Islamic banking has thus far mimicked conventional banking with the result that the same problems and outcomes have surfaced, even though it is operating within an interest free framework. This apparent "convergence" has led to disaffection both among consumers of Islamic banking services and policy makers. This paper proposes a risk sharing model for Islamic banks that can potentially pull Islamic banking away from this path dependency. Under the proposal an Islamic bank's assets would be securitized by the issuance of sukuk type instruments that have the same underlying contract and average "duration" as customer financing. Small assets may have to be pooled into tranches of similar maturity before being securitized. Medium and larger assets would have papers issued directly against them. Thus, instead of depositors, an Islamic bank would have thousands of sukuk holders, all of whom share the profits and losses arising from their respective tagged asset. Other than Wadiah based safe custody accounts and current accounts against which the bank holds cash, all other depositors would be "sold" sukuk for the amount, duration and risk level that they prefer. The model has several advantages such as, minimizing systemic risk through risk dissipation and reducing the liquidity mismatch inherent to banking. The securitized papers provide new liquidity instruments and can enhance liquidity within the Islamic finance sector. Where the macro economy is concerned, the proposal enhances system stability by reducing risk concentration within the banking system, substantially widens financial inclusion by way of small denomination sukuk and minimizes the contingent liabilities of governments by avoiding the use of deposit insurance.

Islamic banking in Malaysia, despite its recent start, has seen very rapid growth. This growth however has beem uneven. While short-term trade financing has always been dominant and grown rapidly, Mudarabah financing by Islamic banks in Malaysia has reduced to insignificant amounts. Yet, Mudarabah which is based on profit and loss sharing has always been considered to be at the core of Islamic financing and in tune with the shariah's injunctions against interest based financing

Efficiency of financial institution has become an important part of insurance literature. This study aims to evaluate the performance in term of cost efficiency for takaful and insurance firms in Malaysia. A sample of 18 firms consisting of 7 takaful operators and 11 conventional insurers are chosen from the period 2004 to 2009. The cost efficiency score for each firm are obtained using input oriented DEA model. A Kruskal Wallis and Mann Whitney test are employed to examine any significant difference in cost efficiency between Takaful industry and insurance industry. The main findings indicate a significant difference in cost efficiency between takaful and insurance industries. The average cost efficiency for takaful industry is 49.20% which implies they could reduce the cost of production by 50% without affecting the level of output. A lower market share exist in takaful industry has resulted to cost inefficiency. Essentially, this study has supported the market power theory.

An efficient market has been theoretically proven to be a key component for effective and efficient resource allocation in an economy. This paper incorporates econophysics with Efficient Market Hypothesis to undertake a comparative analysis of Islamic and developed countries’ markets by extending the understanding of their multifractal nature. By applying the Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MFDFA) we calculated the generalized Hurst exponents, multifractal scaling exponents and generalized multifractal dimensions for 22 broad market indices. The findings provide a deeper understanding of the markets in Islamic countries, where they have traces of highly efficient performance particularly in crisis periods. A key finding is the empirical evidence of the impact of the ‘stage of market development’ on the efficiency of the market. If Islamic countries aim to improve the efficiency of resource allocation, an important area to address is to focus, among others, on enhancing the stage of market development

This study examines the extent and nature of foreign exchange exposure in 405 listed corporations operating in the ASEAN-4 nations, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. The study period of 23 years, from 1995 to 2017, covers the two major crisis periods, the Asian financial crisis (AFC) of 1997 and the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008. Our study improves on earlier work by using two alternative assessment methods, i.e., stock returns (SR) and cash flow (CF) methods. We report several interesting and noteworthy results. First, we find that the stock returns approach results in a higher incidence of exchange rate exposure relative to the cash flow method. Specifically, about 65% and 28% of the total ASEAN-4 firms had significant exposure to all currencies under the stock returns and cash flow methods, respectively. Second, we find the sample firms to have predominant exposure to the US dollar, signifying the important role played by the United States (US) as the major trading partner of the ASEAN-4. Third, when evaluating time-varying exposure, we find that the incidence of the exchange rate exposure is event-specific. Most of our sample firms were highly exposed to exchange rates during the mid-points of the AFC and the GFC.

The derivatives markets in the Asian region have shown significant growth and development since their inception. Similarly, derivatives market in Malaysia and Bursa Malaysia Derivatives have experienced remarkable changes and developments. This study focuses mainly on the stock index futures contract (FKLI) and its relationship with the underlying spot index (FBM KLCI). The FKLI is chosen instead of other permissible futures due to availability of the data and its relevance in the context of fund managers' asset allocation strategy. The FKLI is chosen instead of other permissible futures due to availability of the data and its relevance in the context of fund managers’ asset allocation strategy. Mainly based on intraday data, this study makes an analysis of issues on pricing efficiency, the expiration-day effects on volume and volatility, the lead lag relationship between stock index and stock index futures, in Malaysian derivatives market as a newly advanced emerging market. Based on the underlying assumption that if a mispricing were to arise, unlimited arbitrage trading would trigger the market price back to its theoretical fair value and hedging effectiveness may go down as a result of pricing inefficiency, the first essay investigates the study of pricing efficiency specifically on the extent of mispricing by contract, evolution of mispricing, and mispricing episodes. Daily data based on the cost-of-carry model and 15-minute intraday data based on the basis model are used to address the issue of pricing efficiency. This essay fills the gap by introducing 15-minute intraday data, in addition to a larger time span of daily data. The results show variations in mispricing over time under study and provide valuable information for policymakers and fund managers as the Malaysia markets become more efficient and seem to provide a better avenue to hedge their positions and protect their investment values.

This research attempts to show that risk sharing, as defined under Islamic finance, makes financial systems antifragile. The recent financial crisis has given rise to discussions around a new term known as antifragility, used for evaluating the long-term stability of a financial system. Antifragility specifies conditions under which systems become resilient to shocks caused by Black Swans. These are highly unpredictable outlier events that have a major negative (or positive) consequence when they occur, with their occurence only being explained retrospectively. According to this concept, the long-term survivability of any system centers exclusively on its antifragile nature, that is, its ability to absorb and actually benefit from Black Swan-type shocks. This research aims to investigate risk sharing Islamic finance, qualitatively (via literature-based research) and quantitatively (via mathematical modeling), as an antifragile system ...

The slides highlight: 1) funding growth without debt; 2) risk sharing contracts of Islamic finance; 3) issue and challenges.

The paper examines the level of awareness of the people in the Kyrgyz Republic about Islamic Banking and Finance and whether they are willing to adopt an Islamic financial system in the country. It also attempts to explore population's opinion of the mechanism of the banking business in general. Questionnaire forms were developed and distributed among 300 nationals. It has been found that while a small proportion of the practicing Muslims have some notion of Islamic Banking and Finance, non-practicing Muslims and non-Muslims almost completely lack in this field of knowledge ...

This paper examines the effects of bank financing diversification and market concentration on bank stability in Malaysia. Our study is unique as it investigates these effects within a banking industry that has undergone major restructuring due to the introduction and rapid penetration of a new banking type, Islamic banking. Despite its recent history, Islamic banking, having benefited from strong government support, has grown to command more than a third of the market share. The extensive realignment caused by such industry disruption makes the study of such effects on banking stability highly relevant and interesting. The study investigates 24 conventional and 18 Islamic banks in Malaysia from 2003 to 2019. Our results reveal differences in the above dynamics between the two bank types. Increasing diversification up to a moderate level enhances the stability of conventional banks, but only in less-concentrated markets. Very high diversification levels, however, impair their stability. For Islamic banks, stability seems unresponsive to financing diversification. Furthermore, while market concentration negatively affects the stability of conventional banks, Islamic banks appear to benefit from market concentration. These findings withstand our robustness tests using alternative measures of the key variables. Further examination suggests that these dynamics may have a temporal dimension. Our findings imply that a policy based on a single regulatory framework emphasizing increased diversification and competition across the industry may not be appropriate for all banks. Conventional and Islamic banks may require different regulatory treatment.

Events earlier in the year in Australia show the extent to which cross-border capital flows can arbitrage regulatory hurdles. It appears that in an effort to rein in a burgeoning housing bubble, the Australian central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has placed caps on bank lending to real estate developers. The policy, aimed largely at curbing purchases of Australian homes by foreigners through domestic borrowing, initially was effective. In addition to foreign speculators, domestic housing developers too were hit hard. Such regulation would have essentially taken the wind out of a domestic housing bubble, had it not been for foreign hedge funds and private equity. Given free capital flows, these foreign entities, which are really shadow banks, stepped in to provide the needed funding, obviously at higher interest rates. At that point of time, the foreign lenders appeared to be making huge profits from the large interest spreads. For both the foreign lenders and the foreign speculators of Australian property, the ability to sidestep the regulation appeared to be a win-win.

In the literature of corporate finance, there exists alongside others, an age long inquiry into the behaviour and determinants of corporate capital structure. The study into capital structure behaviour was pioneered by Modigliani and Miller (1958, 1963) and which is still widely research today. Despite years of research, much are still unknown to us, which determinants are reliable explanator of capital structure variations across firms and time. In 1984, Stewart C. Myers officially introduced the "Capital Structure Puzzle" in his American Finance Association Presidential Speech. The capital structure puzzle at its heart asks the question of how do firms decide and manage their capital structure?

In the Islamic finance capital market spectrum, the potential of mudharabah and musyarakah sukuk is hampered with criticism by Shariah scholars. Among the criticisms include the presence of uncertainties surrounding sukuk returns, the risk of losses that the rabbul-mal (investors) have to bear, and the need to mitigate agency costs (for mudharabah contracts). This have made it a deterrent for both issuers and investors in seeing the instrument as a viable alternative to debt-based sukuk structures. This study proposes an improvement to musyarakah sukuk. It begins with a qualitative examination of the structure of corporate mudharabah and musyarakah sukuk issued in Malaysia. The examination finds risk-sharing sukuk structures in Malaysia contain features that supresses the risk sharing element between the sukuk investors and issuer. Findings from qualitative analysis is supported by generalized method of moments (GMM) and threshold analysis. Based on the sample of 86 corporate mudharabah and musyarakah sukuk issuances, the introduction of partnership sukuk in the firm's capital structure is found to be insignificant in affecting both firm risk and firm performance. The present partnership sukuk structure is then modified to incorporate variable returns (coupon payments) proportionate to the firm's net profits and variable principal repayment proportionate to the firm's total assets value. This study finds that when sukuk returns are made variable, sukuk investors are able to earn better/ equitable returns compared what they are earning in the current sukuk structure.

This study constructs active Islamic portfolios using a multi-style rotation strategy, derived from the three prominent styles, namely, momentum, value, and quality investing. We use the stocks that are consistently listed in the U.S. Dow Jones Islamic index for a sample period from 1996 to 2012. We also include two macroeconomic mimicking portfolios to capture the premiums of industrial production growth and inflation innovation, accommodating the economic regime shifts. Based on the information coefficients, we find the six-month momentum and the fractal measure as momentum factors; the enterprise yield (gross profit/TEV) and the book to market ratio as valuation factors; the gross profit to total assets, the return on capital, and the scaled total accruals as quality factors. We further construct active portfolios using the augmented Black Litterman (ABL) factor model to avoid the factor alignment problem, with the factor views predicted using Markov Switching VAR, MIDAS, and Bayesian Model Averaging. The out-of-sample performance of our portfolios can produce information ratios of 0.7–0.8 over the composite indices, and information ratios of 0.42–0.48 over the style indices, with the annualized alphas of 10–11%. Even when we put the constrained tracking error of 1% over the benchmark, our portfolios still produce information ratios of 0.9–1.2 before transaction costs, and 0.6–0.8 after transaction costs. We provide intuitive explanations for each premium changing over time, and suggest the promising strategy for Islamic equity investors to outperform the market.

Concentration risk exposes Islamic banks to the possibility of financial distress and to a certain extent, increases the probability of default. This paper analyses the concentration levels of Malaysian Islamic banks to commodity murabahah. This study is aimed at exploring the possibility of concentration risk as a result of extensive usage of commodity murabahah as the underlying Syariah contract. The Malaysian Islamic banking sector is extremely vulnerable to systemic risks with concentration of banking sector assets at both micro and macro levels as one of the material sources. The high level of commodity murabahah concentration in the Malaysian Islamic banking financing and deposits requires analysis and improvement of the existing supervisory practice. Islamic banks are suggested to limits their exposure to a certain type of underlying contract as part of their major risk control. Another key suggestion worth considering is for Islamic banks to have a greater and adequate disclosure of information on concentrations of financing assets. It is also recommended for Islamic banks and scholars to initiate the exploration of other products in replacement of commodity murabahah.

A prominent issue regarding the stock market and shock crisis is whether the performance of Islamic index or conventional index is more stable, resilient and provides better shock resistance during the plunge in the market. Understanding how the indices respond towards the high level of volatility in the market is crucial for domestic and global investors, researcher, financial analysts, and policymakers. Two crises serve as the source of shock to analyse the performance of the indices. Thus, this study attempts to answer whether the Islamic equity market provides better performance con-sistently than its counterpart during the COVID-19 outbreak relative to the GFC. In particular, this research employed standardised time series method, multivariate Vector Autoregressive ( VAR ) model to evaluate the dynamic interaction between the indices and provide analytical interpretation from their long-run association, linear causal relationship from Granger-causality test and shock responses from Impulse Response Function ( IRF ). The main findings are: (i) the equity indices in Europe, UK, and USA show more substantial mean-reversion correction during GFC compared to COVID-19 outbreak, (ii) all indices in each country are highly correlated and move in the same direction, (iii) In general, there are not so much different in performance of IEIs and CEIs in both crises (iv) Islamic index shows better performance compared to its counterpart within a specific period, in a specific country, (v) investors who include Islamic index in the portfolio have the diversification benefits in the long run as they have non-cointegrated long run equilibrium with the conventional index, (vi) the conventional index responds towards the market shock instantaneously with greater magnitude in both crises compared to the Islamic index in a specific country.

This paper addresses two key issues in Corporate Social Performance (CSP) research. First, it investigates the impact of CSP on Financial Stability (FS), and second, it examines the influence of different banking models on the relationship between CSP and FS. Using a cross-country sample of 117 financial institutions from 36 countries over an 8-year period (2013-2020) and the System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation method, it finds that banking models significantly affect the CSP-FS relationship. This is attributed to diminishing marginal benefits of economic growth beyond a certain level of financial intermediation, which increases financial risk. The results give new insights into the synergies and divergences between different banking models and the overarching goals of social performance and financial stability. This research contributes novel insights that can inform policymakers, regulators, and industry stakeholders in their quest for a more resilient and sustainable banking sector.

This study attempts to measure the relative efficiency of the takaful industry and the conventional insurance industry in Malaysia. A sample of 18 firms consisting of 7 takaful operators and 11 insurance firms is examined over the period 2004 to 2009. The study employs Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to estimate the technical, cost and profit efficiencies for the takaful and insurance industry ...

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 ...

The last decade has witnessed a rapid expansion of Islamic financial instruments with a notable proliferation of Islamic investment certificates called sukuk. In spite of the expansion, research to appraise their growth implications remains limited. This paper investigated the structural differences within sukuk and conventional and their implications on investor return reactions. It also looked at the investors' different decision making time horizon dimensions in response to the respective debt security's announcement. Our sample consisted of 158 conventional bonds and 129 sukuk issuers between 2000 and 2013. Event-study methodology and wavelet analysis were used resulting in three major findings. Firstly, market investors perceived sukuk and conventional bonds as different financial instruments. Variations in investor reactions persisted when each sub-category of sukuk and conventional bond were examined separately. Lastly, firm value and shareholder wealth were affected in different ways upon the issuance announcement of of a specific sukuk or conventional bond. Specifically, the equity-like features within convertible bonds and partnership-based sukuk negated institutional investors' wealth, but were due to different 'dilution' arguments. Sukuk created unique wealth effects for corporate issuers, day traders and institutional investors in comparison with conventional bonds.

Muslim-majority nations like Turkey, Indonesia, Egypt and even Malaysia have seen their currencies depreciate and come under pressure in the recent past. Turkey and Egypt have had to increase domestic interest rates substantially to ease the exchange rate pressure. Indonesia, too, had to raise rates, albeit of a much lower magnitude. The choice of an exchange rate policy - whether pegged, free floating or managed - depends on the trade-off preference. Fixed or pegged exchange rates offer stability, but this has to be traded off against the lack of independence in monetary policymaking. A freely floating currency has the advantage of providing full flexibility in policymaking, but has to be traded off against the lack of exchange rate stability. Faced with these trade-offs between fixed and free floats, many countries chose to be in between the two, with managed floats.