The relationship between government revenue and expenditure in Malaysia

The study examines the relationship between government revenue and expenditure in Malaysia. The results of the Dickey and Fuller (1979) and Phillips and Perron (1988) unit root test statistics show that government revenue and expenditure are integrated of order one. The results of the Johansen(1988) and Gregory and Hansen (1996) cointegration methods show that government revenue and expenditure are cointegrated. Thus, there is a longrun relationship between the government revenue and expenditure. The intertemporal budget constraint is not violated and the budget deficit of the Malaysian government is generally said to be sustainable. The results of the Granger-causality test generally show that the government revenue leads to government expenditure in Malaysia

Non-Linear Dependence in ASEAN-5 Foreign Exchange Rates: An Insight from a Battery of Non-Linearity Tests

The main purpose of this study is to provide a deeper insight into the non-linear generating mechanism in the ASEAN-5 exchange rate returns series. To achieve that end, the differing power of the non-linear tests against certain alternatives is utilized. Specifically, the BDS and Hinich bispectrum tests are employed which provide valuable information on the adequacy of the current framework of ARCH-type models in capturing the non-linear dynamics in ASEAN-5 currencies. Daily data is used in this study covering the period from 1 990 to March 200 1 . The five ASEAN countries selected are Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. The results from the BDS test indicate strong evidences of non-linearity in the ASEAN-5 exchange rate series. However, this conveys little information on the nature of the detected non-linearity since the BDS test has high power against vast class of alternatives. Further application of the Hinich bispectrum test can provide valuable non-linear identification information, in which the results reveal strong evidences against the adequacy of the ARCH-type models in explaining the nonlinear dynamics in ASEAN-5 exchange rate series. The evidences of non-linearity in ASEAN-5 currencies have profound implications on the validity of weak-form market efficient hypothesis, model adequacy as well as the pricing of future derivatives. Furthermore, the results might prompt economists or policy makers to consider alternative policy advice based on models characterised by non-linear dynamics

The delay of stock price adjustment to information: A country-level analysis

This study measures the speed with which the aggregate stock market in 49 countries responds to global market-wide public information. Our empirical results show that there are wide variations in the aggregate price delay values over time and across countries. Subsequent panel analysis confirms previous firm-level evidence that market size, trading volume, short sales restrictions and the degree of investability are significant determinants of price delay even at the country level.Informational efficiency, speed of adjustment, price delay, aggregate stock market

Non-linear Market Behavior: Events Detection in the Malaysian Stock Market

This paper advocates a reverse from of event studies that is data-dependent to determine endogeneously the events that trigger non-linear market behavior. Using the Malaysian stock market as our case study, coupled with the ‘windowing' approach proposed by Hinich and Patterson (1995), the present study is able to identify major political and economic events that contributed to the short bursts of non-linear behavior. The present framework can be extended to individual firm to examine the adjustment of its stock price to firm-specific events, which will provide deeper insight into issues on corporate finance.

Cross-temporal universality of non-linear dependencies in Asian stock markets

This study utilizes the Hinich portmanteau bicorrelation test in conjunction with the windowed testing procedure to examine the cross-temporal universality of non-linear dependencies in the returns series for Asian stock market indices. As a whole, the detected non-linear dependencies do not appear to be persistent or stable across time for all the stock markets. In particular, the underlying process is of a switching type, with the pure noise process from time to time switches to a non-linear dependent stochastic process for some unknown length of time, and then switches back to pure-noise. This provides a plausible explanation for the disappointing forecasting performance of many non-linear models, as these existing models do not take note of the episodic transient nature of the non-linear dependency structures.

Income Disparity between Japan and ASEAN-5 Economies: Converge, Catching Up or Diverge?

The objective of this study is to empirically examine the income disparity between Japan and each of the five major economies of South East Asia (ASEAN-5) during the period of 1960 to 1997, utilizing the popular augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) unit root test. The results provide evidence of income divergence between Japan and each of the ASEAN-5 economies. To avoid the problem associated with structural break, this study proceeds with the jointly crash and changes in trend model proposed by Zivot and Andrews (1992), and is able to obtain evidence of long run income convergence between the Japanese and Singaporean economies. As for the rest of the four ASEAN countries- Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, the earlier results of income divergence remain valid and hence suggest that it would be a more realistic and urgent goal to narrow the income gap among these five core economies of ASEAN.

Stock Market Liberalisation And Cost Of Equity: Firm-Level Evidence From Malaysia

This study extends the stock market liberalisation literature by conducting a firm-level analysis on the emerging economy of Malaysia. Using a finer measure of foreign ownership, we explore the association between liberalisation and cost of equity for public listed firms on Bursa Malaysia over the sample period of 2002-2009. We find strong support for our hypothesis that total foreign ownership is negatively and significantly associated with cost of equity. Further disaggregate analysis suggests foreign institutions that trade through direct accounts are driving the lower cost of equity. When the model is extended to include interaction term, we find that an effective board of directors further strengthens the negative relationship between foreign institutions and cost of equity. Our empirical results consistently support the corporate governance channel in which foreign institutions play an active monitoring role

Is There Any International Diversification Benefits in ASEAN Stock Markets?

This study finds that there is a common force which brings all the five ASEAN stock markets together in the long run by the nonparametric tests. This suggests that shocks from any of these five markets may spillover to the other markets in the same region. The recent Asian financial crisis bears a good testimony to this ‘contagion effect'. Subsequently, there would be no long run gain from international portfolio diversification. Specifically, investors with long run horizons may not benefit from an investment made across the countries in this ASEAN region. One possible explanation for this intra-ASEAN stock markets integration is their strong economic ties, especially intra-ASEAN trade and investment that has indirectly linked their stock indices.