Purpose -The main purpose of this paper is to examine cost efficiencies of the selected Islamic and conventional commercial banks over the period of 2006 to 2009 in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach -Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was initially used, to investigate the cost efficiency of the Malaysian banking sector and followed by Tobit regression analysis determine factors influencing the efficiency of Islamic and conventional banks in Malaysia. Findings -The DEA results reveal technical efficiency as the main contributor of cost efficiency for conventional commercial banks and allocative efficiency as the main contributor for cost efficiency of Islamic commercial banks. This indicates conventional commercial banks have been efficient in utilizing information technology and electronics. Islamic commercial banks conversely have been efficient in allocating and utilizing their resources. Additionally, scale efficiency is found to be the main source of technical efficiency for both Islamic and conventional commercial banks, denoting that size is important in improving bank efficiency. The results of Tobit regression analysis are twofold. First, it documents capitalization and bank sizes are positively and significantly associated to efficiency. Secondly, loan quality is found to be negatively and significantly associated to efficiency. Originality/value -This paper contributes to the body of knowledge through its literature discussions on the efficiency of both Islamic and conventional banks and the effect of banks' specific characteristics on their efficiency.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the impact of external stakeholders-related corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities (local community and suppliers) on customer value co-creation behavior. This study also aims to examine the mediating role of relationship marketing orientation (RMO) on the relationship of CSR activities and customer value co-creation behavior. Design/methodology/approach The main problem of dichotomy between customers and the management was existing in banking sector so that’s why through purposive sampling, banking customers were selected for data collection through a self-administered questionnaire. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings The present study found that both local community-related and supplier-related CSR activities have a positive impact on customer value co-creation behavior. Relationship marketing orientation mediates between the link of CSR activities and customer value co-creation behavior. The strength of RMO in CSR supplier and customer value co-creation behavior is found to be more dominant. Research limitations/implications This study is restricted to one country under-investigation; therefore, it can be replicated with a larger and more geographically diverse sample. Practical implications This study offers insights to the banking sector that local community-related CSR activities contribute to the value co-creation behavior and minimize the social problems of Pakistan. Originality/value The findings of this study highlight that top management of banks can enhance the customer’s participation in services by using valuable CSR activities. The results imply the importance of interactions between the recipient of services and service providers. Stakeholder theory has previously been applied to examine stakeholders’ value maximization; this study uses stakeholder theory to examine shareholders’ value co-creation.

In the setting of globalization, the rising importance of international financial institutions and international relations as well as the emergence of environmental issues has inspired a new sense of political and economic interaction. Owing to these interactions, mode of trade has changed and it has resulted in the world trade reforms. Therefore, trade of differentiating goods is being appreciated and encouraged in developing economies. In the context of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the intra-industry trade is increasingly replacing inter-industry trade. The environmental effects of the aftermath of expansion in intra-industry trade i.e. scale effect, selection effect and technique effects in the SAARC region are to be assessed in this study. The overall results of this study indicate that if intra-industry trade is expanded, it yields positive impacts on the environment. At the one hand, the disintegration of trade induced environmental effects, implies that the scale effect is hazardous for the environment. On the other hand, the trade induced selection and technique effects are beneficial for the environment in the case of SAARC region.Keywords: Intra-Industry Trade; Environmental Effect; SAARC.

Past studies have tended to focus on measuring monetary poverty based on poverty line income; thus, this study aims to investigate the monetary poverty and the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) of 432 households in Niger State, Nigeria. Interestingly, the results indicate 13 per cent of those above poverty line income (non-poor) are found to be multidimensional poor. Hence, this paper suggests that the monetary measure of poverty should be complemented with multidimensional measure. The results of this study also show poverty is apparent in essential living standard and health among the households as spelled out by inadequate access to portable drinking water, poor sanitary facilities, electricity supply, primitive cooking fuel as well as limited access to improved health facilities. The results imply that effective policies towards general infrastructural development will greatly contribute to poverty reduction.

The objective of this study is to analyse the efficiency performance of Takaful and conventional in GCC insurance sector for the period 2015 to 2019. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) were used to estimate the efficiency level. Premium and investment income are taken as common output variable while labour, total fixed assets, business services, and equity capital as major input. The results show that the Takaful firms are equally efficient compared to the conventional firms. The Takaful when compared to conventional insurance is highly technical and pure technical efficient however it is moderately cost efficient and there is a large opportunity for improvement.