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

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

Education and growth in Malaysian knowledge-based economy

The Malaysian economy of today is in the process of evolving from a production-based economy (P-economy) into a knowledge-based economy (K-economy). In the theory of K-economy, knowledge is recognized as one of the primary factors in sustaining economic growth aside from land, labor and physical capital. In this study, we focus on formal education as a knowledge-based input in the Malaysian production function. 'The multivariate cointegration test result indicates that education, technical progress, labor, capital and economic growth of the country have a long-run equilibrium relationship, which allows them to elevate together over time. Even though several previous studies show that education might not contribute significantly to the growth of developing countries, our short-run estimated results, based on vector error-correction modeling, show that human capital, with the stock of knowledge accumulated through education, does contribute to Malaysian economic growth. In fact it can be considered as, based on the estimated production elasticities, the second most important input factor, alter physical capital, that promotes economic growth. This result provides empirical evidence that education, which is causally linked to the physical capital and technological progress, is an important mechanism to escalate the transformation of Malaysia into a fully-developed K-economy

Automatic Diagnosis of Pathological Myopia from Heterogeneous Biomedical Data

10.1371/journal.pone.0065736PLoS ONE86

Associations of childcare arrangements with adiposity measures in a multi-ethnic Asian cohort : The gusto study

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Childcare arrangements shape behavioural patterns that influence the risk of childhood obesity. However, little is known of its influence on childhood obesity in Singapore. We aim to examine the associations between childcare arrangements at the age of 5 years and childhood adiposity at age 6 years. Children from the GUSTO study were grouped into three childcare arrangements at age 5: Full-time centre-based childcare (FC), partial centre-based with parental care (PCP), and partial centre-based with non-parents (grandparents and domestic helpers) as caregivers (PCN). Diet, physical activity and sedentary behaviour information were collected at age 5, while anthropometric measurements were collected at age 6. Associations were analysed using multivariable regression models. Among 540 children, those in PCN had higher BMI z-scores (β: 0.34; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.66), greater sum of skinfold thicknesses (mm) (β: 3.75; 95% CI: 0.53, 6.97) and were 3.55 times (95% CI: 1.78, 7.05) more likely to be overweight/obese than those in FC. Adiposity measures in PCP children did not differ from those in FC. PCN children were reported to have more screen time and greater fast-food intake. Children in PCN tended to have higher adiposity measures. Greater engagement of non-parental caregivers should be considered in interventions targeting child obesity.Peer reviewe

Association of maternal Vitamin D status with glucose tolerance and caesarean section in a multi-ethnic Asian cohort: the growing up in Singapore towards healthy outcomes study

10.1371/journal.pone.0142239PLoS ONE10111-16GUSTO (Growing up towards Healthy Outcomes

Differential Conservation and Divergence of Fertility Genes boule and dazl in the Rainbow Trout

10.1371/journal.pone.0015910PLoS ONE61

Genetic Variants on Chromosome 1q41 Influence Ocular Axial Length and High Myopia

As one of the leading causes of visual impairment and blindness, myopia poses a significant public health burden in Asia. The primary determinant of myopia is an elongated ocular axial length (AL). Here we report a meta-analysis of three genome-wide association studies on AL conducted in 1,860 Chinese adults, 929 Chinese children, and 2,155 Malay adults. We identified a genetic locus on chromosome 1q41 harboring the zinc-finger 11B pseudogene ZC3H11B showing genome-wide significant association with AL variation (rs4373767, β = −0.16 mm per minor allele, Pmeta = 2.69×10−10). The minor C allele of rs4373767 was also observed to significantly associate with decreased susceptibility to high myopia (per-allele odds ratio (OR) = 0.75, 95% CI: 0.68–0.84, Pmeta = 4.38×10−7) in 1,118 highly myopic cases and 5,433 controls. ZC3H11B and two neighboring genes SLC30A10 and LYPLAL1 were expressed in the human neural retina, retinal pigment epithelium, and sclera. In an experimental myopia mouse model, we observed significant alterations to gene and protein expression in the retina and sclera of the unilateral induced myopic eyes for the murine genes ZC3H11A, SLC30A10, and LYPLAL1. This supports the likely role of genetic variants at chromosome 1q41 in influencing AL variation and high myopia

Genome-Wide Meta-Analysis of Five Asian Cohorts Identifies PDGFRA as a Susceptibility Locus for Corneal Astigmatism

Corneal astigmatism refers to refractive abnormalities and irregularities in the curvature of the cornea, and this interferes with light being accurately focused at a single point in the eye. This ametropic condition is highly prevalent, influences visual acuity, and is a highly heritable trait. There is currently a paucity of research in the genetic etiology of corneal astigmatism. Here we report the results from five genome-wide association studies of corneal astigmatism across three Asian populations, with an initial discovery set of 4,254 Chinese and Malay individuals consisting of 2,249 cases and 2,005 controls. Replication was obtained from three surveys comprising of 2,139 Indians, an additional 929 Chinese children, and an independent 397 Chinese family trios. Variants in PDGFRA on chromosome 4q12 (lead SNP: rs7677751, allelic odds ratio = 1.26 (95% CI: 1.16–1.36), Pmeta = 7.87×10−9) were identified to be significantly associated with corneal astigmatism, exhibiting consistent effect sizes across all five cohorts. This highlights the potential role of variants in PDGFRA in the genetic etiology of corneal astigmatism across diverse Asian populations