakarta Islamic Indices. Design/methodology/approach - The daily return from July 4, 2000 to December 29, 2006 was employed in the bivariate VAR GJR-GARCH model. Findings - The results indicate significant unidirectional return and volatility transmissions from Kuala Lumpur Syariah and the Jakarta Islamic Indices. There is no evidence of asymmetric effects in volatility for both markets. However, volatility is highly persistent and mean-reverting in each market. The findings also revealed that there is low correlation between the two Islamic stock markets investigated. Research limitations/implications - The data used in this study are limited to the Islamic stock markets located in South East Asia, concentrating more on the post-economic crisis period analysis. Further research may be conducted using a different time period and frequency of data while utilizing more Islamic indices. In addition, future research may look at and compare the market interdependence of Islamic stock markets in different economic conditions such as the pre-economic crisis period, during an economic crisis period or post-economic crisis period. Practical implications - Market participants such as investors and market analysts should include the Malaysian Islamic stock market in forecasting market price movement and the volatility of the Indonesian Islamic stock market. In addition, both the Kuala Lumpur Syariah and Jakarta Islamic Indices offer potential for diversification to investors who wish to create an Islamic portfolio investment. From the regulator point of view, this study highlighted the fact that the Jakarta Stock Exchange should consider the Malaysian Islamic stock market in setting its policy to control the volatility of the Indonesian Islamic stock market because the source of volatility in Indonesian market is not only from the market itself, but also from the Malaysian market. On the other hand, in controlling the volatility of the Islamic Malaysian market, Bursa Malaysia should only implement a policy related to the Malaysian market because the source of volatility only comes from the local markets. Finally, the policy makers in both markets do not need to implement long-range measures to reduce the impact of volatility persistence in these markets. Originality/value - This is the first paper to investigate information transmission and market interdependence between the Islamic stock markets in South East Asia.

Fractionally integrated ARMA for crude palm oil prices prediction: case of potentially overdifference

Dealing with stationarity remains an unsolved problem. Some of the time series data, especially crude palm oil (CPO) prices persist towards nonstationarity in the long-run data. This dilemma forces the researchers to conduct first-order difference. The basic idea is that to obtain the stationary data that is considered as a good strategy to overcome the nonstationary counterparts. An opportune remark as it is, this proxy may lead to overdifference. The CPO prices trend elements have not been attenuated but nearly annihilated. Therefore, this paper presents the usefulness of autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average (ARFIMA) model as the solution towards the nonstationary persistency of CPO prices in the long-run data. In this study, we employed daily historical Free-on-Board CPO prices in Malaysia. A comparison was made between the ARFIMA over the existing autoregressive-integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. Here, we employed three statistical evaluation criteria in order to measure the performance of the applied models. The general conclusion that can be derived from this paper is that the usefulness of the ARFIMA model outperformed the existing ARIMA model.

Tax Structure and Economic Indicators in Developing and High-income OECD Countries: Panel Cointegration Analysis☆

Abstract This paper investigates the long-run relationship between tax structure and economic growth and the other economic indicators via panel unit root tests and panel cointegration analysis. Panel unit root tests are carried out to determine the order of integration of panel variables. In order to find out the long-run cointegration relationship, we employ the Kao residual cointegration test. The results of panel cointegration test reveal that there is no long-run cointegrating relationship between tax structure and both of GDP and gross saving (SAVING) in developing countries. Yet, there is an evidence of a strong cointegrating relationship among tax structure and international trades activities. Conversely, for high-income OECD countries, Kaos test suggests that there is a long-run cointegrating relationship between components of tax revenue and GDP and gross saving, while there is no evidence for imported and exported of goods and services (international trade).

Review on Accidents Related to Human Factors at Construction Site

The construction sector is among the most hazardous industry due to the working environment which exposes workers to high risk of accidents. Statistics by the Malaysian Ministry of Human Resource had shown that the number of mortality and disability cases involving construction workers were the highest among the other sectors. Most of the cases were caused by unidentified hazards around the construction sites. The literature had documented that environmental factors were responsible for most of the cases. This paper aims to highlight on the causation factors of accidents and injuries at the construction sites based on the human factor. Selected journals and research papers related with accidents at construction sites were reviewed and human error was found to be the main causation factor of accidents at construction sites. This study urges for more in depth study on the actions or interventions that could be taken to minimize the occurrence of human error in the construction site, thus, minimizing the occurrence of accidents, injuries and even mortality.

A Review of Studies Concerning Prolonged Standing Working Posture

Standing is one of the most preferred working postures in the manufacturing field as it provides a large degree of physical freedom and mobility to the human operators. In addition, the cognitive perceptions of the increase in work effectiveness and productivity rate among the human operators are the reasons this working posture is practiced. However, to stand erect for a long period of time or otherwise known as Prolonged Standing often leads to physiological discomfort, fatigue and even health issues such as Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs). The aim of this paper is to review on the effects resulting from Prolonged Standing and disseminates the information on the ergonomic interventions to relieve standing fatigue. Selected journals and research papers related to Prolonged Standing were reviewed and the findings showed that varying the floor conditions such as installing anti-fatigue mat and using shoes with soles would help in relieving discomfort associated with the cumulative effects of Prolonged Standing. Nevertheless, further research is needed to truly quantify the effectiveness of these suggested ergonomics interventions in real world implementations such as in the manufacturing industry.

Rapid Debinding of Injection Moulded M2 High Speed Steel Using Palm Stearin/Waste Rubber Binder

Tendency of injection moulded parts to necessitate a long debinding time which consequently leads to an increase of defects formation has been a major obstacle for the economic process of Metal Injection Moulding (MIM). In the present study, a novel binder system based on waste rubber has been formulated in injection moulding of Molybdenum High Speed Steel (M2 HSS). The feedstock consisted of M2 HSS powder with mean diameter particle size of 16μm and binder which comprised of palm stearin, polyethylene, waste rubber and stearic acid. The moulded part was immersed into n-heptane at 60°C in order to remove the palm stearin and stearic acid, followed by sintering in a controlled vacuum atmosphere. Results showed that solvent extraction debinding technique allowed complete removal of palm stearin and stearic acid from the injection moulded part within 3 hours without swelling or distortion of the debound part. In addition, this study has demonstrated that, the novel binder system has successfully shorten the debinding time through a single stage debinding process whilst the sintered part possessed approximate density of 8.1 g/cm3 and hardness of 76.9 HRC.

Determinants of Cross Border Merger and Acquisition in Advanced Emerging Market Acquiring Firms

Abstract Cross border merger and acquisition (CBMA) deals worth over US

The Influence of Tourism Core Resources on Travel and the Tourism Competitiveness Index and Tourism Performance

2 billion every year but failure rate is between 70 to 90 percent. Many researchers have tried to explain those abysmal statistics but the outcomes are equivocal. This research aims to examine the determinants of CBMA that affect the shareholder value creation of advanced emerging market acquiring firms. Event study and regression analysis are applied for the study period 2000-2011. The result shows six determinants have a positive relationship with the shareholder value creation and are statistically significant for the advanced emerging market scenario.

Potential utilization of biodiesel as alternative fuel for compression ignition engine in Malaysia

This paper explores whether tourism core resources promote destination competitiveness and performance, focusing on the travel and tourism (T&T) competitiveness index (TTCI) rankings and tourist arrivals. Utilizing panel data from eight ASEAN countries, this paper examined the statistical relationship between tourism core resources, tourism performance, and TTCI ranking. This empirical research relied on measures of tourism core resources compiled from various tourism organization reports and databanks. The results revealed a mixed correlation effect between these variables, particularly between TTCI ranking and tourism core resources. The lack of TTCI ranking correlation with the tourism core resources arises from the fact that the observed countries are in different economic development stages, which affect the TTCI ranking indirectly.

Tourism destination competitiveness: Towards a performance-based approach

Biodiesel is a type of fuel which is derived from various sources of vegetable plants and waste fuels. Today, numerous biodiesels have been engineered to be at par or even better in term of performance in comparison to pure diesel. Therefore, biodiesel has shown a promising sign as one of the best candidate in overcoming total dependency on pure diesel. This paper gives review on various tests and experiments conducted on biodiesel in order to highlight the potentials given by this particular fuel. In addition, providing the supporting evidences to further endorse for a mass usage of biodiesel in Malaysia – simultaneously, driving the country to become a potential global biodiesel producer in the near future. The reviewed studies were obtained mainly via indexed journals and online libraries. Conclusively, every test and study for every blend of biodiesel had shown consistent positive results in regards to performance and in overcoming emission related issues. Thus, providing the evidence that biodiesel is highly reliable. Malaysia as a semi-agricultural nation could take the advantage in becoming one of the leading global biodiesel producers. Nevertheless, this will requires total cooperation of every concerned government bodies and authorities.