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Increasing globalisation of the healthcare sector suggests that there may be new competitive opportunities for emerging economies in this price‐sensitive sector. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which emerging economies, and in particular the four major Asian competitors – Thailand, India, Malaysia and Singapore – can compete successfully in the medical tourism (MT) sector.

The authors evaluate this sector in terms of Porter's Diamond of National Competitiveness, as well as considering the challenges that competitors must address. The primary challenges relate to attracting consumers, proving assurances of quality for a credence good, increasing scale while maintaining quality, addressing ethical issues and moving beyond simple price‐based competition.

The authors conclude that the major Asian competitors in MT benefit from strong government support, rely heavily on overseas linkages and accreditation, and are competing in very similar ways. In the future, further differentiation is both likely and desirable.

The paper offers a theoretically based analysis of the future competitiveness of the rapidly evolving MT industry in four key Asian economies. This industry appears to relate well to the comparative advantage of emerging economies and offers future opportunities for upgrading and value adding.

From 1979 to 2023, the takaful structure has been adopted in many jurisdictions, making the documenting of its early days of establishment relatively difficult and somewhat unreliable. This is unlike conventional insurance, where the history and legislation are well documented and archived in various research (Hellwege, 2016; Marano and Siri, 2017). The purpose of this paper is to provide a chronology for the establishment and development of takaful via the takaful establishment in each jurisdiction, documenting its first takaful operator and first takaful regulation.

This paper has used a qualitative method in the form of reviewing literature and available data such as journals, books and official resources. The data is thoroughly analysed in order to build the chronology for takaful. It adopted an exploratory research design, which is deemed suitable in situations where few works of literature have examined the subject (Neuman, 2014). The paper explores the establishment and non-establishment of takaful in 57 countries. The paper categorises the countries into seven regions starting with the GCC, Levant, Asia, Central Asia, Africa, Europe and Others.

The takaful chronology presented in this paper shows that takaful operations exist in 47 jurisdictions, starting from Sudan and the UAE in 1979, with the most recent adopters being Morocco and Iran in December 2021. It is found that 22 jurisdictions do not have takaful regulations, and the Takaful Act 1984, issued in Malaysia, is considered the first takaful regulation that sets the basis for other regulations that follow.

The paper contributes to the literature by providing a comprehensive chronology of takaful, especially as the few existing timelines have been found to be incomplete and consist of contradictory information.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of leverage on the financial performance of general insurance companies in Malaysia, and investigate whether the leverage‐performance relationship is a function of or contingent on the extent of product diversification.

The sample consisted of the entire population of authorized general insurance companies operating during the period from 2006 to 2009 in Malaysia. A total of 94 observations were analysed. All the data used were sourced from the Malaysian Central Bank's (BNM) database.

It is found that leverage is negatively associated with firm performance. However, there is a significant interaction effect between leverage and product diversity on firm performance. The finding indicates that leverage could be beneficial or detrimental to the financial performance of general insurance firms, contingent on the extent of product diversity of the firm.

As the scope of study is limited to the general insurance industry and the sample size is small, the findings of the study must be interpreted with caution and the results may not be generalizable to the life insurance sector or other industry.

Findings of prior empirical studies on leverage‐performance relationship and effect of insurance product diversification are rather mixed and inconclusive. Based on analysis of a single insurance (general) sector that is highly regulated, the paper provides empirical evidence that the benefits of product diversification strategy are contingent on level of the firm's leverage. The paper hence, enhances understanding and contributes to the existing literature on impact of leverage, product diversification on performance of the highly regulated general insurance firms in a developing country.

Hi‐tech communications transform the market‐place, demographics alter consumer demands, global and regional developments recast world dynamics. The USA is enjoying a “Goldilocks economy” – neither too hot, nor too cold – and global trade has tripled over the past twenty years. The factors driving this sustained growth are many, technological, demographic as well as social and behavioural. This article examines the trends driving the economy, especially the impact of information and communications technologies and globalization on business activity with special emphasis on the banking and finance sector.

Little is known of the actualities or possibilities of corporate social reporting in Thailand. This study aims to move towards an appreciation of this neglected but important area. This survey focuses on the annual reports of Thai companies, and thereby contributes to a tradition of related prior empirical work upon corporate social accounting practices which has to date largely focused upon English‐speaking and Western contexts. Its concern is to gain insights into and to critically appraise various dimensions of these annual reports, so as to construct a critique of corporate social disclosure in Thailand. Pursuing a critical perspective sensitive to the context of Thailand, it is concluded that the various aspects of the Thai accounting disclosure that are analysed are disabling, and more generally that the Thai practices explored fall short of their potential to function as enabling communication.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a general model that examines the contextual factors underlying the decision‐making process of international hospital outshopping.

Patients who chose medical treatment abroad were selected to analyze the drivers of internationalization in medical services. A total number of 27 international patients who traveled from developed countries to receive medical treatment at the largest hospital in Thailand were interviewed and their responses assessed through narrative analysis.

The narrative analysis reveals that while high costs and the deteriorating conditions of health care in developed countries are initially driving consumers to leave their local service area and choose foreign service providers, pull factors such as innovation, organizational efficiency, emotional service quality and patient‐doctor relationships in service encounters are nurturing a real preference for choosing foreign health care providers.

This exploratory study is limited to the largest hospital in South East Asia. Future research could expand upon its findings and comparisons be made with other different foreign health care providers.

In order to attract foreign customers a personal service, such as medical treatment, must be based on and sustained by continuous innovation in service quality.

The paper is the first empirical in‐depth study that examines the factors underlying the decision‐making process of international hospital outshopping.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the likely economy-wide impacts of the complete shutdown of the motor vehicle industry on output and employment in Australia using the latest input-output (IO) table (2009-2010).

Both supply- and demand-driven IO models are employed to determine the extent, and pattern, of the resulting output and job losses in upstream and downstream industries. An analysis of the first-order field of influence is also conducted to observe how output multipliers in other sectors respond to changes in the self-use-input-requirement of the professional, scientific and technical services (PSTS) industry.

The PSTS industry (with a significant research and development (R & D) component and the highest forward linkage index) would be hardest hit with the collapse of the motor vehicle industry.

This paper identifies a number of industries that are more likely to be heavily influenced by the resulting lack of R & D in the PSTS industry in the near future. Unless more funding is allocated to other research and technology-intensive industries, the extinction of the motor vehicle industry, coupled with the recent budgetary cuts for strategic organisations such as the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, can reduce the positive spillover effects of R & D activities on the Australian economy.

This is the first study to examine the effects of the shutdown of the motor vehicle industry on employment in Australia. The results also have broader implications for other developed countries that have declining motor vehicle industries. The findings suggest that the global decline in the motor vehicle industry can adversely affect investment in R & D in upstream and downstream industries. More generally, the results suggest that the shift in motor vehicle production to developing countries, will contribute to increased R & D intensity in them at the expense of developed countries.