The aim of this study is to answer the question: "do board characteristics affect firm performance?" There are six board of directors' characteristics being studied, including managerial ownership, board size, board independence, CEO duality, gender diversity and ethnic diversity. Return on Equity (ROE) is used as a measurement for firm financial performance. There are 300 Malaysian public listed companies being randomly selected from each sector. The results show that board size and ethnic diversity have positive relationship with ROE while board independence has negative relationship. There is no significant relationship between managerial ownership, CEO duality and gender diversity on firm performance. The findings may provide some implications for future research regarding the effectiveness of board of directors towards firm performance.

The issue of energy has been debated among policymakers and economists. Energy plays an important role in generating economic activities. On the other hand, it can have deleterious impacts on the environment as more carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will be released. Most previous studies focused on total energy rather than types of energy such as oil and gas in investigating the effects of energy consumption on CO2 emissions. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of oil and gas consumption rather than total energy consumption on CO2 emissions in 20 Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries. The dynamic heterogeneous panel (panel autoregressive distributed lag model – panel ARDL) approach namely pooled mean group (PMG), mean group (MG), and dynamic fixed effect (DFE) were employed. The main results reveal that in the long run, overall national output contributes to higher environmental degradation. However, in the short run, overall national output does not affect CO2 emissions. The results also suggest that the population can reduce CO2 emissions in the short run but leaves no effect in the long run. Besides, gas consumption and oil consumption can have deleterious effects on the environment. The effect of oil consumption is greater than the effect of gas consumption on the environment. Therefore, it is important to consume more renewable energy such as solar, biodiesel, and hydro to replace non-renewable energy, particularly oil, in a bid to conserve the environment.

The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship of foreign direct investment on real gross domestic product in Malaysia using annually data from1971 until 2010. VAR model with cointegration technique is applied to examine the effect of foreing direct investment on real gross domestic product in Malaysia. Vector Error Correction model (VECM) is used to analyze the short run effect of the two variables in Malaysia. Granger causality is also employed to see the causal effect of foreing direct invesement and real grsoss domestic product. Our main findings reveal that the increase in foreign direct investment has given a good impact on Malaysian economic growth. Specifically, 1% permanent increase in the level of foreign direct investment causes the level of Malaysian gross domestic product to increase by 49.135%. By using granger causality, it is found that GDP has granger cause to FDI and vice versa

The drive of this study is to contribute to the literature of service and food quality significance in fast food restaurant industryof Malaysia. The study is carrying out from the viewpoint of fast food restaurant industry and the customers' satisfaction among generation Y in Malaysia. Three variables have been examined to demonstrate the significance of service quality and food quality on customer satisfaction. The outcomesratify the importance of greatercorresponding service and food standards in fast food restaurant industry. For food quality factor, allrespondents are agreed with statement. Findings from 1000 respondents of Generation Yshowed that two factors significantlyinfluenced customer satisfaction. Thisresearch would be valuable in the improvement of a more comprehensive model to simplify a better understanding of customers' satisfaction among generation Y on fast food restaurant in Malaysia; these findings would deliver a better comprehension of Malaysian customers' satisfaction andhelp design more effective marketing strategies

The objective of this paper is to examine the effects of oil price shock on inflation in Malaysia, using monthly data from 2005 to 2011. VAR-VECM and Granger Causality model were employed to analyze the data. The cointegration between all variables are existence also at 5% significant level in the long run. But in the short run, only oil crude price affected the inflation. For granger causality test, we found that the inflation does not granger cause to the exchange rate but it does granger cause to the oil price. The oil price does granger cause to the inflation but it does not granger cause to the exchange rate. The exchange rate does not granger cause to both of the variables (Inflation and Oil Price). So, the oil crude price can give an effect on inflation. If the rate of oil crude price changes, the inflation also changes. This finding will contribute to Malaysian government in making policy to control the petrol price to avoid from the inflation.