AEI Insights: Volume 9, Issue 1

Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief

Distinguished Professor Dato' Dr. Rajah Rasiah, Executive Director, AEI, Universiti Malaya

Managing Editor

Dr. Rahul Mishra, Director, Centre for ASEAN Regionalism Universiti Malaya (CARUM), AEI, Universiti Malaya

Editorial Board members

Professor Emeritus Dr. Azirah Hashim, ASEM Education Standing Working Group - AEI representative, Universiti Malaya

Dr. Nurliana Binti Kamaruddin, Deputy Executive Director (Academic), AEI, Universiti Malaya

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Roy Anthony Rogers, Deputy Executive Director (Internationalisation, Research, Value Creation & Enterprise), AEI, Universiti Malaya

Prof. Maya Khemlani David, Honorary Professor, AEI, Universiti Malaya

Tan Sri Mohamed Jawhar Hassan, Adjunct Professor, AEI, Universiti Malaya

Tan Sri Razali Ismail, Adjunct Professor, AEI, Universiti Malaya

Prof. Johan Saravanamuttu, Adjunct Professor, AEI, Universiti Malaya

Prof. Jörn Dosch, Adjunct Professor, AEI, Universiti Malaya

Prof. Dr. Anthony Milner, Visiting Professor, AEI, Universiti Malaya

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Fumitaka Furuoka, Associate Professor, AEI, Universiti Malaya

Assoc Prof. Dr. Sameer Kumar, Associate Professor, AEI, Universiti Malaya

Dr. Kevin Fernandez, Senior Lecturer, Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Business and Economics, Universiti Malaya

Editorial Assistants

Yanitha Meena Louis

International Advisory Board

Emeritus Professor Dwight H. Perkins, Harvard University, USA

Distinguished Professor Dr Amitav Acharya, American University, Washington D.C. USA

Emeritus Professor Ambassador (Retd.) S.D. Muni, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

Professor Dr. Thomas Risse, Senior Professor at the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script (SCRIPTS), Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

Professor Dr. Alessia Mosca, Adjunct Professor, Sciences Po Paris, France

Professor Dr. Madhu Bhalla, Delhi University, and Editor, India Quarterly, India

Professor Dr. Tosh Minohara, Professor, The Graduate School of Law at Kobe University, Japan

Professor Dr. Harsh V. Pant, King’s College, London, United Kingdom

Contact Information

Editor-in-Chief, AEI-Insights
Asia-Europe Institute (AEI)
Universiti Malaya
50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel: +603 7967 4645
Fax: +603 7954 0799
Email: aei.insights@um.edu.my
Website: https://aei.um.edu.my/

COPYRIGHT. All rights reserved. No part of this journal may be reproduced, copied or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without proper written permission from the publisher.

Publication Ethics guidelines: AEI-Insights journal (authors, reviewers, editors and publisher of the journal) follows the ethics guidelines as specified by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) – https://publicationethics.org/

Any opinion expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not reflect that of the Asia-Europe Institute, Universiti Malaya.

Printed at The Universiti Malaya Press, Universiti Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Contributor Biographies

Biographies in the order as authors’ articles appear in the journal.

Zane Šime is an Affiliated Researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and an Academic Assistant at the College of Europe in Bruges, Department of EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies.

G. M. Shafayet Ullah is a PhD fellow and Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Malaya, Malaysia. He obtained his Master's and Bachelor of Business Administration degrees from East West University, Bangladesh. Before starting his PhD program, he worked as a Senior Lecturer at the BRAC Business School, BRAC University, Bangladesh. His research interests include Hedonic Consumption, Social Networking, and Structural Equation Modelling.

Sameer Kumar has a PhD in Social Networking and currently works as an Associate Professor at Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya. His current research and teaching interests are in the field of Social Networks, Business and History of Southeast Asia, with bi-regional focus involving Asia and Europe.

Fumitaka Furuoka is an Associate Professor at Asia-Europe Institute, Universiti Malaya. His research interests include labor economics and international economics.

Amran Ahmad is a PhD student at the University of Malaya. He has finished his MBA from Loughborough University, United Kingdom. Before starting his PhD he worked as a Business Development Director, Assistant Editor, and Special Officer to the Chief Minister of Penang. His area of research covers business administration, media management, journalism, and leadership.

Rajah Rasiah is Executive Director and Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Asia Europe Institute, University of Malaya. He obtained his doctorate in Economics from Cambridge University in 1992, and was a Rajawali fellow at Harvard University in 2014. While the prime focus of his research is on technology and international development, he has also worked extensively on foreign investment, human capital, public health and environment.

Gareth Liu Zi Yuan attained his Bachelor's degree in Education at the University of Malaysia and Masters degree in Asian studies at the Nanyang Technological University. Currently, he returns to the University of Malaysia as a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences majoring in Southeast Asian Studies. His research interest is Malaysia-Sino relations.

Arjun Rajaseharan was formerly a Research Intern at the Asia-Europe Institute, Universiti Malaya. He graduated with a Master of Environment, specialising in Governance, Policy and Markets from the University of Melbourne.

Yanitha Meena Louis is a doctoral candidate at Asia-Europe Institute, Universiti Malaya, focused on nonwestern international relations. She is currently a Researcher at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia where she works on the Indo-Pacific with an emphasis on South Asia, ASEAN and the European Union.

Editor’s Note

In this issue of AEI Insights, we are pleased to publish five original research articles, all of which contribute significantly to the Asia-Europe discourse. The diverse research approaches and focus themes make this issue unique but relevant nonetheless, and will indeed make for an interesting and informative read.

Šime’s focus on EU member state Latvia’s educational diplomacy sheds light on the overall corpus of Latvian diplomatic ambitions and the implications and opportunities from the increasing inflow of students to Latvia from Asia. Šime argues that this is motivated by the growing interest across the Asia-Europe Meeting partner countries to analyse international student pathways.

Ullah et al. have conducted a systematic literature review on online hedonic consumers, in particular – the issue of “privacy concern”. Through their research, the authors propose a new integrated model on online hedonic consumer behaviour which provides a theoretical framework to further examine the mediation effect of privacy concern. Also mirroring the novelty of this research, Ahmad et al. offer a unique direction for managers of organizations on how to ensure a strategic market position in the volatile business environment through enhancing organizational effectiveness.

Also an excellent addition to this issue is Furuoka’s analysis of the relationship between economic growth and financial development in ten Asian countries using systematic time-series econometric methods. Yuan in his paper mapped the current state of Malaysia's tourism industry through a systematic review and examined the difficulties faced by the Malaysian tourism industry post-Covid-19. This work also contributes to the growing body of work on policies that support post-pandemic recovery.

This issue of AEI Insights also features Book Reviews for the first time. Two books Financing Sustainability: Critical Issues with East Asian Experiences and Asia and Europe in the 21st Century: New Anxieties, New Opportunities were critically reviewed by authors, Rajaseharan and Louis respectively.

We are deeply grateful to the contributors for their time, perspectives and ideas that make this issue a valuable tool for researchers in the field. I would also like to thank the Editorial Team of AEI Insights and wish readers a happy and productive reading.

Dr. Rahul Mishra
Managing Editor, AEI Insights;
Director, Centre for ASEAN Regionalism Universiti Malaya (CARUM);
Senior Lecturer, Asia-Europe Institute, Universiti Malaya