Risk Management in the Malaysian Build Operate Transfer Projects

In Malaysia, Public Private Partnership (PPP) is one of the tools to develop infrastructure. Although, there are various forms of PPP projects but Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) is commonly used in infrastructural projects. Despite, the benefits of adopting PPP, there are a few issues that require focus of the practitioners and researchers such as; risk management in PPP projects. Therefore, this study describes the process of risk management in Malaysian BOT Projects as this PPP arrangement is applied in infrastructure development. The study has employed the exploratory sequential research method to achieve the objective. The results of the study concludes that most of the extreme risks are allocated to SPV thus selection of SPV is crucial for BOT projects.

Investigating the Link Between Macroeconomic Factors and Income Inequality of Asian Countries

The main purpose of the study was to analyze the impact of macroeconomic factors on income inequality. The panel data analysis is conducted on the sample data of 36 Asian countries. The data of 19 years from the period 2001 to 2019 is collected to analyze the impact of interest rate, economic growth, FDI and exports. The findings revealed the positive relationship between income inequality and economic growth whereas FDI and exports have negative relationship with income inequality. Result of the study implies that authorities should pay special attention to design policies that encourage inward FDI and increase exports.

Socio-Economic Determinants of School Dropouts: An Evidence from Households in Pakistan

The present study analyzed the determinants of children who dropped out from school in Pakistan, based on PSLM microdata. The study employed the advanced econometric technique “the logistic regression model “to identify the correlates of the problem; thereby analyzing the marginal effects of the multiple attributes. The analyses show that a female child is more likely to dropout from school as compared to a male child. The education of the household head is also a significant contributor to reducing dropouts. Mother education also reduces the chances of a child to dropout from school. An employed mother will increase the chance of a child to dropout from school as compared with the unemployed mother. Other factors which reduce the chances of child dropouts from school are the female household head, lower distance from middle and secondary school, household wealth, and per capita household income. If household head belongs to agriculture sector then there are more chances that their child dropped out from school. Household economic condition is also a very important factor in reducing dropouts. If the economic condition of a household is better off than before then there is less chance of the child to dropout from school. Similarly, the economic situation of the community where the household resides also affects dropouts. If the community’s economic situation is better than before then it reduces the chance of child dropout.

The Effects of Green Financial Development on Economic Growth in Pakistan

Sustainable development is now a mantra for which every country is striving for it and green finance, and green financial development which is advancement in financial activities harmonized with environmental protection and ecological balance, is considered as the foremost solution for it. Keeping in view the importance of green financial development for the economic growth, this study aims to examine the effects of green financial development such as green credit, green securities, green insurance, green investment, and foreign direct investment on the economic growth of Pakistan. The time series has extracted from World Development Indicators (WDI) and State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) for the period 1981 to 2019. For the analysis purpose, Autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) and Granger casualty have been executed. The findings established empirically that green financial development such as green credit, green securities, green insurance, green investment, and foreign direct investment have a positive impact on the economic growth of Pakistan. These findings provide the insight to the regulators that they should enhance their focus towards green financial development that is imperative for the economic growth of the country.

Bank Capital Structure Dynamics and Covid-19: Evidence from South Asia

The severity in terms of economic activity of the Covid-19 crisis was higher than the global financial crisis. Covid-19 has not only challenged the economic activity across the world but has put to test how the bank operates under the global crises. The objective of this paper is to identify the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the South Asian banking sector. We investigate if South Asian banks have target leverage and how the Covid-19 crisis impacted their capital structure dynamics. To fulfill the objective, past data on all banks of South Asian countries listed in the Thomson Reuter Refinitiv were considered. The sample ended up including quarterly data of banks from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan Nepal and Afghanistan. Engle-Granger's two-step procedure for error correction and two-step GMM estimation was employed to measure the speed of adjustment and the impact of Covid-19 on bank capital. The study found that the capital structure determinants favor the static trade-off theory for South Asian banks. It is also observed that South Asian banks’ capital was negatively impacted by Covid-19. The analysis supports the view of leverage convergence for the capital structure. This study improves our understanding of the capital structure dynamics of banks in response to exogenous shocks in South Asia.

Board Gender Diversity, Firm Performance and Risk-Taking: The Case of Non-Financial Firms of Pakistan

This paper examines the influence of board gender diversity on firm performance and risk taking. We employed the panel data of seventy-five non-financial firms of KSE-100 index listed in the Pakistan Stock Exchange. The data consists of 2005-2018 period. Results of panel regression reveal that board gender diversity have adverse influence on the firm performance i-e Tobin’s Q and return on assets. Moreover, it further provides that board gender diversity has decrease the firm’s risk-taking i-e insolvency risk. Overall, the inclusion of females in the boardroom reduces the financial performance and decrease the risk-taking of non-financial firms in Pakistan. This study provides the managerial and practical implications in compliance with SECP Act of 2017, to include the females in boardroom to discourage the risk-taking behavior of firms.

Impact of Tourism Growth and FDI on Economic Growth: Evidence from South Asian Countries

Nowadays, economic growth has again gained global attention because of the uncertainty in global economic conditions and attracts the focus of regulators and recent research studies. In this scenario, this study examines the role of tourism growth and foreign direct investment (FDI) on the economic growth of South Asian countries. This study has used the interest rate and population growth as the control variables. The secondary data has been extracted from the world development indicators (WDI) from 2001 to 2020. The fixed effect model (FEM) and generalized method of moments (GMM) are run to test the linkage among the variables. The results expose that tourism growth, FDI, interest rate, and population growth have a positive and significant effect on the economic growth in South Asian countries. The results provide guidelines to the regulators and furnish policies regarding economic growth for tourism growth.

Effectiveness of Globalization and Human Capital on Market & Net Income Inequality in NEXT11 Countries: A Panel Data Analysis

This study scrutinizes the impact of defacto and dejure GLOB (KOF GLOB index 2018) on Income inequality on economically emerging countries; NEXT11 countries. The defacto GLOB indicates the estimate of GLOB including variables representing activities and flows; de jure estimate includes variables which show policies representing enable flows and activities. Our analysis separates the impact of globalization on net and market income inequalities. Pretax/transfer and the post-tax/transfer GINI indices were employed as the measures of income inequality. This analysis used balanced panel for NEXT11 countries for the period 1990-2015. Economic globalization both defacto and dejure showed positive sign that depicts a significant relationship with dependent variable. It explains that defacto political has positive sign and dejure political globalization decreases inequality while economic globalizations in both divisions have positive sign and significant impact on inequality. Interestingly, defacto social globalization has positive sign but dejure social has positive sign. Moreover, the purchasing power parity and age dependency both have negative sign and significant influence on inequality. These conclusions point out that social and political globalization may be a hindering factor for governance in these countries.

Antenatal Care (ANC) Coverage, Health Infrastructure, and Postnatal Care (PNC) Services Utilization: A District Level Analysis of Punjab-Pakistan

Awareness of receiving postnatal care is uncommon in Punjab (Pakistan) and supply-side is also unfortunate. Sufficient uptake of PNC may helpful in reducing maternal mortality. Thus, this study explored the demand and supply-side determinants of maternal health (utilization of PNC) care for 35 districts of Punjab, Pakistan. Percentage of women of reproductive ages using PNC services in the 35 districts of Punjab was the outcome variable. While, ANC utilization, adult literacy rate, household wealth, physical infrastructure had been considered as the explanatory variables. Secondary data were obtained from Punjab Development Statistics reports from the years 2010 to 2016. Pooled ordinary least square (OLS) and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) were applied as estimation techniques. It was found that the percentage of women of reproductive ages using ANC services (0.662, p < 0.01), the percentage of households receiving remittances from abroad (0.570, p < 0.01), the percentage of households having access to improved sanitation facilities (0.569, p < 0.01), the percentage of households having their own houses (0.530, p < 0.05), and district-based health infrastructure index (0.237, p < 0.05) had strong positive and significant impact on PNC utilization. The study concluded that district-based targets relating to PNC coverage could be achieved by intervening through ANC utilization behavior, household wealth (remittances receipts), and through the provision of infrastructure (healthcare, sanitation) to the residents of the district. Need to ensure the availability and accessibility of PNC in order to reduce the health disparities among the districts of Punjab.

Environmental Impact of Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Pakistan

Environmental degradation as a consequence of modern technological change is still an unresolved global issue. As countries grow, the cost of this progress has to be born in the form of a rise in carbon emissions. In Pakistan, energy consumption has increased from 34 Million MTOE in 1992 to 98 MTOE in 2019 due to oil and gas-based production. Likewise, the average temperature has risen during the last 50 years in Pakistan. Based on IPAT and Climate change models, this study estimates the two equations model to analyze the impact of economic growth, foreign direct investment, population density and population in urban agglomeration on carbon emissions by using ARDL bound testing methodology. The co-integration relationship was found in both stages with consistency. This study proved the Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory in the case of Pakistan. The more insightful finding is that the large bulge area of the curve between carbon emissions and economic growth highlights that the negative impact of today’s economic growth on the environment will remain for a much longer period in the future. It is also found that carbon emissions are responsible for increasing average temperature resulting in a climatic change in Pakistan. These empirical results indicate that there is a dire need to revisit the growth strategy to achieve sustained economic growth.