Finance can be thought of as an engine of transformation and intermediation that bridges gaps between financial surplus and deficit units, between now and the future and between certainty of now and uncertainty of the future. It transforms value through maturity and risk transformation. This crucial function can be considered the reason for existence of finance. It creates incentives for surplus units to postpone the certainty of their financial resources now to the uncertainty of, presumably, higher amount of these resources in the future. It also encourages the deficit units to bring the future uncertain plans forward to the more certain present. Both units take risks. In other words, finance makes both units risk takers. The surplus units risk their resources now for more in a highly uncertain future. The deficit units risk being able to validate their obligations with a higher income stream in an uncertain future. How can finance become sacralised?

The world price of rice in 2008 reached its highest record last May but declined in August in the same year. The storm clearly caused a global panic about a rice shortage, which led several producing countries including India, Vietnam and Egypt to bar rice exports. Can we get past 2008 hangover safely, or is there another storm brewing. Rising prices and a growing fear of scarcity have prompted some of the world's largest price producers to announce drastic limits on the amount of rice they export. The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world's population has almost doubled on international markets in the last three months.

The slides highlight: 1) overview of Islamic world on Islamic economic; 2) Halal industry and ecosystem; 3) key issues and challenges; 4) opportunities of halal industry.

Theory argues that as long as the shadow economy is of sufficient size, the leakage or loss of tax revenue through tax evasion will also be substantial. In this chapter, we provide new estimates of the size of the shadow economy in Malaysia for the period 1971-2013. Further, we relate the shadow economy to its determinants as measured by the misery index. This chapter reveals that the relationship between the shadow economy and financial development in Malaysia exhibits an inverted U-shaped curve. The chapter concludes that the Malaysian government should embark on programs that can reduce the size of the shadow economy, relying on its dual banking system of Islamic and conventional banks.

The paper "Unemployment, economic development and happiness: a cross-sectional study" presented 6th International Borneo Business Conference (IBBC) 2014, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.

The economic theory on crime behavior proposed by Becker (1968) suggests that an increase in the number of policemen can deter crimes. However, recent studies found a positive relationship between police personnel and crime rates. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of police personnel on 15 categories of crime rates in Malaysia for the period of 1973 to 2005 by using the vector error-correction model. Our results suggest that 8 categories of crime rates support Becker’s crime economic theory, while 6 categories of crime support the ‘long-run natural rate of crime’ hypothesis.

The Insolvency department (MdI) statistical releases indicate total bankruptcy cases as at September 2013 is 251,209 bankrupt filed (The Star, 2013) and recent bankruptcy record exhibits that the declared bankrupt cases are getting younger as comparing to past years record which worries by Bank Negara. The increase in personal bankruptcy case reflects erosion in credit evaluation process and this has lead the banks to be cautious and to tighten their lending process and loan approval. The purpose of this research study is to examine the causality factors towards personal bankruptcy in Malaysia. The concept of financial numeracy has emerged recently in personal financial management to explain the antecedents and consequences of financial numeracy. The result found significant on the mediation factors on financial numeracy and financial management outcome effects towards personal bankruptcy. Hence, the mediation outcome also found support on this research proposed theoretical framework

The paper "Determinants of spread in Islamic securitisation market: empirical evidence from Malaysia" presented at 16th Malaysian Finance Association Conference (MFA2014) at Sasana Kijang Central Bank of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.

Almost five decades, disparity in income across states in Malaysia continues to be a matter of concern. The existence of regional inequalities and the prospects that these inequalities may widen were recognized by the Malaysian government. The nine volumes of the 5-Year Malaysia Plans reflects the sincerity of the Malaysian government in eradicating if not elevating the problem of regional or states imbalances. The objective of the present study is to investigate stochastic convergence among three regions (Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak) in Malaysia using sectoral data. Using annual data for the period 1968 to 2003 we found that Malaysia's sectoral data exhibit strong and weak convergence between regions.

This paper examines the causality between military expenditures and economic growth for twenty selecteddeveloping countries. In this paper we test for Granger long-run causality employing the Panel Error-Correction Model (ECM) framework using annual data for the period 1970 to 2005. Military expenditure is measured using the logarithm of the ratio of military expenditures to gross domestic product (milex); while economic growth is proxied by the logarithm of real GDP per capita (rgdppc). Causation (as well as cointegration) is inferred from milex to rgdppc, in a panel setting using the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator proposed by Pesaran et al. (1999) when the Error-Correction (ECM) term is significant in an equation with rgdppc as dependent variable. On the other hand, Granger causality is said to run from rgdppc to milex, when the ECM term is significant in an equation with milex as dependent variable. However, before testing for cointegration or causality, the order of integration of both time-series in a panel setting was tested using the three standard panel unit root tests (Levin et al., 2002; Im et al., 1997; Maddala and Wu, 1999). Our PMG results suggest that the ECM term is significantly different from zero in a model when milex is the dependent variable but not otherwise. The result implies that there is cointegration between military expenditures and economic growth, on average, for all the selected developing countries.

This paper explores the link between the shadow economy and financial sector development in Malaysia for the period 1971-2013. We calculate the size of the shadow economy by using the modified-cash-deposits-ratio approach recently developed by Pickhardt and Sardia (2011). We investigate the contention made by Blackburn et al. (2012) that financial sector development can mitigate shadow economy, higher level of financial sector development lead to lower level of shadow economy. Our results show that there is a non-linear long-run relationship between shadow economy and financial sector development in Malaysia, an inverted-U shape curve, suggesting that at lower (higher) level of financial sector development commensurate with higher (lower) level of the shadow economy. One policy implication from this study is that the financial sector can play an important role in reducing shadow economy by improving the accessibility to financing and to the credit market.