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Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the revenue efficiency of Islamic banks in the Southeast Asian countries. Specifically, the empirical analysis comprises Islamic banks operating in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. This paper also seeks to investigate the potential internal (bank-specific) and external (macroeconomic and industry-specific) factors which influence the revenue efficiency of Islamic banks operating in Southeast Asian countries. Design/methodology/approach - This paper used a whole gamut of domestic and foreign Islamic banks operating in Southeast Asian countries, namely, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei during the period of 2006-2011. The level of revenue efficiency is computed by using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method. Following the procedure set in Banker and Natarajan (2008) and Gujarati (2002), this paper use a panel regression analysis framework based on the ordinary least square and generalized least square methods to examine the potential determinants of revenue efficiency of the Islamic banks in the sample. In addition, this paper also use a battery of parametric (t-test) and non-parametric (Mann-Whitney [Wilcoxon] and Kruskall-Wallis) tests to examine the difference in the revenue efficiency of the domestic and foreign Islamic banks. Findings - The results indicate that the level of revenue efficiency on the domestic Islamic banks is higher compared to that of their foreign Islamic bank counterparts. The empirical findings seem to suggest that revenue efficiency has greater influence on the profit efficiency levels. It was found that the bank size, asset quality, capitalization, liquidity and management quality significantly influence the revenue efficiency of domestic Islamic banks operating in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei during the period under study. Research limitations/implications - Due to its limitations, the present study may be extended in variety of ways. First, if information on input prices is available, further analysis could be performed to investigate the cost, technical and allocative efficiency. Second, interested researchers may apply the Malmquist Productivity Index method to examine the sources of total factor productivity changes of Islamic banks operating in the ASEAN countries. Third, to obtain more robust results, empirical findings from the present study could be compared to the results derived from improved statistical methods, i.e. Bootstrap DEA. Practical implications - The empirical findings of this paper clearly call for regulators and decision-makers to review the revenue efficiency of banks operating in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei Islamic banking sectors. The results could also provide better information and guidance to the managers of Islamic banks, as they need to have a clear understanding on the impact of revenue efficiency on the performance of their banks. The empirical findings of this paper may also have implications for investors whose main focus is to gain higher profit from their investments. Originality/value - The paper is the first to provide empirical evidence on the determinants of revenue, cost and profit efficiency of Islamic banks operating in Southeast Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the growth and slowdown in the electronics industry in Southeast Asia. American, Japanese and European multinational corporations relocated operations in Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines in the late 1960s and early 1970s to begin electronics assembly, packaging and testing, which was followed in the late 1980s and 1990s by the relocation of electronics manufacturing from Japanese, European, American, Korean, Singaporean and Taiwanese multinationals to the above Southeast Asian countries as well as Thailand and Indonesia. Whereas Singapore has managed significant upgrading to designing and development activities through the provision of grants, incentives, labs and strong infrastructure coordination, electronics production in the remaining countries has largely remained entrenched in assembly, packaging and testing activities. The failure of Malaysia and Thailand to support technological upgrading has undermined the capacity of these economies to sustain rapid growth of the industry as China, Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam have a big edge in low wages and the labour force. Hence, while Singapore has managed to upgrade, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam continue to enjoy rapid growth in low-end manufacturing activities, Malaysia and Thailand have faced a fall in the significance of the industry since 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Rare diseases, also referred to as orphan diseases, are characterised by their low prevalence with majority of them are chronically debilitating and life threatening. Given the low prevalence and the widely dispersed but very small patient base for each disease, there may often be a disproportion in the availability of treatments and resources to manage patients, spur research and train experts. This is especially true in Southeast Asian countries that are currently in the process of implementing or revising their universal health coverage schemes. This paper aims to examine the status of rare disease management in Southeast Asian countries. It will serve as the basis for a more active discussion on how countries in the region can address an under-recognised rare disease burden and enhance national and regional capacities.Methods: The study consists of literature reviews and key stakeholders interviews in six focus countries, including the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand and five countries as best practice, comprising of France, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea. Rare disease management initiatives across each country were examined based on the World Health Organization's framework for action in strengthening health systems.Results: The results suggest rare disease management remains challenging across Southeast Asia, as many of the focus countries face fundamental issues from basic healthcare systems to funding. Nonetheless, there are substantial improvement opportunities, including leveraging best practices from around the world and organising a multi-stakeholder and regional approach and strategy.Conclusions: Southeast Asian countries have made significant progress in the management of rare disease, but there remain key areas for substantial development opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: As the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) gears toward full regional integration by 2015, the cross-border mobility of workers and citizens at large is expected to further intensify in the coming years. While ASEAN member countries have already signed the Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers, the health rights of migrants still need to be addressed, especially with ongoing universal health coverage (UHC) reforms in most ASEAN countries. This paper seeks to examine the inclusion of migrants in the UHC systems of five ASEAN countries which exhibit diverse migration profiles and are currently undergoing varying stages of UHC development. Design: A scoping review of current migration trends and policies as well as ongoing UHC developments and migrant inclusion in UHC in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand was conducted. Results: In general, all five countries, whether receiving or sending, have schemes that cover migrants to varying extents. Thailand even allows undocumented migrants to opt into its Compulsory Migrant Health Insurance scheme, while Malaysia and Singapore are still yet to consider including migrants in their government-run UHC systems. In terms of predominantly sending countries, the Philippines's social health insurance provides outbound migrants with portable insurance yet with limited benefits, while Indonesia still needs to strengthen the implementation of its compulsory migrant insurance which has a health insurance component. Overall, the five ASEAN countries continue to face implementation challenges, and will need to improve on their UHC design in order to ensure genuine inclusion of migrants, including undocumented migrants. However, such reforms will require strong political decisions from agencies outside the health sector that govern migration and labor policies. Furthermore, countries must engage in multilateral and bilateral dialogue as they redefine UHC beyond the basis of citizenship and reimagine UHC systems that transcend national borders. Conclusions: By enhancing migrant coverage, ASEAN countries can make UHC systems truly 'universal'. Migrant inclusion in UHC is a human rights imperative, and it is in ASEAN's best interest to protect the health of migrants as it pursues the path toward collective social progress and regional economic prosperity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complementary feeding period is a critical stage of child development when micronutrient needs are high and challenging to meet. Understanding if specific micronutrient gaps exist during this period is critical for effective programming. A Comprehensive Nutrient Gap Assessment (CONGA) was conducted in seven countries in Southeast Asia to estimate gaps in micronutrients commonly lacking in the diets of children aged 6–23 months and to establish the certainty of available evidence for each identified gap. Sixty‐eight evidence sources were identified during this analysis, and 310 micronutrient‐specific data points were identified across all seven countries. Data points varied in recency, representativeness and evidence type. The CONGA methodology enabled the estimation of a gap burden rating for each micronutrient in each country, as well as a rating of their evidence certainty. Micronutrient gaps were identified in vitamin D, zinc and iron and a potential gap was identified in calcium during the complementary feeding period in the region. Evidence relevant to intake and deficiency of folate, vitamin B12, thiamine, niacin, vitamin C and vitamin B6 was limited across the region. Proven strategies to address these gaps include increasing the availability and consumption of nutrient‐dense foods, micronutrient supplementation, large‐scale fortification of staple foods and condiments and point‐of‐use fortification through multiple micronutrient powders and fortified speciality foods. More recent data on micronutrient availability, intake and deficiency is urgently needed in Southeast Asia. Key messages: Older infants and young children aged 6–23 months experience micronutrient gaps during the complementary feeding period in Southeast Asia. Synthesis of evidence compiled across seven countries in the region identified gaps in vitamin D, zinc and iron and a potential gap in calcium during this critical period.National nutrition policies and programmes should consider multiple strategies to address these micronutrient gaps.Over half of the data points relevant to nutrient deficiency and intake compiled from the seven countries are over a decade old. More recent data on micronutrient availability, intake and deficiency is urgently needed in Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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• Implementation of large Chinese projects overseas is uneven, with the dynamic more complex than often portrayed. • Projects are rolled out more expeditiously in host states with a highly centralized political structure and vice versa. • Malaysia's power concentration has facilitated elite consensus and quickened the East Coast Rail Link's rollout. • Indonesia's implementation of the Jakarta-Bandung High Speed Rail has been checked by multiple influential stakeholders. • This paper's findings have important implications for future South-South cooperation in railway development. This paper focuses on two of the most prominent Chinese railway projects in Southeast Asia since the 2013 inception of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – Malaysia's East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) and Indonesia's Jakarta-Bandung High Speed Rail (HSR). Adding non-economic considerations and political contestation between central state organs into Sinha's (2005) framework on central-state/province interactions and their impact on economic development, it argues that the implementation of large, capital-intensive BRI projects is more complex than often portrayed. The ECRL is implemented considerably faster than the HSR primarily because, relative to Indonesia, Malaysia possesses a more centralized political structure. Malaysia's power concentration at two levels – between central and subnational players and amongst central players – has facilitated elite consensus and accelerated the ECRL's rollout. In contrast, Indonesia's decentralization exercise since the late 1990s, both at the spatial level and within the executive arm of the central government, has encouraged plurality of opinions and complicated project implementation. Despite President Joko Widodo's clear intentions to expedite the Jakarta-Bandung HSR, he has been checked by multiple influential stakeholders, resulting in delays. The Indonesians, relative to the Malaysians, appear to have negotiated a somewhat better deal from the Chinese railway consortium. However, these tentative gains are offset by the HSR's slow implementation, which in turn is undergirded by Indonesia's fragmented institutional arrangement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following new species are described: Salvazaon jakli sp. nov. from Indonesia (Kalimantan), Salvazaon weigeli sp. nov. from Indonesia (Sulawesi Island), Salvazaon dembickyi sp. nov. and Salvazaon tavakiliani sp. nov. from Malaysia (Pahang), and Salvazaon hergovitsi sp. nov. from Malaysia (Perak). All the habitus and male genitalia are illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] The paper analyzes public concerns about haze in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. [•] It compares crises in 1997, 2005, and 2013, using newspaper content analysis. [•] Public debate is increasingly critical of Indonesia and palm oil companies. [•] The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) treaty on haze is criticized. [•] Public criticism is becoming more overt despite media controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the notion of governed interdependence to examine the knowledge practices that have underpinned the expansion of debt capital markets in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Indonesia and Malaysia. It identifies two types of communities of practice – one of planners/policymakers, one of market practitioners – as central to the production of capital market knowledge and traces the emphasis placed on them by state actors through consecutive capital market development plans. The article then moves on to examining how both countries have sought to implement regimes for the training and licensing of capital market professionals in the wake of the financial crisis of the late 1990s. It argues that these knowledge practices bestow capital markets with legitimacy which makes the practices of investing in and borrowing from debt capital markets socially acceptable, if not even a key developmental objective. This is in the context of both the Asian crisis and more recent crises repeatedly showing the dangers of speculative portfolio investment as well as Islamic stipulations against speculative finance in these two Muslim-majority countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research note outlines a project-in-progress, in the hope of soliciting broader participation and discussion. It describes and evaluates a joint initiative between two regional universities to promote inter-class contact and active learning on the subject of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and supplements the experience gained in this endeavour through interviews with practising lecturers. Based on these twin research thrusts, the note argues that the higher education chalkface is a vital arena for ASEAN community-building, and pleads for a more concerted effort to link politics and pedagogy. To this end, recommendations include: cooperating to generalize and extend the kinds of small-scale projects discussed in this article; establishing an inclusive, interactive, teaching-oriented website where ideas and material can be shared; setting up a platform where the results of student-driven research and initiatives can be made available; and organizing practitioner-oriented workshops where lecturers can access the combined expertise of ASEAN officials, national diplomats and pedagogical specialists to construct practical, active, and cooperative teaching programmes. If we are to fulfil the tasks of promoting ASEAN awareness, nurturing regional identity, and encouraging public ownership of the regional project among this highly significant sector of Southeast Asia’s population, then facilitating the task of “teaching ASEAN” is an indispensable component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, when journalists or legal scholars use the term “trial by the press,” it is usually in the context of pretrial publicity, and the First Amendment right to freedom of expression versus the Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial. Although this understanding of the term exists in Indonesia and Malaysia, there it is also used in a variety of other ways that are related to the teachings of Islam and the legacy of authoritarianism. Islam contains strict prohibitions against gossip, libel, and other forms of defamation. For those who are uncomfortable with what they see as the excesses of press freedom, “trial by the press,” or the idea that the press should not “judge” someone until the facts have been proven in a court of law strongly resembles the Islamic injunctions against fitnah (slander) and gossip. The question of when a Muslim journalist can properly divulge something negative about someone else has implications not only for the popular understanding of libel and defamation but also for investigative reporting. Because the accusation of “trial by the press” resonates with deeply held Islamic principles, it can be an exceptionally powerful political tool. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the Global War on Terror has prompted new interest in Islam in Southeast Asia, western governments have scrambled to engage with Muslim journalists in Indonesia and Malaysia. Despite this attention, surprisingly little is known about how journalists in these two majority Muslim countries actually think about the work they do. This article draws on a series of semi-structured interviews with elite journalists in Jakarta, Surabaya, and Kuala Lumpur to provide some preliminary explorations of the relationship between Islam and journalism in Southeast Asia. It argues that Muslim journalists in both Indonesia and Malaysia express the universal values of journalism, but do so within an Islamic idiom. It concludes with a discussion of justice as the overarching ideology of journalism in Islam, and a comment on how western diplomats might use the language of Islam to reach out to journalists in these two majority Muslim countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite global trends towards military reform characterized by processes of professionalization and democratization, militaries in Southeast Asia have continued to play prominent roles in domestic politics since 11 September. This suggests that wider patterns of global military reform have not had as great an impact on the control, capacity and cooperative functions of armed forces in Southeast Asia as they may have elsewhere. In order to explore why the security sector reform agenda has had so little impact in the region, we investigate recent patterns of civil–military relations in Southeast Asia by focusing on the experiences of four of the region's militaries: Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. We argue that the security sector reform agenda is informed by a predominantly North American approach to civil–military relations based on a number of core assumptions that do not reflect Southeast Asian experiences. Hence, we ask whether the reform agenda itself could be modified to better suit the Southeast Asian context. We suggest that although the regional military sector has not reformed along a ‘Western’ path it is nonetheless possible to see other types of, and potential for, reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the factor of ethnicity in the positioning strategies of Southeast Asian Chinese entrepreneurs, in relation to the emergence of China as a land of economic potential. The small- and medium-scale entrepreneurs are focused instead of the mobile business conglomerates, where entrepreneurs in eastern Indonesia and southern Peninsula Malaysia are compared.

Tropical peatland ecosystems are known as large carbon (C) reservoirs and affect spatial and temporal patterns in C sinks and sources at large scales in response to climate anomalies. In this study, we developed a satellite data-based model to estimate the net biosphere exchange (NBE) in Indonesia and Malaysia by accounting for fire emissions (FE), ecosystem respiration (Re), and gross primary production (GPP). All input variables originated from satellite-based datasets, e.g., the precipitation of global satellite mapping of precipitation (GSMaP), the land surface temperature (LST) of the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS), the photosynthetically active radiation of MODIS, and the burned area of MODIS fire products. First, we estimated the groundwater table (GWT) by incorporating LST and precipitation into the Keetch–Byram Drought Index (KBDI). The GWT was validated using in-situ measurements, with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 24.97 cm and an r-squared (R2) of 0.61. The daily GWT variations from 2002 to 2018 were used to estimate respiration (Re) based on a relationship between the in situ GWT and flux-tower-observed Re. Fire emissions are a large direct source of CO2 from terrestrial ecosystems into the atmosphere and were estimated by using MODIS fire products and estimated biomass. The GPP was calculated based on the MODIS GPP product after parameter calibration at site scales. As a result, averages of long-term (17 years) Re, GPP, FE, and NBE from whole peatlands in the study area (6°N–11°S, 95–141°E) were 66.71, 39.15, 1.9, and 29.46 Mt C/month, respectively. We found that the NBE from tropical peatlands in the study area was greater than zero, acting as a C source. Re and FE were influenced by El Niño, and the value of the NBE was also high in the El Niño period. In future studies, the status of peatland degradation should be clarified in detail to accurately estimate the C budget by applying appropriate algorithms of Re with delineations of types of anthropogenic impacts (e.g., drainages and fires). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nutrition is an important factor in mental development and, as a consequence, in cognitive performance. Malnutrition is reflected in children's weight, height and BMI curves. The present cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate the association between anthropometric indices and cognitive performance in 6746 school-aged children (aged 6–12 years) of four Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia; Malaysia; Thailand; Vietnam. Cognitive performance (non-verbal intelligence quotient (IQ)) was measured using Raven's Progressive Matrices test or Test of Non-Verbal Intelligence, third edition (TONI-3). Height-for-age z-scores (HAZ), weight-for-age z-scores (WAZ) and BMI-for-age z-scores (BAZ) were used as anthropometric nutritional status indices. Data were weighted using age, sex and urban/rural weight factors to resemble the total primary school-aged population per country. Overall, 21 % of the children in the four countries were underweight and 19 % were stunted. Children with low WAZ were 3·5 times more likely to have a non-verbal IQ < 89 (OR 3·53 and 95 % CI 3·52, 3·54). The chance of having a non-verbal IQ < 89 was also doubled with low BAZ and HAZ. In contrast, except for severe obesity, the relationship between high BAZ and IQ was less clear and differed per country. The odds of having non-verbal IQ levels < 89 also increased with severe obesity. In conclusion, undernourishment and non-verbal IQ are significantly associated in 6–12-year-old children. Effective strategies to improve nutrition in preschoolers and school-aged children can have a pronounced effect on cognition and, in the longer term, help in positively contributing to individual and national development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]