The Role of Financial Planning on Farmers Productivity and Well Being in Sarawak

This study emphasizes on a new phenomenon that has been gaining attention in recent years, namely the productivity and wellbeing of farmers in Malaysia. Inadequate emphasis on these farmers, despite the importance of Bario Rice as a Geographical Indication for Malaysia, is the main motivation for this study. Consequently, undesirable production may affect the farmer’s wellbeing. Modernization aided by the government has yet to offer a profound outcome for the paddy cultivation and farmer’s wellbeing. Interestingly, the link between productivity and wellbeing can be moderated by financial planning. However, there is theoretical disagreement between agentic work behaviour and the eudaimonic per-spective. The proponents of agentic work behaviour found that productivity leads to better wellbeing. Conversely, the proponents of eudaimonic perspective argue that wellbeing leads to better productivity. This no consensus situation might be due to the absence of moderation. Thus, this research offers financial planning as moderation in the issue of productivity and wellbeing for the farmers. A face to face interviews were carried out with 115 farmers who were solely or jointly responsible for Bario rice farm productivity. The OLS regression was conducted along with instrumented regression to eliminate the reverse causality effect. The results show that wellbeing improves as productivity and financial planning becomes better. Farmers are less likely to achieve happiness as health condition deteriorates. The moderating role of financial planning on the relationship between produc-tivity and wellbeing is not statistically significant. This research would enrich the under-standing of the theories that are applied in this research which is the Life Cycle Hypothesis Theory, the Theory of Wellbeing and the Agentic Work Behaviour Theory. From this study, policymakers could understand the status or livelihood of paddy farmers and im-plement sound actions that would fit the current situation in the Bario highland. This re-search, by all means, lays the foundations for any further research in this topic with more focus on other characteristic dimensions such as Gayo Coffee, Bintangor Tree and other types of farming

CFO Attributes and Corporate Risk Management : Evidence from Top 100 Firms in Malaysia

The research aims to investigate the relationship between Chief Financial Officer (CFO) attributes and corporate risk management of the Top 100 Firms in Malaysia. A sample of 8 years from 2012 to 2019 with 704 observations excluding financial firms is used. Corporate risk management is measured by two proxies: hedging decisions and the usage of financial derivatives. The independent variables are CFO attributes (age, gender, education level, professional qualification, tenure, and nationality). This study is controlled with leverage, firm size, profitability, cost of financial distress, and capital expenditure. Panel logistic regression is conducted to analyse the relationship between the CFO attributes and hedging decisions. Based on the main findings, CFO age, gender, education level, and nationality significantly impact corporate risk management. In contrast, CFO professional qualification and tenure do not impact corporate risk management in this study. This research makes a valuable contribution to policymakers by enhancing their understanding of risk management regulations. The study provides crucial insights for Malaysian firms, helping them make informed decisions regarding capital raising, investments, and risk management. Moreover, the findings empower CFOs with valuable knowledge about the relevance of their attributes in effectively managing corporate risk through hedging activities

Does Nutrition Really Matter for the Productivity of Smallholder Farmers?

Household-level data from Malaysia Smallholder paddy farmers are used to test whether higher caloric intake enhances family farm labour productivity. This study contests the notion behind the efficiency wages hypothesis. Farmers’ productivity is estimated using Data Envelopment Analysis. To avoid estimation bias from reverse causality, we utilize a two-stage least square approach by choosing prices, household demography, and farm assets as instrumental variables. The results show that high caloric intake significantly affects farmers’ productivity in a non-linear relationship. Farmers with obesity and overweight conditions produce less per unit of inputs and supply more labour than farmers with normal BMI and normal weight. The model results show that production inefficiency increases significantly with the high consumption calories, high BMI, and obesity of farmers providing solid support for the nutrition productivity hypothesis. The marginal effect on productivity falls drastically as caloric intake increases. These outcomes recommend that investing in the health sector in rural areas will improve farmer productivity. Policymakers should develop approaches that will maximize agricultural investments’ contribution to agricultural productivity and the overall rural economy

Does Internal Financing Trigger the relationship between Managerial Optimism and Investment Inefficiency?

This study investigates the relationship between managerial optimism and investment efficiency moderated by internal financing. The sample for this study comprises the FTSE 100 index firms listed on Bursa Malaysia from the year 2013 to 2018. In this study, the dependent variable is investment efficiency whereby its measurement is adopted from Biddle et al. (2009); the independent variable is managerial optimism which is proxied by net buyer, and lastly, the intermediate variable is internal financing whereby the method of measurement is adopted from He et al. (2019). The findings of this research portray that managerial optimism and internal financing have an insignificant relationship with investment efficiency when examined separately. However, the interaction term between managerial optimism and internal financing has a positive significant relationship with investment efficiency. This study shows that when internal finance is sufficient, the existence of managerial optimism tends to result in investment inefficiency (overinvestment) in the firm. It is important to acknowledge the existence of managerial optimism in the corporation, hence our study suggests that firms may refine their strategies by developing a mechanism that controls the internal financing of the firm as an approach to prevent the effects of managerial optimism leads to investment inefficiency

A survey study on the assessment of food handler’s compliance to personal hygiene practices regulation in selected Malaysia food outlets

Food safety remains a major issue around the world particularly when the COVID-19 pandemic becomes the main issue nowadays. Food safety is essential to the human population worldwide because food is the primary energy source and nutrition for humans. Therefore, food handlers' personal hygiene is one of the factors that are necessary to maintain food safety. The purpose of this study was to assess the food handler’s compliance with personal hygiene practices in randomly any food outlets across Malaysia including Kuching, Sarawak; Lawas, Sarawak; Johor Bahru, Johor; Kuala Penyu, Sabah, and Gurun, Kedah. A quantitative method, a cross-sectional descriptive study to one thousand and five (N = 1005) food handlers who participated in the questionnaire and observation checklist was developed by modifying questions in accordance with the Food Hygiene Regulations 2009. Overall, the mean percentage of conformity in adhering to food handler attire was the highest observed at Gurun, Kedah and Kuala Penyu, Sabah with 86.96% and 80.79%, respectively, followed by Kuching, Sarawak with 77.5%, Johor Bahru with 76.71%, and Lawas, Sarawak with 74.93%. Personal hygiene practices conformity showed a high mean percentage with all districts scoring >91% higher than non-conformity. The food handlers also show less unhygienic behaviour while on duty and scored a mean percentage of > 92%. Although in that positive behaviour, some of the food handlers did not perform some unhygienic practices (≤ 8 %). In conclusion, there is no significant difference (p-value > 0.05) in the level of conformity between the mean percentages among all districts. Thus, this issue shall raise a concern to the food industries in order to make sure their workers comply with the legal requirement and to avoid any food poisoning outbreak related to food hygiene and food safety in the future

Does Financial Planning Moderate the Relationship between Productivity and Wellbeing of Sarawak Paddy Rice Farmer?

Despite having a vital role in national food security, there is an inadequate emphasis on the smallholder paddy farmer’s productivity and wellbeing. Previous studies regarding productivity and wellbeing relationships have no consensus. This research offers financial planning as moderation in the issue of productivity and wellbeing for Sarawak’s paddy rice farmers. A face-to-face interview was carried out with 115 paddy farmers. We ran the OLS regression along with an instrumented regression to eliminate reverse causality effects. This study shows that wellbeing improves as productivity and financial planning progress. Farmers are less likely to achieve happiness when their health condition deteriorates. The moderating role of financial planning on the relationship between productivity and wellbeing is not statistically significant. Results indicate that productivity and happiness do not rely on financial planning for paddy farmers. The research provides a basis and guidelines for policymakers to create financial awareness and provide evidence for corresponding studies to determine the role of financial planning for agricultural farmers in both developed and developing countries