This article investigates the existence of credit and housing booms in the Malaysian economy, with high levels of household indebtedness. The results reveal that both the credit boom and the housing boom exist and imply the fragility of the financial sector of the economy. � 2017, Oviedo University Press. All rights reserved.

A rapid increase in household debt is undeniably a main concern among policymakers. Studies indicating the damaging effect of rapid rise in household debt towards economic growth attracted many researchers to determine its reasons. The risk from high household debt is not only applicable to advanced economies, but also inherent in emerging economies. Thus, the present study examines the leading causes of household debt in emerging economies. The study employs a bias-corrected least square dummy variable for the period of 1995–2018. The results show positive and significant effects of financial development, house prices, and lending interest rate. Meanwhile, unemployment rate and inflation are negatively associated with household debt. The study therefore urges policymakers, relevant authority and financial institutions to employ suitable and effective policy to mitigate the factors identified in the rise of household debt. © 2020 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

This paper analyzes the contribution of external debt to Malaysia's economic growth. To investigate whether the external debt has contributed to the economic growth in the long run, the growth model is tested by applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound test. In addition, the existence of the threshold effect is examined to estimate the optimal level of external debt. The empirical results reveal that the accumulation of external debt is associated with an increase in Malaysia's economic growth up to an optimal level, and an additional increase of external indebtedness beyond the level has inversely contributed to the Malaysian economy. � 2013 Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Department of Economics and Tourism "Dr. Mijo Mirkovic".

This paper proposes a study on the contribution of external debt to the expansion of economic growth for 31 developing countries. Over a period of 36 years, by using dynamic panel data econometrics estimation GMM-system, the results reveal that the accumulation of external debt is associated with a slowdown in the economies of the developing countries. In addition, this paper finds evidence that debt service ratio does not crowd out the investment rate in developing countries. In other words, even though external debt is negatively associated with economic growth, countries are found to be safe from being in the debt overhang hypothesis. Furthermore, there is evidence to support the existence of spatial dependence in the growth model, suggesting the existence of a positive spillover effect of growth among the neighbouring countries. � 2012 Copyright Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU) Press Technika.

This paper extends the empirical literature on the relationship between the country risk and the demand for international reserves in selected ASEAN4 economies, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, for the period 1980 to 2006. The empirical findings reveal that the fiscal position and stock of external indebtedness have a huge impact on a country's decision to hold international reserves. In addition, the results also find that Indonesia, a country with the highest risk in terms of economic and financial sectors, has taken corrective measures to deal with any sudden shocks.

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate Malaysia’s house prices behaviour by decomposing trend, cycle and stochastic component. Design/methodology/approach: The authors perform an unobserved component model of a structural time series and Markov switching model that covers the period 1999Q1 to 2015Q4. Findings: The results reveal that the variation in house price in Malaysia is best explained by its trend level, with a small role played by the cycle component; this implies the potential for gaining returns on investments in property by investors and households. The results also show that Malaysia’s HPI cycle is between 8 and 17 years which, in relative terms, is twice the length of the growth cycle and the business cycle in the economy. Meanwhile, the overall movement of HPI is forecast to have a marginal price increase up to 2028Q2. Originality/value: As house prices remained elevated during the year, the house price dynamic is pivotal for understanding the source of changes in house price. With major findings centred on the relationship between house prices and macroeconomic as well as policy variables, little attention has been paid to composing the trend, cycle and seasonal pattern from the house price index, thus understanding the behaviour of house prices’ unobserved components.