Reactions of Long-run Private Consumption in Malaysia to Crises, Economic Leadership and Telecommunication Technology

We estimate the long-run reactions of private consumption in Malaysia to crises, economic leadership, information and communications technology (ICT), and other key determinants using time series econometrics. This study covers the quarterly sample from 1990:Q1 to 2020:Q4. We find that Malaysia's private consumption and its key determinants are cointegrated, demonstrating that a reliable long-run private consumption function can be estimated. We find that both economic and health crises, namely the Asian financial crisis in 1997/98, SARS and COVID-19 pandemic are likely to reduce private consumption in Malaysia. However, the long-run estimation results show that ICT and economic leadership are positively related to consumption. Therefore, policymakers should set the goal of encouraging the development of ICT infrastructure and good economic leadership in order to promote private consumption, which eventually sustains long-term economic growth and development. © 2023 Malaysian Economic Association. All rights reserved.

UNEMPLOYMENT BEHAVIOUR IN THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: EVIDENCE FROM DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

This paper explores the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, corruption and other determinants on unemployment in developing countries using panel dataset for 89 developing countries from January to December 2020. The proposed unemployment model is estimated utilising a newly formulated conceptual framework to examine whether COVID-19 pandemic, corruption, and human capital, play a moderating role on unemployment determination in our selected developing countries. The model is estimated using the dynamic panel system generalised method of moments (GMM) estimator. Apart from output, inflation and human capital, our results show that the COVID-19 pandemic and corruption are major variables in explaining the unemployment rate for our sampled countries. Furthermore, and more notably, we find evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic and corruption appear to significantly restrain and alter the role of outputs and human capital in impacting unemployment. Therefore, the detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and corruption on the economies and labour markets of countries examined should not be under-estimated. Additionally, findings show that, while policy initiatives to combat the COVID-19 pandemic are critical, strengthening anti-corruption regulations would further improve the efficiency of any attempt to reduce unemployment rates associated with the COVID-19 period. © 2023, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. All rights reserved.

How Effective are Policy Interventions Against the COVID-19 Infection Rates?

Studies on the COVID-19 pandemic are more likely to concentrate on the effects of the virus while ignoring its timeseries characteristics, particularly its stationarity characteristics. Thus, this study attempts to investigate the effectiveness of policy interventions against COVID-19 by determining the permanent or transitory effects in 5 major regions and the ten most infected countries. Using the endogenous multiple breaks unit root tests introduced by Kapetanios (2005), the findings indicate that only the impacts of shocks to COVID-19 infection rates in France are likely to be permanent. However, the transitory effect is found in Brazil, Germany, Iran, Italy, Russia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The country where the shock has a permanent impact is suitable for policy interventions, including lockdowns, social isolation, and local isolation. While herd immunity, which protects the entire population against COVID-19, is better ideal for application in countries that experience shocks with a transitory effect.

Reactions of Long-run Private Consumption in Malaysia to Crises, Economic Leadership and Telecommunication Technology

We estimate the long-run reactions of private consumption in Malaysia to crises, economic leadership, information and communications technology (ICT), and other key determinants using time series econometrics. This study covers the quarterly sample from 1990:Q1 to 2020:Q4. We find that Malaysia's private consumption and its key determinants are cointegrated, demonstrating that a reliable long-run private consumption function can be estimated. We find that both economic and health crises, namely the Asian financial crisis in 1997/98, SARS and COVID-19 pandemic are likely to reduce private consumption in Malaysia. However, the long-run estimation results show that ICT and economic leadership are positively related to consumption. Therefore, policymakers should set the goal of encouraging the development of ICT infrastructure and good economic leadership in order to promote private consumption, which eventually sustains long-term economic growth and development.

The Fatality Rate of COVID-19: How Does Education, Health Infrastructure and Institutional Quality Make a Change?

This article provides new empirical evidence on the impact of institutional quality in affecting female fatality rates resulting from COVID-19 by grounding our analysis on the marginal effects on other explanatory variables. This strain of research is not well examined in existing literature. We identify the main determinants of these rates and empirically estimate several models using cross-country data for 2020 for 57 countries. Our results show that not allowing for such marginal effects seems to produce imprecise results whereby institutional quality returns to be insignificant in explaining the fatality rates from COVID-19 and thus may have resulted in inappropriate policy recommendations front previous studies. Our results extend recent findings on the role of institutional quality in reducing female fatality rates and imply that benefits expected front improvements in institutional quality are worthy of consideration and implementation. The article offers some recommendations based on the reported results.