A Review on Housing Policy and Practices in Malaysia in Providing Access to Housing: Are they adequate?

Drawing on Malaysia as the case study, the objective of this paper is to examine whether the current housing policy and practices in Malaysia are adequate in providing housing opportunities among young people. Utilising the Participatory Action Research (PAR) and the Delphi Technique, this study involved observation and in-depth interviews with key informants in Greater Kuala Lumpur. Two key themes emerged that contributed to the deficiency of housing policy and practices in Malaysia and suggest the development of comprehensive housing policies to address the issue of housing as one of the principles of human rights and improve the quality of life. Keywords: Housing policy; housing practice; young people; housing opportunities eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7i19.321

Essays in Corporate Finance

This doctoral Dissertation examines the impact of firms\u27 geographic location and labor market friction, both based on the states in which firms are headquartered, on corporate policies. The first essay examines the impact of the geographical location of the firm on the use of operating leases. The main idea of this essay is that, because obtaining information and monitoring is costly for potential lessors, especially when a lessee is relatively far away from financial centers, rural firms are less likely to use operating leases in comparison to their urban counterparts. Consistent with this hypothesis, I show that rural firms tend to have lower lease intensities than similar urban and small city firms. In addition, I find that firms with higher levels of debt capacity lease less, with higher financial constraints lease more, and with higher analyst following lease more. These findings are consistent with the existence of an agency problem associated with leasing. The second essay examines whether firms exhibit less tax aggressiveness in order to mitigate workers\u27 exposure to unemployment risk. I use unemployment insurance (UI) benefit laws as a proxy for unemployment risk and multiple measures of tax aggressiveness. Given that tax aggressiveness is risky and costly for the firm and its employees, I argue that high state UI benefits lower labor unemployment risk and, hence provide firms an opportunity to exhibit more tax aggressiveness. Consistent with this hypothesis, I find a negative relation between firms\u27 tax aggressiveness and unemployment risk. In additional analysis, I also find that the negative relation is more pronounced for firms in industries that are more labor intensive and industries in which labor has more bargaining power. Overall, these findings suggest that labor market frictions have implications for corporate tax policy

Essays in corporate finance

This doctoral dissertation examines the impact of firms\u27 geographic location and labor market friction, both based on the states in which firms are headquartered, on corporate policies. The first essay examines the impact of the geographical location of the firm on the use of operating leases. The main idea of this essay is that, because obtaining information and monitoring is costly for potential lessors, especially when a lessee is relatively far away from financial centers, rural firms are less likely to use operating leases in comparison to their urban counterparts. Consistent with this hypothesis, I show that rural firms tend to have lower lease intensities than similar urban and small city firms. In addition, I find that firms with higher levels of debt capacity lease less, with higher financial constraints lease more, and with higher analyst following lease more. These findings are consistent with the existence of an agency problem associated with leasing. The second essay examines whether firms exhibit less tax aggressiveness in order to mitigate workers\u27 exposure to unemployment risk. I use unemployment insurance (UI) benefit laws as a proxy for unemployment risk and multiple measures of tax aggressiveness. Given that tax aggressiveness is risky and costly for the firm and its employees, I argue that high state UI benefits lower labor unemployment risk and, hence provide firms an opportunity to exhibit more tax aggressiveness. Consistent with this hypothesis, I find a negative relation between firms\u27 tax aggressiveness and unemployment risk. In additional analysis, I also find that the negative relation is more pronounced for firms in industries that are more labor intensive and industries in which labor has more bargaining power. Overall, these findings suggest that labor market frictions have implications for corporate tax policy

Leverage deviation from the target debt ratio and leasing

We find a negative association between the leverage deviation and leasing intensity, implying that firms actively use leasing as a source of financing when faced with a leverage deviation. This negative relation is more pronounced for firms that are underleveraged, are financially constrained, and have a high likelihood of bankruptcy, and weaker for firms with a greater need to preserve debt capacity. We attribute these incentives to distinct features of the lease contract that separate it from secured debt contracts. Overall, our results are consistent with the substitution effects of lease and debt

Debt covenants and the speed of capital structure adjustment

This paper examines the impact of debt covenants on the speed of capital structure adjustment. Overall, we find that covenants lower the speed of adjustment by 10–13%, relative to the speed of adjustment of firms without covenants. The speed of adjustment is significantly lower, by 40–50%, for firms with the most intense covenant provisions. In particular, we find that capital covenants, as opposed to performance covenants, appear to be the main mechanism that lowers the speed of adjustment, delaying the speed of capital structure adjustment by 86%. We find that the speed of adjustment is reduced more for strict capital covenants than for strict performance covenants. We also show that, for firms that are cash and financially constrained, covenants impede the speed of adjustment even more. Lastly, we show that the negative relationship between covenants and the speed of adjustment is more pronounced for firms that are over-levered

Development of Genotype-Specific Anti-Bovine Rotavirus A Immunoglobulin Yolk Based on a Current Molecular Epidemiological Analysis of Bovine Rotaviruses A Collected in Japan during 2017–2020

Bovine rotavirus A (RVA), a major causative pathogen of diarrhea in dairy and Japanese beef calves, has led to severe economic losses in numerous countries. A dual genotyping system based on genomic segments encoding VP7 (G genotype) and VP4 (P genotype), comprising the outer layer of the virion, has been used to understand the epidemiological dynamics of RVAs at the national and global levels. This study aimed to investigate occurrence frequency of G and P genotypes for multiple bovine RVAs from calf diarrheic samples collected in Japan from 2017 to 2020. After we produced anti-bovine RVA immunoglobulin yolks (IgYs) from hens immunized with the two RVAs with different genotypes (G6P[5] and G10P[11]) selected on the basis of the current epidemiological survey, we investigated cross-reactivity against bovine RVAs with different G and P combinations owing to establish a useful strategy to protect calves from RVA infections using the two IgYs. Consequently, the two produced anti-bovine IgYs showed strong cross-reactivity against bovine RVAs with the same G and/or P genotypes in neutralization assay, respectively. Therefore, our data suggest the possibility of a passive immunization to protect calves from a bovine RVA infections epidemic in Japan via oral administration of the two IgYs into calves. The findings presented herein will provide important information that IgY is one of the effective tools to prevent infections of various pathogens