INCEIF Knowledge Repository (INCEIF University)
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On the dynamic links between commodities and Islamic equity
No full textHave commodities and equity become a "financialized market of one"? Is such oneness persistent? Do diversification benefits still exist? Evidence behind these enquiries offers important insights for policymakers, governments, traders and investors, and constitutes the main motivation for this paper. To assess the viability of commodities as an alternative asset class for Islamic equity investors, we present evidence on the extent to which returns in commodities and Islamic equity markets move in sync in both time and frequency domains. Our findings reveal that, throughout the January 1999 - April 2015 period, correlations between commodities and Islamic equity were highly volatile and time sensitive. While there had been minimal correlation between commodities and Islamic equity prior to 2008, the relationship has strengthened since 2008, possibly attributed to the anomaly arising from the global financial crisis. Trends in the recent two years, however, suggest that the links between commodities and Islamic equity are heading towards their pre-crisis equilibrium, offering again potential diversification opportunities for investors. Divergence in correlations reveals that the behaviour of commodities is heterogeneous with varying potentials for diversification. Overall, gold, natural gas, soft commodities, grains and livestock are better portfolio diversifiers than oil and other metals. Relative to medium to long term investors, short-term investors gained better diversification benefits in most commodities during bullish, bearish and market recovery periods
IRTI organizes international workshop in the Maldives on Islamic monetary economics
No full textOn the 1st and 2nd November 2017, the Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI) in collaboration with the Maldives Center for Islamic Finance (MCIF) organized an international workshop with the theme 'Islamic Monetary Economics and Institutions: Theory and Practice', inaugurated by Dr Mohamed Shainy, the minister of fisheries and agriculture, with participants from eight different countries
Leverage versus volatility: evidence from the capital structure of European firms
No full textThe impact of leverage on financial market stability and the relationship with the real economy is a key concern among researchers. This paper makes an initial attempt to investigate the relationship between a firm's leverage, return and share price volatility from an Islamic finance perspective and capital structure theory. A multicountry dynamic panel framework and the mean-variance efficient frontier are applied to 320 sample firms from eight European countries, divided into portfolios of low and high debt using the shari'ah screening threshold of 33%. We find that the firm's return and volatility change with changes in the capital structure. Islamic compliant stocks show, in most cases, less volatility than non-compliant stocks but are no different in terms of return. Finally, our results tend to imply a case for limiting debt beyond certain levels
The implications of voidable contract (al aqd al-fasid) to Islamic financial transactions: a study from Shari'ah and legal point of view
No full textThis paper aims to propose a modality for the mitigating of Shari'ah non-compliance risk that may arise from voidable contract. Despite all the positive legal developments and achievements that are provided by the Islamic Finance laws that are enacted in the recent years, the question of voidable contracts (al-aqd al-fasid) remains a lacuna in the legal framework of Islamic finance. Although, in Malaysia the Contract Act (CA) 1950 provides a number of provisions that deal with voidable contracts, it does not look at the contract from the Islamic perspective. It provisions are restricted to the conventional system ..
A wavelet approach to timescale relationships among the Islamic and conventional stock markets and LIBOR
No full textA series of financial crises in recent times resulted in an increase in contagion and correlations between assets making investments in conventional securities a little more unsafe. Therefore, global investors started looking for alternative assets to diversify their portfolios. One of the alternative assets that has been growing very fast over the recent period is the Islamic financial sectors which has been growing at an average rate of 15 percent to 20 percent per annum over the past decade. The risk-return profile of Islamic products, such as Islamic stocks, is expected to be different from that of conventional stocks
Macroeconomic shocks and Islamic bank behavior in Turkey
No full textEvents such as the 'credit crunch', 'bank run', 'financial contagion', 'flight to quality' and 'systemic risks' have widely transpired in recent times. One important dimension permeating these events is the dynamic link between macroeconomic shocks and banks' behaviour. Economic crises experienced by five East Asian countries in the late 1990s were accompanied by financial sector problems. The Great Recession of the late 2000s also corresponded to heightened solvency risks affecting over-leveraged banks and financial institutions in many developed countries. In a world of imperfect information, adverse macroeconomic shocks could weaken firms' balance sheets, diminish bank capital and trigger financial disintermediation.
Available in physical copy only (Call Number: BP 173.75 H236
Does a held-to-maturity strategy impede effective portfolio diversification for Islamic bond (sukuk) portfolios? A multi-scale continuous wavelet correlation analysis
No full textThere is a critical gap in literature in studying the portfolio diversification opportunities available to sukuk investors and evaluating these in the light of held-to-maturity strategies usually adopted by these investors. This paper has made an initial attempt to study the portfolio diversification strategies for sukuk portfolios across heterogeneous investment horizons. Our findings critically indicate that returns between local currency sukuk in different markets generally have low levels of correlations across different investor holding periods, thus enabling both short and long-run portfolio diversification benefits. However, in contrast, international currency sukuk issued in different markets exhibit high levels of correlations in the longer-term investor holding periods. Also in the domestic market context, returns on different classes of domestic sukuk are found to exhibit strong correlations in the longer-holding periods. Our findings critically highlight the feasibility of held-to-maturity sukuk investment strategies from a portfolio diversification perspective
Shariah index and macroeconomic variables: the impact of new Shariah screening criteria
No full textThe paper aims to study the relationship between selected macroeconomic variables and Malaysia Shariah Index after the adjustment of the screening process. It also attempts to look at how the new screening process impacts the performance of the Shariah index. To achieve these aims, this study used Auto Regressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) to look at the long-run and short-run relationships of the macroeconomic variables towards the FTSE EMAS Shariah Index ..
Shariah boards: practical challenges for Islamic financial institutions
No full textThis chapter aims to logically show that the contemporary structure of shariah supervisory boards in banks have to move towards a more aggressive compliance mode to ensure Islamic banks meet the regulatory requirements fully for all processes involved in providing shariah compliant products and services, since the industry has been in operation for more than five decades. The rapid growth of Islamic finance in recent years; something similar to other new financial products in historical times; has attracted many financial institutions, who are taking a keen interest in this growth sector
International banking and cross-border effects of regulation: lessons from Turkey
No full textHow do regulatory changes in a foreign country affect the lending growth in another country? This paper addresses this question using bank-level data from Turkey and macroprudential measures from fifty-six countries over a sample period of 2006-13. We offer evidence for the existence of the inward transmission of foreign prudential regulations by showing that the macroprudential tightening abroad leads to lending growth by the banks in Turkey. We find that domestic affiliates of foreign banks play a more prominent role in this transmission. We show that the existence and the magnitude spillovers differ across bank characteristics or the prudential instruments. Finally, our results indicate that the spillovers depend on the financial cycles