The Northern States of Malaysia comprises of four states (Penang, Kedah, Perlis and Perak) still record high poverty incidence eventhough Malaysia has experienced a remarkable reduction of poverty over the past century. Economic activities in Perlis and Kedah that are predominantly agriculture in the rural area contribute to this disparity. To add, rural households are also subject to risks and uncertainties that make them more vulnerable to poverty. This study examines the impact of risks and assets on households’ vulnerability to poverty. A survey of 400 respondents was conducted in December 2015 in the northern region of Malaysia. From these 400 questionnaires, only 298 were considered valid and used in the analysis. Using a logistic probability function, the results indicated that risks are not a significant threat to households. Gender and strata are crucial elements that significantly determine households’ vulnerability. While human capital and financial capital significantly reduce households’ vulnerability to poverty, physical and natural capitals were not statistically significant. The study suggests that the government and practitioners design strategies and policies with an assets-based approach. The asset-based approach is more appropriate for linking the causes of poverty to vulnerability.

Many workers today encounter the problem of overemployment which occurs when actual working hours exceed preferred or desired working hours. Overemployed workers desire to work fewer hours although this may entail a concomitant decline in earnings. This research is conducted to examine the likelihood of overemployment among employees in a particular state in Malaysia, that is, Penang. This study uses primary data that was collected in a survey encompassing a total of 525 employees in the state. A logit model is used to analyse the relationship between the likelihood of overemployment and various socio-demographic, household and work-related variables. The factors that are significantly related to overemployment are ethnicity, age, education, number of children in the household, occupation, hours of work and control over work schedule. Based on the findings of this paper, it is suggested that policies such as offering part-time jobs or jobsharing options to older workers, implementing family-friendly policies, adopting decent working time measures and strategies that give workers more control over their work schedule are some possible ways to deal with the issue of overemployment.

This study examines the behaviour of staple food price using Multivariate BEKK-GARCH Model. Understanding of staple food price behaviour is important for determining the unpredictability of staple food market and also for policy making. In this paper, we focus on the commodity prices of sugar, rice, soybean and wheat to examine the volatility behaviour of those commodities. The empirical results show that the own-volatility spillover are relatively significant for all food prices. The own-volatility spillover effect for sugar price is relatively large compared with the volatility spillover of other staple food commodities. The findings also highlight that the price volatility of wheat increases during food crisis more than it does when the condition is stable. Also, the own-volatility of rice and wheat in the period of the food crisis is significant and higher compared to the period before food crisis indicates that the past own-volatility effects during food crisis are relatively more difficult to predict because of the uncertainty and high price volatility. Policy recommendations that can be proposed based on the findings are: (1) a better trade agreement in food commodity trade, (2) Indonesia should not depend on wheat importation, and (3) early warning system to minimize food price volatility risks.

Religious intolerance has become a common feature of many countries in recent times. Studies have revealed a worldwide increase in government regulations and social hostilities against religious beliefs and practices. The stifling impact of both government and society on the market for religion, warrants closer scrutiny. This study examines the relationship between government regulations and social hostilities towards religious beliefs and practices, for the period of 2001-2011 for a sample of 45 European countries. The Generalized Method of Moments dynamic panel estimation technique is employed to analyze the micro panel dataset of 45 European countries, to establish the possible relationships that may exist between these variables. The theoretical framework for this study is based on the Religious Economies Theory and the Supply Side Theory of Religion. The results of this study show evidence of the positive relationship between government regulations and social hostility. Interestingly, the study also revealed that the impact of social hostility on the level of government restrictions is smaller in magnitude compared to the reverse impact of government restrictions on social hostilities, indicating the dangerous role played by governments in inciting social hostilities, when they regulate or restrict religious beliefs and practices.

India is the top recipient of workers’ remittance flows; recent data indicate that the Remittances/GDP ratio has increased from 2.7% in 2000 to 3.36% in 2015. We apply a consumption behavior model, based on the “permanent income hypothesis”, to estimate the consumption augmentation and the stability impact for the period of 1989-2014. The independent variables are: (i) real per capita income (exclusive of remittances) is the measure of “permanent income”, (ii) remittances is the measure of “transitory income”, and (iii) real interest rate as the indicator of consumers’ ability for intertemporal consumption. The economic ramifications are important since current global risk factors could decrease flows in the future. The results indicate the significance of all three variables; there are: (i) evidence of significant consumption augmentation, (ii) consumption responds higher to remittances than to real income, the remittance elasticity is 0.571 and the income elasticity is 0.31, and (iii) evidence of pro-cyclical effect. The VAR model indicates some linkages and causality in the series that result in small response to the shocks. Policies to increase or stabilize remittance flows and to leverage remittances for economic development are important.

Environmental awareness and its relation to the development of economy has garnered increased attention in recent years. Researchers, over the years, have argued that sustainable development warrants for minimizing environmental degradation since one depends on the other. This study analyzes the relationship between environmental degradation (carbon emission taken as proxy for degradation), economic growth, total energy consumption and industrial production index growth in Bangladesh from year 1998 to 2013. This study uses Vector Autoregression (VAR) Model and variance decomposition of VAR to analyze the effect of these variables on carbon emission and vice-versa. The findings of VAR model suggest that industrial production and GDP per capita has significant relationship with carbon emission. Further analysis through variance decomposition shows carbon emission has consistent impact on industrial production over time, whereas, industrial production has high impact on emission in the short run which fades in the long run which is consistent with Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Carbon emission rising along with GDP per capita and at the same time having low impact in the long run on industrial index indicates there may be other sources of pollution introduced with the rise in income of the economy over time.

The purpose of this research is to explore the factors affecting on Supply chain (SC). In fact, the collaborative supply chain (CSC) concept in Vietnam is quite new. Apart from obvious differences of doing business between Western versus and most of developing countries such as Vietnam, the literature suggests that collaboration in the supply chain (SC) of the furniture industry are quite low. The primary reason for such low adoption rates is low awareness of enterprises. In order to achieve the purpose of this study, a literature survey related to SC, CSC was carried out, and an empirical analysis was conducted among 276 manufacturers in this industry with the results analyzed. Using Cronbach's alpha analysis, Explore Factor Analysis (EFA) and Regression Analysis (RA) with primary data collected 276 valid samples from 393 samples in Vietnam, this paper explores and confirms that there are existed six basic factors affecting the collaboration in supply chain including: (i) Trust; (ii) Power; (iii) Maturity; (iv) Strategy; (v) Culture; and (vi) Frequency. Results of the research show strong evidences for policy makers and enterprises for management the supply chain collaboration in furniture industry as well as its contribution to literature review of supply chain management.

The purpose of this research is to examine reasons and evaluate strategies implemented by the Indian banking industry in tackling jaycustomers in general and in light of the recent demonetization in particular. After a thorough germane literature and theoretical framework on jay-customers and Indian banking industry, researchers framed a well-structured questionnaire for collecting banking employees opinions along with a set of questions framed to conduct in-depth personal interviews with banking customers. The collected data were summarized, coded, and controlled by using Software R and the selected hypotheses were analyzed by the observance of percentile values. More than 90 percent of banking employees said lack of proper supply of cash from the Reserve Bank of India is the major reason for this kind of customer behaviour and shockingly 95 percent of banking customers expressed backdoor preference given by banking employees to some big customers is the major reason. The research confined only two state capitals Amaravati and Bangalore in India and covered only two largest banks one in public and private sector. The research provides useful insight into the crucial reasons for jay-customers’ behaviour from the dyadic perspective of both employees and customers of the Indian banking industry.