• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.10
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• pp.471-480
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• 2020

In Indonesia, micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) are introduced to increase income by providing many easier jobs to improve economic growth. They have also been reported to be generally supportive of the local industry. The government policies on investment and expenditure have the ability to promote MSMEs and economic growth. Therefore, this research was conducted to analyze the theoretical background and empirical study to investigate government's role to promote MSMEs growth in Indonesia. The secondary data after the 2008 global financial crisis recorded quarterly from 2009 to 2019 Q3 were analyzed using the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression model. The results showed government expenditure has a positive and significant contribution to small- and medium-sized enterprises, but the effect was not significant for micro-businesses. Meanwhile, the investment sector was discovered to have a positive and significant effect on MSMEs. The policy implications of the Indonesian government are expected to focus on its expenditure's role as the most important factor for "social-economic protection of the community" through micro-enterprises, which are numerous and more attached to the real community economic-social life. Therefore, the existence of micro-businesses is very helpful for the lower classes despite their high vulnerability to crisis.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.583-593
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• 2021

The objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of economic growth (per capita real GDP), the square of per capita real GDP, energy use, financial development (FD), and foreign direct investment (FDI) on ecological footprint (EF) in the case of Malaysia over the period 1971-2014, by employing the ARDL approach. The long-run results revealed that economic growth has a significant positive impact on the ecological footprint and it implies that the economic growth deteriorates the environmental quality in Malaysia. Conversely, the square of GDP showed a negative and significant impact on the EF in the long run. As the coefficient of GDP in our study is positive and statistically significant while the coefficient of squared GDP is negatively significant, thus, this study supports the presence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in the case of Malaysia. Furthermore, the result indicates that FDI has a positive and significant impact on the EF in the long run, which means a rise in FDI will enhance the environmental pollution level. Thus, it confirms the pollution haven hypothesis. Hence, it suggests that Malaysia imposes stricter environmental policies. Further, FDI and FD are causing GDP in Malaysia, but through increasing EF.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.191-199
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• 2021

The study examines the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth through trade openness for the leading ASEAN countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam). The study employs a panel data for the period of 25 years spanning from 1995 to 2015 for the six countries, yielding a balanced panel of 150 observations. Fixed effect model (FEM) and random effect model (REM) are used for the panel data, following the Hausman test performed for model selection. The trivariate Granger causality test is also used to check for possible relationship between the variables. The results show that REM is chosen based on the Hausman test result, suggesting that the trade openness has a positive association with growth whereas the financial development is positively, but insignificantly associated with growth. The reason for this is that the financial development and economic growth may be related to each other. The results are, then, further explored and confirmed by the causality test. That is, the financial development and the economic growth, through the trade openness, are found to have bidirectional positive relationships. This implies that there would be shortcomings when ignoring the presence of trade openness, which positively impacts the relationship between finance and growth.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.353-362
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• 2022

Small and medium businesses (SMEs) play a critical role in the economy, yet they are plagued by a shortage of finance. Determining the influence of cash sources both inside and outside the firm is critical to the company's survival and growth. As a result, the purpose of this research is to determine the impact of capital on the growth of SMEs in Vietnam. The key factors of this research are equity and liabilities, which are two proxies for a firm's capital. The data is based on the results of a survey conducted every two years from 2005 to 2015, which included over 2,600 SMEs in 20 processing and manufacturing industries in ten provinces and cities, including Hanoi, Hai Phong, Ho Chi Minh City, Ha Tay, Phu Tho, Nghe An, Quang Nam, Khanh Hoa, Lam Dong, and Long An. The findings show that characteristics such as equity capital, total workforce growth rate, and male entrepreneurs have a positive impact on enterprise growth, whereas liabilities, firm age, and export have a negative impact on enterprise growth. The study has demonstrated that equity has a positive impact while liabilities have a negative impact on the growth of Vietnamese SMEs.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.33-42
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• 2020

The neoclassical economic supporters have suggested that foreign direct investment and raw material (e.g., coal, electricity, gas, and oil) are critical economic growth inputs. Few previous studies have analyzed the relationship between foreign direct investment and energy consumption on economic growth. However, existing studies usually have applied the frequentist inference. The limitation of the frequentist inference is that, if the coefficient of the independent variable is not yet significant, then conclusions might be unreliable. By applying the Bayesian approach, the main aim of this study is to revisit the impact of foreign direct investment, electricity consumption, and urbanization on economic growth in six ASEAN countries from 1980 to 2016. The obtained outcome shows that the impact of electricity consumption is evident and positive on economic growth in both frequentist and Bayesian inferences. However, the influence of foreign direct investment is not identified by frequentist inference, while Bayesian inference provides evidence that foreign direct investment is a moderately positive impact on economic growth. The empirical result from Bayesian inference contributes to the literature on foreign direct investment modeling and could be of significant importance for a more efficient foreign direct investment attracting and achieve sustainability in the long-term.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.7
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• pp.229-239
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• 2020

This article aims to measure the impact of economic growth and urbanization on poverty reduction in Vietnam, and verify whether economic growth and urbanization will help reduce poverty rates. Data for this study are tabular data related to growth, urbanization and poverty at the provincial level for the period of nine years, from 2006 to 2014 provided by the Vietnam General Statistics Office and the Vietnam General Department of Customs. The level of economic growth and urbanization mentioned in the study is reflected in such indicators as GDP value, exports value, imports value, urbanization rate and employment rate. The authors used logistic regression models with fixed-effects and logistic regression models with random effects. With 5% confidence level tested by the Chi-Square test of Hausman trial with the fixed-effect model, research results show that: (1) factors with significant negative impact on the poverty rate include imports value, urbanization rate and, employment rate; (2) factors that do not affect the poverty rate include exports value and GDP value. Based on the research results, this study proposes a number of policy recommendations to help promote economic growth, to sustain the urbanization process, and to contribute directly and positively to poverty reduction in Vietnam.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.183-190
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• 2010

This paper selects length of berth, area of yard, unloading capacity and number of berth as the input indexes, and cargo turnover as output index to research the source of TFP(Total Factor Productivity) growth of 23 main ports in Korea. The major conclusions are as follows. The TFP of the trade ports in Korea is at the fluctuating stage, but it generally displays a rising trend, and it’s growth originate from the growth of technical efficiency. The Growth rates of TFP of trade ports in the different areas are different, and the sources of growth are also different, but the changing trends are basically the same. Four major factors to the increase of TFP are following: competition between ports, reform of property system, harbor-hinterland economic and international trade, modeling, imitation and innovation in management, technology and system.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.107-119
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• 2019

This paper examines the impact of financial integration on economic growth in Southeast Asia over the period 1993-2013. This paper further investigates whether the relationship depends on the level of financial and economic development, government corruption, and macroeconomic policy. These questions raise important issues both from a theoretical and a policy perspective. We employ the generalized methods of moment (GMM) in the dynamic panel estimation framework to analyse several factors, including initial income, initial schooling, financial development, inflation, trade openness, corruption, and financial crisis. The study further analyzes the data using the EGLS model to examine the consistency of the GMM model. We found that financial integration has a significant positive effect on economic growth in Southeast Asia. Our findings suggest that increasing financial integration could improve the productive capacity of the economy, including more investments and efficient allocation of capital, and thus enhancing economic growth in this region. More specifically, the results suggest that the government should work towards eliminating corruption and stabilizing macroeconomics in order to enhance financial integration and economic growth. This paper sheds new insights on a better evaluation of the past and present theorizing on the subject of financial integration and economic growth; especially, in Southeast Asia.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.12
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• pp.295-303
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• 2021

The aim of this study is to analyze the effects of oil prices on economic growth and exchange rate in Saudi Arabia during the period 1980-2020. For this purpose, the linear and nonlinear ARDL models are estimated. The linear ARDL model shows that the oil price and economic growth are cointegrated. Moreover, the two variables have a significant positive association in the long run. However, the oil price has no significant impact on the exchange rate. When estimating the nonlinear ARDL model, it has been shown that oil price is only cointegrated with economic growth but not with the exchange rate. The estimation of nonlinear effects using the nonlinear ARDL model shows that economic growth is affected by both positive and negative oil shocks in the long run. However, the impact of positive shocks is higher than those of negative shocks. Moreover, results show that the short-run effects of positive and negative oil shocks are not statistically significant. Regarding the exchange rate, our results show that the effects of positive and negative oil shocks are not statistically significant. Consequently, this study concludes that the oil price has an asymmetric effect on economic growth in Saudi Arabia, but not on the exchange rate.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.21-27
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• 2021

The financial sector is one of the most important building blocks of the economy. When this sector efficiently implemented a well-crafted program on banking and financial system to translate financial activities to income-generating activity, economic growth will be realized. Hence, this study analyzed the effect of financial intermediation on economic growth and the existence of cointegrating relationship using time-series data from 1986 to 2015. The influence of financial intermediation in terms of bank credit to bank deposit ratio, private credit, and stock market capitalization and time trend to economic growth was estimated using ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression. The results showed that all the financial intermediation indicators and time trend exert significant effect on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. The positive sign of the time trend indicates that there is an upward trend in GDP per capita averaging approximately 0.06 percent annually. Furthermore, the cointegration test using the Johansen procedure revealed that there is a presence of long-term equilibrium relationship between financial intermediation and time trend and economic growth, and rules out spurious regression results. This study established the idea that financial intermediation in the Philippines has a significant and vital role in stimulating growth in the economy.