The paper assesses the transmission of foreign inflationary disturbances for Malaysia. Using quarterly data from 1971 to 2003, we form a four-variable vector error correction model (VECM) consisting of domestic prices, US prices, Ringgit exchange rate and relative interest rate. Apart from the full-sample analysis, recursive and rolling regressions are adopted to examine potential changes in inflation transmission from the US to Malaysia. As a basis for inferences, we rely on the speed of adjustments estimates as well as the significance of lagged first-differenced terms of the VECM. The results unequivocally suggest significant spillover of US inflationary disturbances to Malaysia in the short run regardless of the estimation periods. However, the speed of adjustment estimates for domestic prices tend to decline or turn insignificant when recent observations are added. Our findings demonstrate that inflation transmission across nations ought not to be cast in the light of exchange rate regimes alone. Indeed, the degree of capital mobility may have played a more dominant role.

The present paper analyzes the role of stock market returns as a predictor of real output for a fast-growing emerging market, Malaysia. In the analysis, forecasting equations for 1-, 2-, 4-, and 8-quarter forecasting horizons based on autoregressive distributed lags framework are adopted. From the estimation, we find evidence that stock market returns do contain predictive ability at short-forecasting horizons, especially at less than 4-quarter horizons. Estimating the forecasting models recursively, we note reduction of out-of-sample forecasting evaluation statistics, namely the mean absolute errors (MAE) and the mean squared forecast errors (MSFE), from those obtained from the simple autoregressive (AR) model. More importantly, the null hypothesis of equal predictive accuracy between the model with stock returns as a predictor and the AR model is rejected for the 1-quarter and 2-quarter forecasting horizons by the McCraken’s (2007) out-of-sample-F statistics

For the first time, this study investigates whether, in mimicking conventional banks, Islamic banks have become less stable than their theoretical equivalent: cooperative banks in Europe. Theoretically, the prohibition of interest should have pushed Islamic banks towards mutuality and profit-sharing, which have been argued as stabilising. In practice, however, banks are pushed for growth under a debt-driven commercial banking model, which is not only antithetical to the Shariah but is also destabilising. This may explain why empirical findings are still divergent in Islamic banking stability studies. Our study employs the generalised method of moments (GMM) system to compare the stability of 37 Islamic banks against 1,536 cooperative banks in Europe during the 2008 crisis and post-non-crisis years. Interestingly, we found consistent and significant evidence that Islamic banks are less stable than cooperative banks in both macroeconomic conditions. This has significant policy implications, the most important of which is to steer reform efforts away from refurbishing Islamic commercial banks and towards building an entirely new Islamic cooperative bank, based on the model in Europe.

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The present paper characterizes the mean-reverting behavior of six ASEAN markets - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – using an autoregressive exponential GARCH-in mean model and daily data from August 2000 to May 2010. The results indicate fast speed of mean-reversion in the returns of these markets but with quite distinct patterns of return dynamics. The evidence seems strong to suggest asymmetric mean reversion and overreaction during market downturns in the Indonesian market. The Vietnamese market exhibits most persistent return autocorrelation with some evidence pointing to higher persistence during market downturns. However, there is no evidence indicating significant serial correlation in the markets of Singapore and Thailand. Finally, the leverage effect is documented in all markets except Vietnam. We tentatively attribute these differences to stages of market development and, accordingly their levels of efficiency, and to the degree of market volatility.

This paper is aimed to examine the impact of bail-out policy carried out following the financial crisis which hit the Malaysian economy some years ago. Using panel estimation methods, this study tries to analyze the relationship between firms‟ investments and their cash flows before and after the crisis period. Theoretically, the relationship becomes tight due to the crisis. This tight relationship indicates the existence of severe financial constraints faced by existing firms. Such relationship is on the contrast to the loose relationship prior the crisis when the financial market was liberalized through various deregulations including the interest rates deregulation. However, to combat the crisis Malaysia carried out a variety of counter-crisis measures. The measures are packaged under the bail-out policy implementation. If the bail-out policy was a success, it can be measured through the easiness of financial constraints the firms faced. Using annual financial data of unbalanced panel of 1988-2005, the results found are in favor of the bail-out policy.

The paper assesses the risk implications of rapid Islamic financing growth after the Global Financial crisis and whether financing - risk relations are more reflective of large Islamic banks. Employing a panel regression methodology and a sample of 72 Islamic banks from 14 countries over the period 2010-2019, our analysis indicates that Islamic financing growth does lead to credit risk deterioration up to two years ahead. We note further that Islamic banks are "too small to succeed" in that the risk effect of financing growth is more apparent for small Islamic banks. But, once an Islamic bank reaches a certain size threshold, it demonstrates ability to manage and mitigate credit risk arising from its financing activities. Based on these results, we conclude that Islamic banks need to be bigger.

This study investigates whether local and global geopolitical risks depress credit growth in GCC banks and whether the effect is heterogeneous across banks of different types (Islamic and Conventional), sizes, capital ratios, and liquidity ratios. Using an unbalanced panel dataset of 64 banks over the period 1990-2023, a total of 1967 bank-year observations, and the local projections method, we find that in general, credit growth declines following the increase in global and local geopolitical risks. Interestingly, the drop in credit growth tends to be larger when facing heightened global geopolitical risk. Looking at the heterogeneous effect of geopolitical risk across bank-specific characteristics, we find that Islamic banks remain resilient to global risk but are vulnerable to local risks. We also note that local geopolitical risk tends to exert a more persistent impact on smaller and less liquid banks. These results suggest the need for (i) further development of Islamic banking to shield GCC's banking sector from global geopolitical uncertainty, (ii) building banks' balance-sheet strength vis-a-vis bank assets and liquidity ratio, and (iii) preserving regional stability to mitigate regional tensions and conflicts.

This paper examines the impact of monetary policy on bank lending in a dual banking system, i.e. Malaysia. Making use of an unbalanced panel data set of 38 Islamic and conventional banks covering mostly 2001-2014, we find evidence that variations in monetary policy affect lending growth of Islamic banks and, to some extent, conventional banks. The results further reveal that, in comformity with studies using aggregate Islamic financing data, the Islamic financing growth reacts more strongly to monetary policy changes.

In this study, we conduct a panel analysis of Islamic and conventional banks to ascertain whether Islamic banks are able to sustain financing supply and whether its growth is higher than conventional bank lending growth in times of stress. For concreteness, we also assess whether the sustained financing supply of Islamic banks is justified by a concomitant increase in Islamic deposit growth and is not linked to excessive risk taking. Utilizing a panel sample of 25 Islamic banks and 114 conventional banks from 10 dual-banking countries, we observe sustained financing supply by Islamic banks but significant reduction in the lending growth by conventional banks during the crisis period. The results further suggest that the financing growth of Islamic banks is higher than the lending growth of conventional banks during the crisis period. However, we find no clear evidence that the deposit growth of Islamic banks behaves differently during the period. Finally, there is no indication to suggest that Islamic banks exhibit excessive risk taking in times of stress. Our results contribute to the evidence supporting the contributive role of the Islamic banking system to financial and economic stability.

In this paper, we examine the interrelations between bank lending, macroeconomic conditions and financial uncertainty for an emerging economy, Malaysia. Adopting time series techniques of cointegration, causality and vector autoregressions (VARs), we arrive at the following main results. We note long run positive relations between real output and both real bank credits and real stock prices. However, with slow adjustment of real output in responses to credit expansion or stock price increase and weak exogeneity of the latter two variables, both credits and stock prices can be persistently higher than their fundamental values. The phenomenon can be detrimental since it heightens market uncertainty. Our results suggest that heightened market uncertainty is negatively related to output in the long run and, on the basis of dynamics analysis, it is likely to depress real output, real credit and real stock prices. At the same time, we note significant dynamic impacts of interest rate shocks on other variables. Taken together, these results have important implications for macroeconomic performance and stability for the case of Malaysi

The present paper comparatively evaluates the credit channel of monetary transmission process of Islamic banks and conventional banks by focusing on their lending/financing behaviour in responses to monetary policy shocks as well as other shocks. Adopting structural vector autoregression (SVAR) specification, we validate the significant responses of both conventional bank credit and Islamic bank financing to monetary policy shocks. However, the dynamic behaviour of Islamic banks following monetary policy shocks as well as other shocks tends to be different. Our analysis indicates that the Islamic bank financing tends to respond immediately while the conventional bank credit exhibits delayed responses to interest rate hikes. These results are generally robust to alternative specifications of the SVAR.

The paper studies bank lending behaviour over the business cycle in a dual banking system, Malaysia, with the objective of ascertaining whether Islamic banks have a role in stabilizing credit. The study makes use of unbalanced panel data of 21 conventional banks and 16 Islamic banks covering mostly the period 2001–2013. Applying dynamic GMM estimators, we find the aggregate loans by banks to be pro-cyclical in conformity with existing studies. However, when we segregate the lending/financing behaviour of conventional and Islamic banks, the cyclicality of bank lending seems to be true only for conventional banks. As for the Islamic banks, the business cycle does not seem to affect their financing decisions. Indeed, there is indication that the Islamic banks in general and the full-fledged Islamic banks in particular can even be counter-cyclical in their financing decisions. This conclusion is fairly robust to a different loan measure, alternative model specifications, and to an alternative business cycle measure. Hence, our results provide further support to the “stability” view of the Islamic banks in that they have the ability to stabilize credit

This paper empirically assesses the relation between bank performance and capital regulation for Islamic banks from 13 countries and evaluates whether the relation varies with bank size, capital, and liquidity. We find small Islamic banks to be less stable and less profitable; they also cut lending growth as capital regulation becomes more stringent. The stability and lending growth of big Islamic banks are, however, directly related to capital regulation. Further, capital regulation adversely affects the profitability of Islamic banks with low liquidity and high capital holdings. While capital regulation is needed, it should not be adopted in a blanket manner for all Islamic banks.

The slides highlight 1) the importance of risk-taking; 2) variables - risk-taking, bank-specific, macroeconomic, and regulation of the study.

Numerous attempts have been made to study the impact of competition on banking-stability before and after the recent global financial crisis. In the rich theoretical and empirical literature on the topic, two contradictory views have surfaced, i.e. the competition-fragility view and the competition-stability view. This thesis provides empirical evidence of a nonlinear relationship between competition and stability that explains, at least partially, the conflicting results of previous theoretical and empirical studies. Furthermore, while the existing literature focuses on conventional banking, this thesis investigates both Islamic and conventional banks in dual banking systems and explores whether or not bank types affect the competition-stability relationship. Using GMM technique on panel data covering the dual-banking countries that have significant share of Islamic banking for the period from 2004 until 2014, this thesis finds that the relationship between market power and stability is nonlinear for both Islamic and conventional banks, albeit with a marginal difference between them. The impact of market power is initially positive "supporting the charter value theory," but it turns to be negative as soon as banks' market power exceeds a certain limit, probably because the negative impact of the "too-important-to-fail" moral hazard overcomes the initial positive impact.

This article investigates the dynamic relationship among competition, diversification and bank performance using data for 18 countries with a dual banking system over the period 2000 to 2016. Analyses using panel vector autoregression (P.V.A.R.) model, impulse response function (I.R.F.) and variance decomposition (V.D.C.) methods confirm that market power increases the profitability and the stability of banks the dual banking system while revenue diversification reduces them. Market power increases revenue diversification of banks. Segregating the sample of banks into emerging and developing countries, we find that positive impact of market power on profitability is stronger for emerging countries. Even though we find that revenue diversification has a more damaging effect on the profitability of banks in the developing countries, it only dampens the stability of banks in emerging countries. In addition, we find that asset diversification dampens the stability of banks. However, it has a more positive impact on the profitability of banks in emerging economies.

This study investigated the degree of synchronization between credit expansion and financial stability in Malaysia at aggregated and disaggregated levels. The dynamic factor model and a broad range of macrofinancial variables are adopted to construct a financial stability index to measure the stability of the Malaysian financial system. The non-parametric method is subsequently employed to gauge the degree of synchronization between credit and financial stability. The empirical findings indicated a negative synchronization between business credit and financial stability in Malaysia, suggesting that an expansion in business credit would lead to financial instability. The results implied that difficulties will arise in designing policies as business credit expands. On the other hand, there is insufficient evidence to show that increasing household credit has any negative influence on Malaysian financial stability.

This study extends the bank ownership database of Claessens and van Horen (2015) to investigate the role of state-owned and foreign banks in the development of private credit markets in countries with a dual banking system. The enhanced database contains state and foreign ownership information of 1,038 banks operating in 29 countries, categorised as either Islamic or non-Islamic. To begin, this study uses the database to identify the bank ownership patterns in the dual banking countries. The data reveals that the ownership structure of the Islamic banking industry changes in a different manner from that of their conventional counterpart. More specifically, it shows that, in line with financial liberalisation policies, the presence of state-owned and foreign conventional banks decreases and increases, respectively. On contrary, Islamic banks with both types of ownership become more prevalent over time. Further, the data is used to examine how state-owned and foreign bank presence affects private credit in the countries. To do so, this study employs a cross-country approach that regresses private credit to GDP ratios against the shares of total bank assets held by state-owned and foreign banks. In the regressions, the asset shares are measured both in total and by bank types (i.e., Islamic versus conventional banks). The regressions are run separately using data average over the full sample period (1995-2017), and over the three subsample periods that are divided into the pre-crisis (1995-2006), during-crisis (2007-2009), and post-crisis (2010-2017) periods. When measuring bank ownership shares in total, this study finds that the presence of state-owned banks is associated with less credit to the private sector in support of the political view. This negative relationship is, however, found to be insignificant during the crisis period. In terms of magnitude, the effect, when significant, is somewhat larger in the post-crisis period than in the pre-crisis and the full sample period. On the other hand, this study does not find significant evidence that the presence of foreign banks could adversely affect private credit markets either in the full sample period or in the subsample periods.

The study of currency exposure in the context of small open economies such as the ASEAN-4 region is important in view of the higher degree of openness of the economies and the progressive growth of the Islamic finance industry. This study examined the presence of currency exposure in a sample of 405 listed non-financial corporations from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand over a duration of 18 years from 1993 to 2010. This study is different from previous studies as it combines two assessment methods, i.e., the cash flow (CF) and stock returns (SR) approaches. Furthermore, this study covers two major events of the financial crises ...