This study examines the relationship between the conventional and mudharabah deposit rates of Malaysian banks in two separate periods-between January 1996 and September 2004, and between October 2004 and June 2011-which signify the implementation of a framework for calculating the Islamic bank deposit rate and the profit equalization reserve (PER). Employing the autoregressive distributed lagged (ARDL) approach, this study finds the two rates to be cointegrated in the first period similar to previous findings. However, for the second period, there is largely no evidence of a long-term relationship. The significance of this finding is that in the second period, when Islamic banks employ a regulated PER as a displacement risk mitigating mechanism, Islamic banks do not benchmark against conventional rates. They possibly engage in income smoothing for economic efficiency or for signalling purposes. An important policy implication is that PER and any type of reserve to smooth income, that is regulated, may be prescribed as it may have a positive behavioural effect.

We evaluate the efficiency of mutual fund managers of 20 different classes of management styles to identify the most efficient strategies and to propose an optimal pattern in selecting the funds by investors. We collect monthly data of 17,686 US mutual funds for a five-year period 2005–2010 to minimize the impact of survivorship bias and use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model to evaluate the mutual fund performance. The set of considered inputs comprised “variance”, representing the mutual fund risk, and “turnover, expense ratio and loads indicators”, reflecting the mutual fund costs and fees. Two kinds of outputs are taken into account by our DEA model, “portfolio return” and “stochastic dominance indicators”. As a unique contribution, we state the benefits of the DEA approach in the DARA, CARA, and IARA framework, and evaluate the efficiency of mutual funds based on fund strategies as well as the performance of best mutual funds among their group. The evidence shows that the efficiency scores of technical, management, and scale are respectively 0.81, 0.921, and 0.874 for the DARA model, while the efficiency scores of two models of CARA and IARA are negligible. Also, we rank each management strategy in any model based on two methods – the number of referencing and the weighted value so that the managers of inefficient strategies must pattern the managers’ ability of reference (efficient) strategies to improve their efficiency on the fund market in future.

Title – KPJ Healthcare: service internationalization. Subject area – International business, international marketing, and strategic management. Study level/applicability – Advanced undergraduate and MBA students taking courses in international business, international marketing, and strategic management. Case overview – KPJ Healthcare Group started its operations in 1979. By the end of 2012, the Group operated 22 hospitals in Malaysia, two in Indonesia, one in Thailand, and one retirement resort in Australia. Its internationalization efforts began in mid-1990s with the provision of hospital management service in Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia. Since 2010, the Group had pursued international acquisition projects in Australia, Indonesia and Thailand. In early 2013, the Group ' s newly appointed CEO and his management team had to decide on the strategies to ensure the success of these international acquisition projects. This case stimulates discussion on international strategies of a large healthcare group, operating in a highly competitive, high-growth industry in an emerging economy. Expected learning outcomes – Understanding of approaches to service internationalization (incremental versus rapid), strategies in service internationalization, forms of service internationalization ventures will enable case analysts to apply and consider these concepts in many business situations involving internationalization process and business growth in general. Supplementary materials – Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

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