The applicability of performance-based funding mechanisms in Malaysian Public Universities

A performance-based funding (PBF) mechanism is now widespread in educational institutions in both developed and developing countries. The Malaysian Government also has intention to implement PBF in public universities, yet no study has explored the applicability of PBF implementation in Malaysian public universities to date. Hence, this study examined the drivers to the introduction of PBF in Malaysian public universities. An exploratory two-phased mixed-methods approach was employed to retrieve views from participants pertaining to PBF implementation in order to develop a survey questionnaire based on the gathered information. The selected participants for the semi-structured interviews were senior officers from the Bursar Office, while the respondents of the survey questionnaires composed of Dean and Deputy Dean of all Malaysian public universities. Thematic, descriptive, and inferential analyses were applied to examine the gathered qualitative and quantitative data. The outcomes signified that the main applicability drivers to the implementation of PBF were government objectives, level of understanding, and autonomy. All the drivers exhibited significant relationships with PBF implementation, whereas statistically significant differences were observed in autonomy between Research/Apex Universities and Focused Universities. On the contrary, no significant difference was noted between government objectives and level of understanding across university categories. The study outputs enable the Malaysian Government to have greater confidence in developing and implementing the PBF mechanism in Malaysian public universities

The impacts of economic structures on the performance of simple policy rules in a small open economy

Applying a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model, the performance of various simple rules is analyzed in a small open economy context. The aspects that are considered in the analysis include the degree of exchange rate pass-through, trade openness, the policy objective and the source and persistency of shocks. The main objective of this analysis is to investigate if the rule reacts to exchange rate performs better than the basic closed economy rule without exchange rate term. Comparison on the performances is also made between the consumer inflation targeting and domestic inflation targeting rules. The results show that adding the exchange rate term to the policy rule enhances improvement especially in the higher pass-through case. The superior rule is the hybrid rule that reacts to the exchange rate term. CPI inflation targeting rules outperform the domestic inflation targeting rules in term of welfare loss. However, more complicated domestic inflation targeting rules generate lower loss in term of relative loss. On the second part of this chapter, comparisons on the performances of different exchange rate regimes are made under different source and persistency of shocks. The floating (pegged) regime is favored under more prominent real (nominal) shocks. The results suggest that emerging countries that experience very large real shocks should float their exchange rate.simple policy rule, exchange rate pass-through, open economy model

Interactions between monetary policy and exchange rate in inflation targeting emerging countries: the case of three East Asian countries

This paper investigates empirically how the reaction of monetary policy to exchange rate has changed after the adoption of inflation targeting regime in three East Asian countries. Using a structural VAR and single equation methods, this study shows that the reactions of monetary policy to exchange rate shocks as well as CPI (demand shocks) and output (supply shocks) have declined under the inflation targeting environment. The policy function reacts weakly to the exchange rate movements before and after the financial crisis of 1997 in two out of the three countries.exchange rate, inflation targeting, policy reaction function

Exchange rate pass-through and volatility: Impacts on domestic prices in four Asian countries

The paper undertakes a comparative empirical analysis on the effects of shocks on domestic prices in four Asian countries before and after the financial crisis of 1997. We apply two different estimation methodologies, namely a structural VAR and a single equation approach. The results of the two methods are consistent, although the magnitude of the elasticities of the exchange rate pass-through are different due to the inclusion of different variables, lag terms and different assumptions made in both methods. The results show that the degrees of the exchange rate pass-through are different across countries and over time. In most cases, the pass-through rates are incomplete. The degree of the exchange rate pass-through is the highest on import prices, moderate on PPI and is the lowest on CPI. In some cases, the pass-through rates on CPI are even negative. The effect of the import price shock is stronger as compared to that of the exchange rate shock in determining the movement of the domestic prices in these countries. Trade openness has a weak correlation with the degree of the exchange rate pass-through.domestic prices, exchange rate pass-through, SVAR, single equation approach

Females in Fetters: The Patriarchal World in Catherine Lim' S Selected Works

This research seeks to explore the feminist views that filter through Catherine Lim's selected works: a collection of short stories and two novels. They capture the essence of feminism when she focuses on the dominant motif of servitude, suffering and subordination of women. Her abject stories of female suffering indicate her belief that women are the objects of oppression while men are the dominating subjects. She portrays women as victims of masculine power and authority. Much has been written by men on the representation of women in various texts. Therefore, it is refreshing to read texts written from a woman's perspective. Catherine Lim's creativity expresses the female experience, indicating her understanding of the emotions and struggles of women who are silenced, marginalised, and imprisoned in a patriarchal world. Her works deal with a wide range of issues: gender, class and culture, giving special focus on traditional Chinese society. Women are the losers, and the maids in bondage. In my opinion, Lim's feminist stance parallels those of leading feminists such as Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir and Kate Millett. This study offers a fascinating understanding of her narratives as a platform for social comment

HRM Practices, Job Satisfaction and Intention to Stay: A Study of a Private College in Penang

The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between HRM practices, job satisfaction and intention to stay. HRM practices specifically addressed five dimensions; compensation and benefits, training and development, performance appraisal, supervisor role and career advancement. This study involved survey of the employee in KDU College, Penang Campus. A total of 190 questionnaires were distributed to the respondents and 130 questionnaires were returned and useable. The data was analysed by “Statistical Package for Social Science” (SPSS Window) Version 16.0. Correlation and multiple regression analysis were used to analyse the data. The findings found that there were relationship between the independent variables (HRM practices and job satisfaction) and the dependent variable (intention to stay). The result indicated there were positive relationships between HRM practices and intention to stay, however the regression analysis result indicated only three of the HRM practices namely performance appraisal, career advancement and compensation and benefits are significant with intention to stay. It was also found that there were positive relationship between job satisfaction and intention to stay. The results shown that HRM practices influence intention to stay the most compare to job satisfaction

The development of PVP-based solid dispersions using hot melt extrusion for the preparation of immediate release formulations

Bioavailability and clinical effectiveness of a poorly soluble drug can be highly affected by its formulation design. In this respect, research on solid dispersion of hydrophilic carrier has commenced a decade ago to resolve the problem of poorly soluble drug. However, the availability of solid dispersion is commercially limited due to the concerns of its physical instability, unpredictability and inconsistency formulation performance. This is attributed to the lack of fundamental understanding on the processing method, physicochemical properties of the obtained solid dispersion. Therefore, better understanding on the processing methods and factors underlying the performance of solid dispersion may be required to maximize the use of solid dispersion. Hot melt extrusion (HME) method was introduced in formulating solid dispersion. The use of this production method offers many advantages such as environmental friendly, cost sparing and readily scalable production as compared to conventional methods. On the other hand, the hydrophilic polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) polymer with its good stabilising ability in the solid dispersion is less applied in HME process due to its possible degradation at high temperature. However, rejection on the use of PVP without thorough understanding of its potential might lead to underuse of this polymer in HME solid dispersion. This project explores the feasibility of using PVP and its derivative in HME manufacturing method. It offers an in-depth study on the hot melt processing, physical stability and dissolution behaviour of HME PVP-based solid dispersion. Factors affecting the production of fully amorphous solid dispersion and its physical stability are discussed, taking into account the influence of the composition and characteristic of the drug, drug-polymer interaction and the molecular weight of the polymer. In parallel, HME poorly soluble drug in PVP based solid dispersion were produced and investigated for their dissolution performances in order to understand the mechanism underlying the dissolution process of the HME PVP-based solid dispersion system

Economic structures, the nature of shocks and the role of exchange rate in the monetary policy formation in the emerging countries of East-Asia

This thesis investigates the role of exchange rate in a small open economy policy framework. Focusing the analysis on the crisis-hit East-Asian countries, the main objective of this thesis is to investigate the necessity of the monetary authority to concern about the exchange rate stability by reacting directly to the exchange rate movements under the flexible exchange rate regime. This thesis conducts both numerical simulations and empirical analyses and it is organized in six chapters. Chapter One is the introduction about the content of each chapter and the summary of the main findings. Chapter Two is the overview about the economic and monetary policy of East-Asian countries. Chapter Four applies a model of Lindé, Nessén & Söderström (2004) and conducts simulations to compare the performances of various policy rules in terms of policy loss and variations. The remaining chapters are about the empirical analyses, i.e. Chapter Three applies GMM technique and SUR model to estimate the degree of exchange rate pass-through in East-Asia in the pre- and post-crisis of 1997/98, Chapter Five applies GMM technique to estimate the policy reaction function for East-Asia and the last chapter conducts a SVAR model to investigate the change in the economic structure, the dynamic of shocks and the performances of the policy regimes in East-Asian countries. The simulations reveal some evidences on more effective monetary policy rules/ regimes that react directly to the exchange rate terms, taking into account for different degrees of exchange rate pass-through, trade openness, policy objective, the source and persistency of shocks. However, the size of improvements depends on country specific factors. Empirical results report different results for the degree of exchange rate pass-through along the pricing chain, over time and across countries. Besides, there are empirical evidences that the monetary authorities in East-Asian countries influence the exchange rate movements through short-term interest rate adjustments and foreign market intervention under the floating regime aftermath the crisis. Empirical findings indicate that the policy regimes aftermath the crisis is more effective. The source of shocks and the change in the economic structure matters in determining the performances of policy regimes. The empirical results are in line with the theoretical outcomes that favor the reaction to the exchange rate movements under the flexible exchange rate regime in the emerging countries of East-Asia