The One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative is implemented to improve the linkage between China and its neighboring countries in terms of economic ties, connectivity, partnership, and security cooperation. The crucial challenge encountered in OBOR initiative is the different gauge standards from different countries in the development of railway along the Silk Road. Another issue arose from the regulation of education sector in the aspect of quality, cost, and efficiency. To the best of our knowledge, there is still lack of study on the transportation infrastructure and education towards the GDP in the selected Asian countries, especially for Central Asia. Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of OBOR initiative and its importance towards economic growth by further investigating the determinants such as transportation infrastructure, education, labor, trade, and inflation rate. This study employs panel data analysis using the annual data from the period of 2000-2015. The selected Asian countries are divided into three regions, namely Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan), ASEAN (Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia), and East Asia (China, Mongolia). Besides, we use fixed effect model (FEM) to obtain the results based on the support of Hausman test and Poolability F-test. The findings reveal that transportation infrastructure possess a positive effect on GDP. Surprisingly, education is negatively related to GDP. With this, policy makers are suggested to encourage OBOR countries to expand and upgrade their system in terms of transportation infrastructure, human capital, culture, and education. In future studies, the advanced model is recommended to investigate the pre-and post-efficiency of OBOR initiative.

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Despite a growing trend in m-wallet services in Malaysia, the actual level of usage is considered low among all of the non-cash payment methods. The Malaysian government has taken a serious initiative in spurring the use of m-wallets by providing a one-off RM30 incentive to all eligible Malaysians. As such, it is important to understand the motivations behind m-wallet usage by examining Alipay, which is favoured in the international, as well as Malaysian markets. This research investigates the effects of mobile payment knowledge, personal innovativeness, self-efficacy, convenience, and compatibility on the actual adoption of Alipay in Malaysia with perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, as the mediators. Using importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) and Variance Accounted For (VAF), based on Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) on 260 respondents, it was discovered that compatibility and perceived usefulness demonstrated high importance in improving the performance of Alipay adoption. The results also showed a direct effect between compatibility and mobile payment knowledge. Additionally, perceived usefulness was shown to be an essential mediator in influencing the impact of compatibility and convenience on the actual adoption of Alipay. This study has produced essential policy recommendations for both mobile wallet providers and policymakers on how to further promote the adoption of mobile wallets in Malaysia.

This paper empirically examines the relationship between energy efficiency, CO2 emissions, foreign direct investment, exports, and real gross domestic product at both aggregate and disaggregate levels in Malaysia based on an autoregressive distributed lag approach. The annual data for the period of 1971–2013 are employed. The results indicate that energy efficiency Granger causes economic growth at the aggregate level, but not in each of the three main sectors (primary, secondary, and tertiary) of the economy. Another important finding of the study is that the export-led growth hypothesis is found to be valid in Malaysia at both the aggregate and disaggregate levels. The results of our study also confirm the fact that CO2 emissions do affect the overall economic performance and growth in all sectors, except for the primary sector. This finding implies that pollution from both secondary and tertiary sectors has led to economic growth in Malaysia. Moreover, it is also discovered that foreign direct investment does not have a significant impact on economic growth in Malaysia. The results of this study are essential for policymakers of Malaysia in designing appropriate policies in each sector that can lead to robust growth in the country. In addition to focusing on enhancing energy efficiency and promoting foreign direct investment, the policymakers should also start to look for alternative strategies to ensure long-term economic growth in the country.

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