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Digital technology is gaining attention among many scholars as a way to facilitate trade. This study aims to investigate three important digital dimensions (DD), namely, digital infrastructure, digital usage and digital security on trade using selected Asian countries and 20 selected trade partners. Digital infrastructure focussed on the availability and accessibility of digital infrastructure in exporting and importing countries. The second dimension, digital usage, highlights the importance of household usage of mobile phones, broadband data and the internet. Finally, the third dimension focusses on digital security as many online transactions occur across the globe.

The study uses the gravity model to investigate the impact of DD as tools to facilitate trade in selected Asian countries with selected trading partners between 2003 and 2017. The Hausman test is used to determine whether to use the random effect model or fixed effect model. However, for robustness, the Hausman and Taylor estimation is used to allow the time-invariant model to be included and at the same time to remove correlations between the error terms.

The result of this study confirmed that having digital infrastructure is not sufficient for trade facilitation, but it must be supported with an intensity of use by businesses and consumers and be accompanied by strong internet security for trade. The study also revealed that a narrowing digital divide in terms internet users and security will be a benefit to both trade partners in a transaction through better and efficient trade facilitation.

The study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, the classification of DD is used to identify which dimensions need to be addressed for policymakers. Most studies focussed on the first two dimensions without including security dimensions. Second, the authors estimate digital trade facilitation variables for both exporters and importers to ensure unbiased results between two trade partners. Finally, this study introduces new variables in the analysis of the digital user gap and the digital security gap as indicators for the digital divide.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the house market in Malaysia from 2002 to 2015. Specifically, the macroeconomic determinants on the house price and house demand are investigated.

Structural Vector Autoregressive Regression was adopted to estimate the unexpected changes in both house demand (residential transaction volume) and prices based on economic theoretical reasoning that consider shock from macroeconomic determinants.

The transaction volume and real house prices respond to most of the macroeconomic shocks. While the impact of real gross domestic product (GDP) on house prices appears to be stronger and longer in comparison to other macroeconomic shocks, a 60 per cent change in house prices can be explained by real GDP regardless of whether it is in the short run or the long run. The studies also reveal that a positive effective exchange rate plays an important role when demonstrating the transaction volume. Moreover, monetary liquidity plays a major role in justifying the transaction volume. This implies that mortgage lending may have an impact on housing demand. Meanwhile, movements of house prices cannot be explained by the demand in quantity. This signifies that supply has a strong influence in determining the price.

This study has implications on policymakers of which the interest rate as a cooling measure might not be effective in the short run. The interest rate has very little impact on housing prices. Furthermore, policymakers should address the concerns on speculations, as the results reveal that monetary liquidity and the exchange rate have a strong impact on the housing demand.

This study seeks to provide answers regarding the recent upsurge of Malaysian housing prices. Besides focusing on the house price changes, this study addresses the role of transaction volume while evaluating the house market, as housing prices are usually downwards rigid. Since the price and transaction volume are both related to the transaction activity, this study is significant and could be a good reflection on the actual demand behaviour in the residential market.

This study aims to examine the linear and nonlinear remittance–institutional quality link in developing countries.

This study investigates the nonlinear relationship between remittance and political institutional quality in a panel of 97 developing countries using annual data of over nine years from 2009 to 2017. The estimated model uses system generalized method of moments for three political institutions indicators, namely, democracy, political stability and civil liberties.

The results revealed that remittance has a significant inverted U-shape impact on political institution’s indicators. Therefore, before the turning point, remittance is associated with high level of democracy, more stable political system and more civil freedom. While moving after the turning point indicates low level of political institution in the country.

The authors certify that this is the original paper. It has not been previously published and is not currently under submission or in press elsewhere.

Skilled migrant workers move relatively in unidirectional form (from developing to developed countries) in response to many factors. The purpose of this paper is to examine some factors that influence skilled migration to such preferred locations among skilled workers.

Both conceptual discussion and analytical approach are used.

The authors' econometric model identified an inverted U‐shaped relationship between skilled migration rates, wage differentials and income convergence with destination countries. Other factors found to be significantly related to brain drain are population size, domestic political instability and distance to destination countries.

This paper presents insights on factors influencing migration decisions among skilled migrants and why skilled workers' migration from developing countries remains on the increase over the years, despite the urgent need for highly skilled personnel in most of these countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of foreign aid on corruption in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Foreign aid is aimed to promote economic growth by complementing the recipient country’s shortfall of financial resource. However, if the recipient country’s quality of governance and institutions is poor, the process of growth will be undermined. Since foreign aid to SSA countries has been increasing substantially in recent years, it is imperative to explore its impact on the level of corruption in the SSA countries.

The paper opted to use a Quantile regression (QR) approach to examine the impact of foreign aid on corruption. The data cover from the year 2000 to 2010 for 42 Sub-Saharan countries. QR is appropriate to achieve the stated objective because the method enables to examine the effect of aid on at different level of corruption.

The paper provides empirical insights on the impact of foreign aid on corruption level in SSA countries. The finding indicates that foreign aid has reduction effect on the corruption level of SSA countries. The effect is likely to be greater in nations that experience a higher level of corruption. The findings further reveal that aid from different bilateral sources has different effect on corruption. As a whole, the findings are statistically significant and robust to alternative measure of corruption.

Since the study just focus on Sub-Saharan African countries, the research findings may lack generalization to the entire African countries or poor developing countries that are receiving substantial amount of foreign aid. Therefore, future research should incorporate all the African countries or all poor developing countries.

Since the empirical findings reveals that aid reduces the corruption level and aid from different bilateral source have different effect on corruption, it is important to establish more cooperation between donor countries in allocating aid. The conditions attached to aid should be, among other things, be related with improvement of governance and institutional environment. Allocation of aid should be selective such that countries in institutional quality should be among the important criteria for a country to qualify for aid.

This paper fulfills the need to study the relationship between foreign aid and corruption in the case of SSA countries. The aid-corruption nexus is relatively under explored issue especially in the case African countries.