What Drives Remittances from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan? Home Versus Host Country's Economic Conditions

Saudi Arabia is the largest source country of remittances to Pakistan since the 1970s. This study examined the impact of home versus host country’s economic conditions on remittances from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan. The ARDL bounds testing is used on the annual data set from 1973 to 2014. The study concluded that economic growth in the host country and economic crises in the home country increase remittances. 1% decrease in domestic output increases remittances by 2.79% while 1% increase in sending country’s output growth increases remittances by 5.2% in the long‐run. The bilateral trade has a positive while financial deepening has a negative impact on inflows. The impact of oil shock is insignificant. We suggest cautious foreign policy as remittances depend significantly on the host country’s economic condition that is not directly under the control of the home country but remittances can be sustained with bilateral trade.     

The elites’ collective subjectivities of the history of ethnic politics in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Malaysia is one of the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious countries in Southeast Asia. Due to the pluralistic nature of Malaysia, it has a political structure based on ethnic politics. The ethnic preferential policies affected most domains of this country. The objective of this article is to examine the origin and background of ethnic politics in Malaysia. Findings of this study indicate that, ethnic politics originated during the British colonial period, it became a tool used by the Barisan Nasional for the legitimacy of regime. Moreover, ethnic politics in Malaysia today is intertwined with religion. Besides, there is the dilemma of the choice between the interest of certain ethnic group and national interests. However, with the opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan won the election in 9th May, UMNO-led BN lost power and interrupted its 61 years control, which leaves us an interesting topic to think about the future of Malaysian ethnic politics.     

Managing diversity: academic’s perspective on culture and teaching

As UK Higher Education institutions continue to accept students from ethnically diverse backgrounds, there is now an onus and an expectation for academics to provide learning environments and experiences that are inclusive, validating and affirming. The aim of this paper is to explore, through the lens of the academic tutor, the pedagogical methods employed towards the implementation of ‘cultural branching’, which we define as helping ethnically diverse students to build bridges between their pre-existing knowledge and what they are expected to learn. To investigate this in more detail, the researchers interviewed 22 academic tutors across three UK Higher Education Institutions in the North of England. The findings suggest that current curriculum structures and pedagogical approaches favour the dominant non-ethnically diverse learner. Our research proposes that additional emphasis needs to be placed on developing a practical and functional approach which embeds cultural branching via technological platforms.     

Dynamic Reflections of Crimes,Quasi Democracy and Misery Index in Pakistan

Massive increase in crimes has coexisted with rising inflation and high unemployment for the last couple of decades especially during democratic governments in Pakistan. In this paper, we explore the relationship between crime rate, misery index and democracy in Pakistan from 1975 to 2013. Granger causality test proposed the unidirectional causality running from misery index to crime rate in Pakistan. Estimating the crime function via Pasaran’s conditional error correction model, we found the significant long run equilibrium relationship between Okun’s misery index and crime rate which implies that rising inflation and unemployment rate are the major driving forces towards increasing crime rates in Pakistan. Finally, empirical evidence from Okun’s misery index suggested that people are three times more miserable in quasi democratic periods than that of dictatorship. The Barrow’s misery index model verifies that people are twice worsening in quasi democratic periods. Likewise, reported crimes are nearly twice during quasi democracy than quasi dictatorship. The crime model provided the evidence that people during quasi democratic governments are more likely tending towards crime as compared to quasi dictatorship during the study period in Pakistan. This implicitly advocates the fact that half hearted efforts and ill structured apparatus of democracy can augment the tendency of crime and misery rather than solution of such concerns of the economy.     

Analyzing the Import Demand Function with Expenditure Components: Evidence from Pakistan

This study highlights the responsiveness of import demand in the context of aggregate expenditure components in Pakistan over the period of 1974?C2009. The study uses Johansen multivariate cointegration analysis and estimates an error correction model to drive the long-run and short run elasticities of the import demand behavior. The cointegration results provide a strong empirical validity of the presence of long run elasticities between import and macro-components. In the long-run, the consumption expenditure is the main dominant determinants of the movements in import demand in Pakistan. In the short-run, the consumption and investment expenditures are the major determinants of import demand while the import demand is not sensitive to relative price. Moreover, the parameter stability tests confirm the stability of the model, and the sensitivity analysis confirms the robustness of initial results.     

A conceptual model for the process of IT innovation adoption in organizations

In this paper, we develop a conceptual model for IT innovation adoption process in organizations. The model utilizes Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory, Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and a framework that contains characteristics of innovation, organization, environment, chief executive officer (CEO) and user acceptance. The model presents IT adoption as a sequence of stages, progressing from initiation to adoption-decision to implementation. The study presents a model with an interactive process perspective which considers organizational level analysis until acquisition of technology and individual level analysis for the user acceptance of IT.     

Multivariate process dispersion monitoring without subgrouping

The memory-type adaptive and non-adaptive control charts are among the best control charts for detecting small-to-moderate changes in the process parameter(s). In this paper, we propose the Crosier CUSUM (CCUSUM), EWMA, adaptive CCUSUM (ACCUSUM) and adaptive EWMA (AEWMA) charts for efficiently monitoring the changes in the covariance matrix of a multivariate normal process without subgrouping. Using extensive Monte Carlo simulations, the length characteristics of these control charts are computed. It turns out that the ACCUSUM and AEWMA charts perform uniformly and substantially better than the CCUSUM and EWMA charts when detecting a range of shift sizes in the covariance matrix. Moreover, the AEWMA chart outperforms the ACCUSUM chart. A real dataset is used to explain the implementation of the proposed control charts.     

Selective Maintenance in System Reliability with Random Costs of Repairing and Replacing the Components

In this paper we consider the problem of determining the optimum number of repairable and replaceable components to maximize a system's reliability when both, the cost of repairing the components and the cost of replacement of components by new ones, are random. We formulate it as a problem of non-linear stochastic programming. The solution is obtained through Chance Constrained programming. We also consider the problem of finding the optimal maintenance cost for a given reliability requirement of the system. The solution is then obtained by using Modified E-model. A numerical example is solved for both the formulations.     

Evaluating the effectiveness of the first breast cancer awareness campaign in the United Arab Emirates: Lessons learned and next steps

Following an innovative breast cancer awareness campaign in the United Arab Emirates, a dual language survey of 500 women and in-depth interviews were conducted. The study found television advertising to be the most optimal awareness communication method, particularly among Emirati and other Arab women respondents. The research also found strong support for a year-long awareness campaign.     

Towards an Objective Classification Scheme for Organizational Task Environments

This study replicates, refines, cross-validates and simplifies a scheme of operationalization and measurement of environmental dimensions proposed by Dess and Beard (1984). Employing a sample of 60 industries and data over a 16-year period, this study found considerable support for the viability of the three dimensions of munificence, dynamism and complexity. The data intensive and computationally complex operationalization scheme was simplified using a discriminant analysis approach and the discriminant functions were cross-validated using an alternate data set.