Life Insurance Demand in Malaysia

Malaysia has been identified as having the second highest saving in the world; however, less than 30 percent of Malaysia's total population of about 6.4 million is insured in 1999. The fact that a large section of the society remains uninsured means that any sudden loss of property or any personal misfortune will suffered a reduction in living standard and poverty. Besides that, savings generated by life insurance companies are crucial in providing long term savings for sustainable economic development and growth of the nation. Nevertheless, the life insurance industry in Malaysia has not been thoroughly investigated Therefore, the objectives of this study are to identify the factors contributing individual purchasing behaviour of life insurance in Malaysia, and to investigate the macroeconomic factors influence on the aggregate demand of life insurance in Malaysia. Since the demand analysis is an important component of an attempt to understand the forces driving industry growth - its past and future prospects. The empirical findings of individual purchasing behaviour of life insurance indicated significant demographic variables including the presence of children in the household, the age of the consumer, and their income level. While, the empirical finding of the multivariate Granger-causality test suggests that national income can be a stimulus to the life insurance demand in the short-run. The results of Granger-causality test also indicate that there is bidirectional causality between the price of life insurance and life insurance demand in Malaysia. Furthermore, the empirical results also showed that the interest rate significantly influence the life insurance demand in Malaysia. However, the causality tests of this study did not detect a significant short-run direct causal relationship between inflation rates and life insurance demand in Malaysia. Last but not least, the finding of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach indicated the demand for life insurance in Malaysia is closely linked to the efficiency scores of insurance companies. Over the empirical years, most of the local constituted insurance companies operate in inefficiency state compared to the foreign Insurance companies

Efficiency, Technological Shift And Human Capital In The K-Economies Of Asean Five Plus Three

Develop towards a knowledge-based economy is extremely important for the ASEAN five plus three countries, since the countries face challenges at the global fronts and technological changes; the rules of competition have changed. A country’s competitive advantage is no longer dependent solely on factors such as labor, land and natural resources, but on its potential to produce, acquire, utilize and disseminate knowledge. Thus, this is essentially a shift from economic development based on resources to development based on knowledge where human capital (consequently education) emerges as crucial public policy themes for creating wealth and increasing the quality of life. This thesis attempts to determine the level of knowledge-based development in Malaysia in terms of efficiency, technical change and human capital. This development is then compared with the other ASEAN five plus three countries,which includes four members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) namely Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand and the three Northeast Asian states, namely China, Japan and South Korea. In particular, the objectives of this study are to (1) determine the contribution of knowledge-based human capital to economic growth in the ASEAN five plus three countries, (2) identify the determinants of knowledge-based human capital in Malaysia and the selected ASEAN five plus three countries, (3) determine the efficiency of Malaysian in generating the knowledge-based outputs, as compared to other ASEAN five plus three countries, and (4) investigate whether there is any long-run convergence in the development of knowledge-based human capital among Malaysia and the ASEAN five plus three countries. The empirical findings of the economic growth model using a panel cointegration framework and Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) show that the human capital significantly influenced the economic growth in the ASEAN five plus three countries. Furthermore, the empirical results of the human capital analyses also indicate significant economic and demographic variables including the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and fertility rate. However, the time series cointegration test did not detect a significant long-run convergence in the development of human capital among Malaysia and the ASEAN five plus three countries.The empirical findings of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) indicate that Malaysia, Korea, Singapore, Japan and China appear to be the most efficient countries in generating the knowledge-based outputs, followed by Thailand though Indonesia and Philippines appear to be the least efficient countries. In regard to the issue of catch-up and convergence, the results show that Malaysia and Korea are catching up with the developed country such as Japan while other ASEAN five plus three countries are failed to catch-up with developed countries over the period. Last but not least, all the ASEAN five plus three countries have enjoyed from technical progress and achieved positive total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates over the 1992-2005 period

An Analysis of Education Subsidy in the presence of Fertility Decisions, Human Capital Accumulation, and Spillovers

The paper hypothesizes that the level of aggregate human capital in an economy affects the overall returns of an individual\u27s human capital accumulation and fertility decision. However, the positive externalities from aggregate human capital are not internalized by households in their investment decisions. Using an overlapping-generations model, specify the household’s optimization problem in a rural developing country where parents have an old-age support motive that underlies the benefits of having and educating children. The optimal decision of parents is then contrasted with that of the social planner. They differ in that the social planner internalizes the externalities of aggregate human capital on the single consumption good production. The difference between investment decisions yields the country’s optimal education subsidy. The model is tested empirically on secondary education across 59 countries using difference-in-differences and OLS regressions

An Analysis of Education Subsidy in the presence of Fertility Decisions, Human Capital Accumulation, and Spillovers

The paper hypothesizes that the level of aggregate human capital in an economy affects the overall returns of an individual\u27s human capital accumulation and fertility decision. However, the positive externalities from aggregate human capital are not internalized by households in their investment decisions. Using an overlapping-generations model, specify the household’s optimization problem in a rural developing country where parents have an old-age support motive that underlies the benefits of having and educating children. The optimal decision of parents is then contrasted with that of the social planner. They differ in that the social planner internalizes the externalities of aggregate human capital on the single consumption good production. The difference between investment decisions yields the country’s optimal education subsidy. The model is tested empirically on secondary education across 59 countries using difference-in-differences and OLS regressions

Influence of brand loyalty on consumer sportswear

The purpose of this research is to investigate how the respondents are influenced by factors of brand loyalty towards sportswear brands. Previous research adopted seven factors to test in the Malaysian environment. The seven factors of brand loyalty are brand name, product quality, price, style, promotion, service quality and store environment. Brand name has shown strong correlation with brand loyalty. In order to increase customer satisfaction and drive them to be brand loyalists, marketers are encouraged to develop aggressive marketing programs. Questionnaires were distributed and self-administered to 100 respondents. Descriptive analysis, one-way ANOVA and Pearson Correlation were used in this study. The research results showed that there is positive and significant relationship between factors of brand loyalty (brand name, product quality, price, style, promotion, service quality and store environment) with sportswear brand loyalty. Study of more focused factors that are appropriate to the Malaysian environment is recommended in order to obtain accurate information

Figuring Out the Doha Round

The global economic and financial crisis has awakened protectionist sentiments around the world, and policymakers have failed to actively seek trade liberalization. In light of this, some have proposed abandoning the Doha Round and starting over with a new agenda. Figuring Out the Doha Round argues that this is far from the time to drop the Doha Round and that it is now more important than ever to sustain political support for the rules-based multilateral trade system. This important new study recommends modest increments in market access commitments by G-20 countries beyond tariff and subsidy cuts in agriculture and nonagricultural market access (NAMA), and policy reforms in customs procedures and related areas that slash red tape and cut transactions costs for exporting and importing goods and services. With additional effort by the G-20 countries, WTO countries can put together a Doha package that is both ambitious and balanced between the interests of developed and developing countries. The study finds that following these recommendations can lead to a world GDP gain of almost $300 billion a year.

Factors influencing customer satisfaction and loyalty to internationally branded clothes

Satisfaction is important as the principle purpose of a business is to create satisfied customers that will consequently lead to higher profitability in the future. Therefore, it is crucial for marketers to focus on creating and retaining customer loyalty in a business. Besides, customer satisfaction and loyalty are being highlighted due to growing interests and practices in customer relationship management. Thus, this study seeks to examine the factors affecting customer satisfaction with regard to the purchase of imported apparel, and to determine the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. A questionnaire was constructed and data were collected from 100 buyers of imported apparel in Malaysia. Results indicated that customer satisfaction is positively affected by brand credibility, perceived quality, and perceived value. This finding implies that a higher customer satisfaction leads to higher levels of customer retention and loyalty towards a specific brand. In conclusion, understanding such factors will help marketers of internationally branded apparel to operate their businesses effectively

Understanding the repercussions of intercultural communicative competence: a study on the degree of students’ cultural awareness, social and communication skills

Demographic change is transforming the way we communicate. In many parts of the world, the society has become increasingly multicultural and multi-ethnic. In this context, intercultural cognizance is one of the pivotal facets for intercultural communication. The recent years has seen the emergence of the intercultural communicative competence (ICC) concept permeating the education field thereby a large and growing body of literature has commenced to investigate the concept of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and its repercussion in the context of teaching and learning. The notion of ICC is incepted on the acquisition of several “savoirs” associated with attitudes and values, knowledge, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction and critical cultural awareness. However, the process of acquiring and negotiating meaning in the context of intercultural communication lies a tremendous challenge and demands a continuous effort. Thus, the objective of this study is to probe on how students’ attitudes towards another culture affect their degree of cultural awareness and to deliberate how social and communication skills can foster intercultural competence that is influenced by the level of ICC acquisition. The findings indicate that the students possess intercultural competence in which they demonstrate positive attitudes towards individuals from other cultures; henceforth is reflected in the high cultural awareness amongst the students. Apart from this, the findings yielded also show that the students are able to exhibit and display significant competencies in both social and communication skills which are allied to the high level of ICC acquisition.

Customer Intention to Stay with Banks: The Role of Virtual Service

Identifying the success factors that contribute to customer satisfaction and loyalty are the crucial and it is a continuous process in order for firms to stay competitive. This paper examines the factors that determine the customer satisfaction and loyalty and its causal effects using a theoretical model. The research model consists of four exogenous latent constructs, namely service quality, perceived value, brand image and online banking quality. Customer satisfaction is the mediator and the endogenous variable is intention to stay. Data relating to the constructs were collected from 12 banks' customers located in the Klang Valley by using convenience sampling method, and subjected to Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis. The hypothesized structural model fits the data well. The results disclose that perceived value and online banking quality have a direct and indirect effect on intention to stay, while service quality and brand image have only an indirect effect on intention to stay

Hybrid tabu search – strawberry algorithm for multidimensional knapsack problem

Multidimensional Knapsack Problem (MKP) has been widely used to model real-life combinatorial problems. It is also used extensively in experiments to test the performances of metaheuristic algorithms and their hybrids. For example, Tabu Search (TS) has been successfully hybridized with other techniques, including particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and the two-stage TS algorithm to solve MKP. In 2011, a new metaheuristic known as Strawberry algorithm (SBA) was initiated. Since then, it has been vastly applied to solve engineering problems. However, SBA has never been deployed to solve MKP. Therefore, a new hybrid of TS-SBA is proposed in this study to solve MKP with the objective of maximizing the total profit. The Greedy heuristics by ratio was employed to construct an initial solution. Next, the solution was enhanced by using the hybrid TS-SBA. The parameters setting to run the hybrid TS-SBA was determined by using a combination of Factorial Design of Experiments and Decision Tree Data Mining methods. Finally, the hybrid TS-SBA was evaluated using an MKP benchmark problem. It consisted of 270 test problems with different sizes of constraints and decision variables. The findings revealed that on average the hybrid TS-SBA was able to increase 1.97% profit of the initial solution. However, the best-known solution from past studies seemed to outperform the hybrid TS-SBA with an average difference of 3.69%. Notably, the novel hybrid TS-SBA proposed in this study may facilitate decisionmakers to solve real applications of MKP. It may also be applied to solve other variants of knapsack problems (KPs) with minor modifications