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Sustainable food security at the household level is one of the emerging issues for all nations. Several factors such as social, economic, political, demographic, natural and livelihood strategies cause vulnerability in the status of household food security. This study aims to examine the vulnerability of the factors of household food accessibility and its linkage with the climatic changes in Malaysia.

The study is based on primary data collected in the months of July-October, 2012, through a questionnaire survey on 460 low-income households from the East Coast Economic Region (ECER) in Malaysia. The samples were selected from E-Kasih poor household database, based on the cluster random sampling technique. The questionnaire uses a five-point Likert scale, and the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and ANOVA F statistics for chi-square two-sample test.

The study finds that the vulnerability of the factors of household food accessibility has increased statistically and significantly over the past five years in Malaysia, whereas the contributions of climatic factors are low on these changes. This study suggests that the food security programs in Malaysia need to be integrated with the climatic change adaptation programs to ensure more effective and sustainable household food security in the future.

This study is an original work based on primary data that empirically measures the vulnerability of the factors of household food accessibility, one of the important dimensions of household food security, and its linkage with climatic changes.

Sustainable food security at the household level is one of the emerging issues for all nations. It is expected that the patterns of household resilience factors and adaptation practices have a strong linkage with household food security. The purpose of this paper is to seek an effective technique of adaptation for food security and the required types of support for adaptation to food insecurity among the poor and low-income households in Malaysia.

This study was based on primary data that were collected in July-October 2012 through a questionnaire survey among 460 poor and low-income households from the Pahang, Kelantan, and Terengganu states of Malaysia. The samples were selected from E-Kasih poor household database based on a two-stage cluster random sampling technique. The study considered household food security as household food availability and food accessibility, and ran ordinal regressions to find out the linkages of household food security with household resilience factors, adaptation practices, and expected support for adaptation to food security.

The study concludes that several resilience factors and adaptation practices were statistically significant to household food security, and several external supports were statistically and significantly needed to ensure household food security. Therefore, to ensure sustainable household food security in Malaysia, the food security programs need to be integrated with sustainable development goals (SDGs) and climatic changes adaptation programs, and the involvement of relevant stakeholders are crucial.

This study is a pioneer work based on primary data that empirically measured the linkages of household food security with household resilience factors, adaptation practices, and expected support for adaptation to food security in Malaysia. This study also discussed some issues related to the climate change linkage, which would help future climate change research. The findings of the study will be beneficial for all the stakeholders, including policy makers related to the food security and climate change adaptation.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the profitability performance of Islamic banks (IBs) of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region during 2008 global financial crisis.

Bank-specific data are taken from the Bank Scope database and macroeconomic data are collected from International Financial Statistics. Using a panel data series of 30 banks for the period of 2005 to 2011, the study shows the evidence of structural break for the crisis year as well as the factors that impact the profitability of IBs.

The performance of GCC IBs was significantly influenced during the crisis period by capital adequacy, credit risk, financial risk, operational efficiency, liquidity, bank size, gross domestic product, growth rate of money supply, bank sector development and inflation rate. The study also finds that there is a structural change before and after the global financial crisis.

This is an original study that shows that the Sharīʿah-compliant banks have performed better during the crisis and are not affected based on their internal performance records; rather, they have been affected indirectly from the macro shock owing to the overall economic crisis.

This paper aims to examine whether the Sharīʿah indices outperform the conventional indices as evident from Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE). To achieve the objective, the study, first, assesses the risk adjusted returns of the Sharīʿah and conventional indices and compares the same between the two indices. Second, it examines the short-run and long-run associations between the two indices.

The DSEX Sharīʿah index and DSE broad index of the DSE are used as representatives of the Sharīʿah and conventional indices, respectively. The study uses monthly data for the period 2014–2018 and applies a number of techniques such as risk adjusted returns, Johansen’s cointegration test, vector error correction model, Granger causality test, forecast error variance decomposition and impulse response functions techniques.

The study reveals that albeit there is no significant difference in simple mean between the two indices, the Sharīʿah index outperforms its conventional counterpart based on the risk adjusted returns. The two indices are associated only in the long-run, while no causal relationship is spotted between them. The overall results show that the Sharīʿah index has dominance over the conventional index in Bangladesh.

The study could use more pairs of indices, including additional variables such as financial crisis and macroeconomic variables.

The study has important implications to investors, especially the religious Muslims and ethical ones, who are suggested to invest their funds in the Sharīʿah index without sacrificing returns, rather be monetarily more benefited. Moreover, the other investors can generate diversification benefits by adding both Sharīʿah and conventional indices in their portfolios in the short-run.

Unlike previous studies, this study endeavors to use a comprehensive methodology to conduct its analysis. Moreover, this is supposedly the first ever effort to conduct such a study in the context of Bangladesh.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of ownership structure such as family, government, institutional, foreign and public on dividend payouts as a representative of dividend policy of nonfinancial firms in Bangladesh.

This study employs a dynamic panel data model, namely, differenced generalized method of moments (GMM), which follows a two-step process. The study uses annual data of a sample of 159 nonfinancial firms of Dhaka Stock Exchange for the period 2008–2017, which constitutes a panel data of 1,590 firm-year observations.

This study’s findings reveal that family and public ownerships have a significant and positive effect on dividend payouts, while government and institutional ownerships have a significant but negative effect. This study additionally incorporates some very important controlled variables and finds that except for size, all the selected controlled variables, i.e. lagged-one of dividend payout, returns on assets, debts to assets, price-earnings (PE) ratio, age and financial crisis have a significant effect on the dividend payouts. However, the findings support several dividend-related theories or hypotheses, i.e. agency cost theory, dividend stability theory and reputation hypothesis.

This study could consider some other aspects of corporate governance, as well as other emerging markets and financial institutions to perceive whether the results differ. Also, investigation could be carried out on conventional and Islamic firms individually to observe if the findings are different. However, the researchers are suggested to incorporate these issues in their future studies.

This study offers an important insight into the relationship dynamics between dividend payouts and ownership structure in the context of an emerging market like Bangladesh. Moreover, it enhances the understanding of the ties of dividend payouts with the firm-specific factors as well as the financial crisis. The findings of the present study have also important implications for managers, policymakers and researchers, who are in quest of directions on the dividend policy of publicly listed nonfinancial firms.

Most of the previous studies consider one or two types of ownership to examine the impacts on dividend payouts, while this study uses five types of ownership accompanied by a different data set. Moreover, to the authors’ knowledge, no study in Bangladesh has yet addressed this issue in such a comprehensive manner as theirs.

This paper seeks to contribute to the study of the relationship between savings and investment in a panel of five South Asian countries.

A number of unit root tests such as Levin, Lin, and Chu or LLC, Breitung, Im, Pesaran, and Shin or IPS, Fisher‐type tests using ADF and Fisher‐type tests using PP tests are conducted that confirm the non‐stationarity of data. Then the paper applies maximum likelihood‐based panel cointegration method to examine the relationship between savings and investment using data on investment and savings for five South Asian developing countries, namely, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka over the period 1973‐2007 compiled from the World Development Indicator (WDI) Database 2008 CD‐ROM.

The results obtained suggest that savings and investment are cointegrated, which implies that the Feldstein‐Horioka (F‐H) puzzle does not hold in this region. It is also found that most of these countries have maintained an international solvency condition.

This is another contribution that would enrich the existing literature on the F‐H puzzle. The paper includes data that involve the longest sample period. No other study, as of now, has employed the panel cointegration method to study the savings investment relationship in this region.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct and indirect impacts of climatic changes as well as the effects of non-climatic factors on household food security in Malaysia.

The study is based on primary data collected in the months of July – October, 2012 through a questionnaire survey on 460 low-income households from East Coast Economic Region (ECER) of the country. The samples were selected from E-Kasih poor household database, based on cluster random sampling technique. The statistical estimation was done through two-stage formative path measurement model by using non-parametric bootstrap procedure under Smart PLS.

This study finds that household food insecurity ECER – Malaysia is not only related to social and economic factors, but also statistically significantly linked to the direct and indirect impacts of climatic factors. The policy implications of the study suggest that design of food security programs must be integrated with climatic change adaptation programs.

The government and other relevant agencies should jointly develop appropriate policies for poverty alleviation, household-level food security, and adaptation with climatic changes in Malaysia.

This paper aims to use the newly developed panel data cointegration analysis and the dynamic time series modeling approach to examine the linkages between financial structure (market‐based vs bank‐based) and economic growth in African economies.

The research investigates the dynamic relationship between financial structure and economic growth in a panel of a group of seven African developing countries over the period of 1986‐2007. The paper uses various indicators/measures of financial structure and financial system, and employs the traditional time‐series analysis for causality as well as the newly developed panel unit root and cointegration techniques and estimated finance‐growth relationship using FMOLS for heterogeneous panel.

From the dynamic heterogeneous panel approach, the paper firstly finds that market‐based financial system is important for explaining output growth through enhancing efficiency and productivity. Second, the authors' empirical evidence supports the view that higher levels of banking system development are positively associated with capital accumulation growth and lead to faster rates of economic growth.

Panel cointegration, group mean panel FMOLS and country‐by‐country time series investigations indicate that the market‐based financial system is important for explaining output growth through enhancing efficiency and productivity, whereas the development of banking system is significantly associated with capital accumulation growth. Further results from the time‐series approach show evidence of unidirectional causality running from market‐oriented as well as bank‐oriented financial systems to economic growth.

Bangladesh achieved its independence in 1971. Since that time, the country has gone through several major policy changes regarding the ownership and control of industries with a view to promoting economic growth. One of the strategies the Government of Bangladesh (GOB) followed to accelerate economic growth was to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country. Immediately after the independence, the Government obtained control of a large number of industries abandoned by non‐Bangladeshi owners. Through the Nationalization Order of 1972, all key industries including jute, cotton textiles and sugar were vested upon the public sector. The wholesale nationalization of industries resulted in a low growth of the economy. The Gross National Product (GNP) per capita of the country grew at an average annual rate of 0.4 per cent until 1985 compared to 3.8 per cent for the group of “low income countries” (The World Development Report, 1989). The low growth performance of the economy put pressures on GOB to privatise major industries and to undertake economic reforms. As Karim (1996) mentions, external pressure from donors had a significant impact on the Government's investment policy. As a result, the GOB has taken a number of measures to attract FDI including the establishment of the Board of Investment (BOI) and wide publicity in foreign countries. Many believe that GOB has maintained an over‐valued exchange rate in order to attract FDI. These policy changes, along with other traditional factors (such as financial, political, regulatory and tax risks) have significant impact on foreign direct investment (FDI) in Bangladesh.

This paper analyzes the growth of entrepreneurship in Bangladesh in relation to its Government's privatization efforts. A survey instrument was designed to elicit opinions of entrepreneurs regarding the level of privatization and the growth of entrepreneurship. The instrument was designed in such a way that the responses were dichotomous. A Discriminant Analysis was then conducted in order to classify entrepreneurs and to determine the key variables responsible for privatization and the growth (or lack of growth) of entrepreneurship. Results indicate that the non‐availability of long‐term capital, the poor state of the economy, and excessive government regulation are the three most important explanatory variables for non‐privatization and lack of growth of entrepreneurship.