How stable is the underlying process of stock prices? Empirical evidence of structural breaks in the firm-level dividend of the U.S. firms

In this paper, we present empirical evidence of instability in the form of structural breaks in dividend at the firm level of the U.S. firms. We perform the Bai and Perron (2003) structural break program that estimates multiple breaks based on deterministic econometric approach. We also observe for links between any specific episodes in the economic and financial history of the U.S and structural breaks detected in the dividend process of the U.S firms

Error in the real-time identification of breaks

We studied the mistakes that happen in the real-time identification of structural breaks in the selected aggregate-level of U.S. financial data series. We were interested in the real-time identification because of its relevance for forecasting. The level of the noisiness of different datasets and techniques used for the identification of breaks affected the frequency of the mistakes encountered in real-time. We found that mistakes in not finding the true breaks and/or finding the wrong ones in real-time were made more frequently in the case of a noisier financial dataset. Moreover, the techniques for optimal break detection based on the sequential learning of Bai and Perron (2003) were found to make fewer mistakes than those based on the Information Criteria (IC)

The impact of electricity consumption on economic growth in Malaysia: evidence from ARDL bounds testing

This paper investigates the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in Malaysia during the period 1971-2014. The results from the ARDL bounds testing approach, as developed by Pesaran et al. (2001), showed that there was a cointegration between electricity consumption and real Gross Domestic Product (GDP). There was also a stable long-run relationship between other determinants such as foreign direct investment (FDI) and real GDP. Moreover, we found that electricity consumption, FDI, and real capital positively affected economic growth in the short-run. Therefore, it is recommended that policies should be geared towards improving current energy production and encouraging the exploration of alternative energy sources in order to promote growth in the Malaysian economy

The role of globalisation in improving human development in Malaysia

This paper examines the impact of globalisation on the level of human development in Malaysia. It also investigates the roles of other potential determinants of human development such as foreign direct investment (FDI), trade openness and international migration on Human Development Index (HDI) in Malaysia. We employ the method of Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) on the annual time series data covering the period from 1980 to 2017. The results confirm a positive and significant long run relationship between globalisation and FDI with HDI in Malaysia. However, the results imply a negative short and long run relationship of both trade openness and international migration with HDI. Therefore, the results suggest for policies to be focused and geared towards fostering globalisation and attracting the inflows of FDI if the country’s main agenda is to improve the level of human development

How does immigration affect wages and the unemployment rate in Malaysia? a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) approach

Malaysia had approximately 2 million migrants in 2018, and this number was increasing dramatically by 25 percent in 2019. Parallels with the aims of country policy to reduce migrant workers' dependency in 2020, managing the workers needs to be clarified. At the same time, the country still needs to keep them for specific sectors. These issues motivate us to analyze the migrant worker's requirements at different levels of skills and wages. Using Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modeling, at four-level nested CES production function, this study found high skilled migrants will harm wages for the high skilled and skilled groups while the opposite effect was observed for the semiskilled and low-skilled groups. However, when the migrant stock increases slightly below 1 percent, it will reduce the wages for semiskilled workers due to substitution effects. This study also found that the influx of low-skilled migrant workers will reduce salaries for semiskilled and low-skilled workers. The analysis also indicates that a small rise in high skilled immigrant labour will reduce the unemployment rate; likewise, increasing more than 4 percent will increase the unemployment rate. The results provide the policymaker guidelines to employ foreign workers' best skills to control the inequality of wages among skilled and low-skilled workers

Public debt, institutional quality and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa

While other regions with better institutional quality have benefitted considerably from borrowing, sub-Saharan Africa continues to accumulate public debt with a long history of dismal economic performance. This paper examines the impact of public debt and institutional quality on economic growth using the Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) approach on a sample of 46 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2000–2014. The empirical result indicates that institutional quality has both a direct and indirect impact on economic growth and therefore reveals that the interaction term of institutional quality and public debt has a statistically significant impact on the debt-growth relationship. This confirms the hypothesis that the impact of public debt on economic growth is a function of institutional quality. Moreover, government effectiveness, control of corruption and regulatory quality were found to have the strongest influence in mitigating the negative impact of public debt on economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, comprehensive improvement of the institutional quality is necessary not only in minimising the negative impact of public debt but also in delivering the unwavering benefits of government borrowing

ICT adoption drives productivity in developed and developing countries

This study examined the impact of ICT adoption on productivity in developed and developing countries. Data was gathered among 44 developed and 45 developing countries between 2009 and 2015. As identified in previous literature, the key factors that determine productivity are capital, labour, ICT, human capital, prices, research and development (R&D). The data was analysed using the generalized method of moments (GMM). Findings show that ICT adoption drives labour productivity in developed countries, despite the high mobile broadband prices. There is also an indication that people enjoy being connected regardless of the the increase in the price of broadband, in order to enhance their productivity. However, it was observed that ICT adoption has insignificant impact on productivity in the developing countries. Lastly, developing countries were found to have larger inputs of labour and capital which increased their producitivity

Is finance-growth nexus linear in selected countries of Middle East and Northern Africa?

The present study re-examines the impact of financial development on economic growth in resource-rich Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries over 1987-2015. Although several studies investigate the finance-growth nexus, none emphasized the nature of this relationship in MENA. In the long run, an inverted U-shaped association between finance and growth is indicated when using pooled mean group estimations. However, the relationship is not significant in the short run. The outcomes suggest that financial development is significantly and positively affiliated with economic growth up to a certain level. After this turning point, additional financial development tends to adversely affect economic growth. The existence of an inverse U-shape association between financial development and economic growth was confirmed by the estimation of the U-test. The outcomes of our study are important to policymakers, in terms of optimizing the necessary and limit of financial development to ensure maximum benefit for the whole economy through the banking sector

The production of Crude Palm Oil (CPO) in Malaysia

Palm oil production contributes significantly to the Malaysian economy. Malaysia currently holds the position as the world’s second-largest palm oil producer after Indonesia. This study intends to empirically test the Cobb- Douglas (C-D) production function for the palm oil production sector in Malaysia with the validity of C-D’s assumptions. The significance of factors such as capital, labour and utilisation rate in the production of Crude Palm Oil (CPO) is also tested in the study. The data on the productivity of the Palm Oil (PO) mills are collected from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB). The methods of Least Square (LS) and robustness check are carried out in the estimation of the production function. The results show a positive and significant relationship between the production of CPO and labour, capital, and the utilisation rate. This study suggests that increases in capital, labour employment and the utilisation rate will boost the production of CPO in Malaysia