Shaista Arshad

The Impact of Global Financial Shocks to Islamic Indices: Speculative Influence or Fundamental Changes?

The ripples of the financial crisis are still being felt over different parts of the world causing much distress to the real economy. The capital market, in particular, took a massive hit during the crisis plummeting to all-time lows. In the footsteps of globalization, a financial shock to the US capital market can cause a spill over effect to other markets, Islamic capital market included. Hence, this paper attempts to address the question whether Islamic indices are affected through fundamental changes or short-term influences by sudden changes in volatility as compared to their conventional counterparts. To empirically analyze this, we apply continuous wavelet technique to identify comovements between world financial indices and Islamic indices for World, Asia Pacific and Emerging Markets specifically. Covering a time period of 15 years (1997 – 2011), our results confer that Islamic indices in the Asia Pacific and Emerging Market region are partially immune to speculative shocks to global financial services making them a good alternative. Similarly, Islamic indices testified more stable due to their rigid screening criteria.

An Empirical Study of Islamic Equity as a Better Alternative during Crisis Using Multivariate GARCH DCC

Risk Sharing is the core of the Islamic finance, the closest modern equivalent being equity investments. Through the decades of Islamic Finance development scholars have stressed on equity as the most beneficial financial mechanism while most accept modern joint-stock companies as quasi Mush rakah and Mu rabah forms, but this segment is still small in Islamic finance. Multitude of reasons contributes to it, primarily, the risk averseness and myth of equities as more risky alternate. This paper attempts to investigate this myth utilizing MGARCH DCC method, by studying the volatilities and correlations of Islamic indices over a period of twelve years. The findings are promising, suggesting a low moving correlation between the conventional and Islamic indices. The results substantiate the authors’ argument, that during crisis, Islamic indices provide though not complete, but partial insulation, thus a safer haven. This bodes well for a hugely untapped Islamic alternate investment avenue for exploration.

Impact of corruption on bank profitability: an analysis of Islamic banks

The great influx of Islamic finance to the global scene has raised an interesting notion about its behaviour towards corruption. As the practice of corruption can be found in almost any corner of the world, it is most likely that Islamic banks may have been exposed to certain unscrupulous practices. This brings forth an important yet interesting discussion as sometimes corruption becomes unavoidable and this is something that is prohibited in Islam, proving to be a conflict of interest. This novel study sought to econometrically analyse the impact of corruption on Islamic bank profitability in highly corrupt countries. Using a panel dataset comprising 300 observations of 10 unique banks over the 2000-2010 time period panel least squared regression results reveal that corruption has a significant positive impact on bank profitability. The results lend some credence to implications that banks are thriving from corruption in the country.

Examining the Efficiency

As the primary role of the capital market is to allocate the economy’s resources, the fundamental need for an efficient market arises from the importance of efficient resource allocations, which in turn will help the economy. In light of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), several studies have been undertaken over the past two decade, but very few have been on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). This chapter focuses on analysing the weak-form efficiency of OIC member stock markets to determine their efficiency rankings during different business cycles. The results are indicative of improving efficiency over the past decade.

Outsourcing the Islamic Way : A Look into the Challenges Faced by Financial Institutions

Outsourcing The Islamic Way: A Look Into The Challenges Faced By Financial Institutions Fuelled by the growth of Islamic finance, banks and other financial institutions are increasingly seeking to outsource their non-core business functions. The benefits of outsourcing have already been well documented in literature and while it is good business sense to indulge in outsourcing when required, it becomes a matter of concern when it comes to outsourcing Shariah compliancy. Although there is a great avenue for growth in outsourcing, the industry must be conscious of the risks involved. This article addresses the issues and challenges in outsourcing Shariah approval for banks that do not have their own Shariah advisory board. This unique perspective into outsourcing by Islamic banks divulges into the Shariah risks, governance issues and Shariah arbitraging. For instance, when dealing with consultancy firms that contract Shariah scholars, the issue of rubber stamping is created. This becomes a problem because in many cases these scholars are not held accountable for their actions as the board of directors would be, hence leading to a conflict of interest between Shariah scholars and banks. Furthermore, it is established that subsiding this risk can be done through a convergence of Shariah opinions and a greater need for collaboration between the private sector, the government and regulatory bodies is required.

Stabilising economic growth through risk sharing macro instruments

The risk sharing principles of Islamic Finance have ironically been studied and used extensively outside the Muslim World. The development of early European city states was founded on the risk sharing principle. The risk sharing financing helped these city states to develop their infrastructure and rule the scientific and economic landscape of the west. The Western financial system of today still carries traces of risk sharing in the form of venture capital financing, albeit the primary focus has diverted to risk shifting†based debt financing. Over the past decades, much effort and research has gone into establishing a viable set of Islamic financial institutions. Most Muslim nations are heavily indebted with high reliance on multilateral financing primarily based on high interest rates. This vicious cycle of interest rates and debt has stunted the growth of these nations and worsened the conditions of the masses. This research brings to the forefront the concept of an equity in nature GDP†linked paper, which allows for enhanced risk sharing†based sovereign financing. It aims to present empirical proof of the stability this instrument offers in economic growth, for a large sample of developing economies, comprising bulk of Islamic countries. While analysing the empirical work, a strong favourable argument for this instrument is derived for its benefits in stability. Through this study, we endeavour to initiate a thought†provoking and practical discussion for further development of these instruments for the betterment of developing countries.

Background on Business Cycles

The chapter provides some background on business cycles. When discussing business cycles, it becomes necessary to define clearly recessions and expansions. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) defines recession as a period between a peak and a trough, and expansion as a period between trough and a peak. Furthermore, the different types of cycles and theories associated with business cycles are discussed. A key theory that is relevant in this book is the Real Business Cycle (RBC) theory. According to the theory, changes in technology in the business sector cause the booms and bust of a business cycle.

Overview of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation

The chapter provides a detailed description of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and its stock markets. As the second largest regional bloc, the OIC is home to several rapidly emerging markets and natural resources-rich countries. Despite this, out of the 57 member countries, only 33 have an active stock exchange. In these, there are significantly lower domestic companies listed as compared to other developing and emerging markets. Less liquid markets bring about an increased volatility, and an increased volatility is reflective of both shallowness and a lack of integration with global markets, indicating the main problem with OIC stock markets.

Vetting the Volatility

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) comprises several rapidly growing industries attracting large sums of foreign direct investments. The emerging nature of the markets and the rapid influx of investments bring about the question of how the stock markets in OIC member countries react to variations in the economy. The objective of this chapter is to understand the relationship between business cycles and stock market volatility within the OIC member countries for short-term traders and long-term investors. The results showed that most of the OIC countries, being oil rich and dependent, saw its business cycle and stock markets fluctuating owing to drops and increases in world oil prices. All the countries in the sample were affected by the global crisis.

Investigating the Integration

Analysing the market integration is an important part of understanding the economic nature of a stock market as it tells us its relationship with world markets and its effect based on movements in other markets. Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries, with higher volatility and greater market instability, are of particular interest in understanding how their markets would react to global or regional news. This chapter will analyse comparatively with developed markets the market integration of OIC member countries with the world average as well look into its regional integration.