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 option pricing model introduced by Black-Scholes in 1974 gained wide acceptance for its simplicity but was inefficient in pricing options as it relied on implied volatility. Despite the evolution of various versions of option pricing models since their seminal work, little progress had been documented on the use of implied volatility, leaving Black-Scholes to be a mathematical identity to calculate the instantaneous implied volatility as it fails to be an efficient pricing equation. Although interpreted as market expectation of future volatility of stocks, implied volatility is literally a black box that captures market information that is not specifically known yet also internally inconsistent (e.g., having a different implied volatility surface for put and call options). The four main objectives of this thesis are: first, to empirically studying the performance of the Oscillator model developed by Baaquie (2019) and examining its efficiency in pricing options as compared to Black-Scholes model. The Oscillator model has only two sets of parameters in addition to the classical form of Black-Scholes; one to model for the underlying stochastic evolution of the stock price, and the second are of market time. Market time is a behavioural parameter introduced by Baaquie and Bouchaud (2004) which scales the time to maturity to capture the market sentiment of the underlying instrument. This thesis also introduced an alternative version of Black-Scholes by adjusting it for market time. Second, the thesis tested the put-call parity violation. Third, the thesis tested three main option hedging Greeks; Delta, Gamma, and Theta, which are partial differentiations of the option pricing equation. Fourth, the thesis discussed the calibrated output and parameters' behaviour to provide insights into the implied volatility information content and gain new understanding of the parametric gap of Black-Scholes particularly in the light of the Oscillator and Black-Scholes models adjusted for market time.

The present study attempts to investigate whether shadow economy and the tourism sector are related. In the European countries, Schneider reported that 20 to 25 per cent of the shadow economy is represented in the tourism-related industries – wholesale and retail, automotive and motorcycle sales and maintenance; transportation, storage and communications; and hotels and restaurants. For the tourism sector, the services given by operators (unregistered and/or underreporting) operate in the shadow economy will ultimately wiped off the map of high quality tourist destinations and destroyed the development of the tourism industry itself. This study examines the short-run and long-run relationships between international tourism receipts and shadow economy for 149 countries over the period 1995-2008. We use a generalized one-step error-correction model (ECM) in combination with a system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to explore the long-run relationship between these two variables. Our results suggest that tourism receipts and shadow economy are cointegrated. This implies that shadow economy and the tourism industry worldwide are related in the long-run. The long-run elasticities indicate a negative impact of the shadow economy on the tourism sector suggesting that increase in shadow economy activities will adversely affecting the tourism industry.

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

This study examines the impact of financial development on bank risk-taking, measured as bank capitalization and bank income diversification. We observe the relationship using annual bank-level data from countries with dual-banking systems. The dataset spans from 2000 to 2014. Our results suggest that the impact of financial development on bank capitalization is heterogeneous across Islamic and conventional commercial banks. Moreover, the effect is different across listed and unlisted banks. However, on average, the response of income diversification to financial development is similar across most specifications. Additionally, bank risk is found to be countercyclical, suggesting that bank risk increases in good times. On average, these results (countercyclical evidence) hold across bank types (Islamic and conventional) and ownership structure (listed and unlisted). However, these results are contingent on the size (small vs. large) factor. The results are robust to alternative proxies of financial development.

This paper reports evidence of a banking liquidity impact on stock prices in the three Asean countries. Banking liquidity impacts suggested by Friedman is yet to be fully investigated nor verified despite several attempts. If improved liquidity of banks leads to credit expansion, which in turn leads to more positive net present value projects undertaken by firms, earnings of the latter must go up, and hence the share prices should rise. This link is worth an investigation. According to an influential of the US stock market, up to 52% of share returns are due to changes in the macro economy. Using a 3-equation structural model as well as employing corrections for cross-section dependence, we examine the link between money supply, liquidity and stock prices over 2001:4Q and 2012:2Q in three developing countries. It is found money supply changes lead to a positive liquidity effect and banking liquidity impacts share market prices positively. These findings are new and in support of Friedman's liquidity proposition, and also constitute evidence of a banking liquidity having a positive effect on asset prices.

This paper examines the existence of behavioural finance aspects among Malaysian fund managers. We identify behavioural biases of loss aversion, disposition effect and illusion of control. We also study the endowment effect and mental accounting which rooted in the Prospect Theory. We developed two-parts experiments i.e. investment-related decisions and general behavioural questions. The study revealed that Malaysian fund managers are prone to behavioural biases in investment decisions and general aspects as well. We also analysed the data in comparison with demographical information such as age, gender, years of experience and investing style. We find that the younger fund managers tend to experience behavioural biases more than the elders. Female fund managers prone to loss aversion and disposition effect than male fund managers, while male fund managers experience a moderately higher percentage in illusion of control than the female counterpart.

This research attempts to explore the impact of banking competition on financial stability employing more precise measure of market power. It was found that Islamic banks are less stable and are enjoying lower market power. The analysis shows that higher market competition makes the banking sector vulnerable to defaults, supporting the "competition-fragility view". This research finds no difference in the relationship for Islamic banks indicates that Islamic banks might be involved in traditional banking activities as conventional banks. The results are consistent and robust to different estimation approaches and subsamples. This research carries regulatory and policy implications.

Our study attempts to discover contagion amongst the Asia-Pacific equity markets (Japan, Hong Kong and Australia) during twelve major crises around the world. We apply both discrete and continuous wavelet decompositions to unveil the multi-horizon nature of co-movement and lead–lag relationship. We find that shocks were transmitted via excessive linkages, with the Asian crisis as the most influential in relation to a sudden stop. We also find that the subprime crisis revealed fundamentals-based contagion, due to the strengthening fundamental linkages, with a dominant role of the Japanese market. Finally, we find low co-movements in the short run, suggesting a partial convergence across the markets

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.

Infrastructure is the backbone of modem economies; an adequate and efficient public infrastructure is essential for nations to achieve their economic growth objectives. Although the need and role of infrastructure are well recognized, little attention has been paid to the risks and pitfalls of the current infrastructure financing structures. The enormous infrastructure deficit and the increasing instances of debt restructurings, infrastructure project failures and expensive government bailouts, present enough reason for a deeper thought and action towards making infrastructure financing more robust. Through the thesis, the researcher sheds light on the problems related to such forms of financings and presents the case for an alternative model to finance infrastructure developments. The objective is to structure instruments based on Islamic risk-sharing principles and evaluate their efficacy to finance infrastructure projects. To test the viability of such instruments, we use the case study approach, whereby the cases of the Euro Tunnel and the Taiwan High Speed Rail have been simulated and backtested, to demonstrate how fortunes of these projects would have been different considering the use of the proposed instruments instead of conventional interest-bearing debt. The findings of the cash flow remodel are positive for both the cases and the introduction of the proposed instrument within the two project capital structures adds robustness to the projects. Moreover, the risk adjusted returns for investors tends to be higher in comparison to the conventional infrastructure financing structures. The findings provide a strong argument towards the use of lesser leverage for infrastructure financing and the use of risk-sharing instruments by governments to develop infrastructure. The proposed instrument while providing stability to infrastructure projects and economic benefits to its investors, is Shariah compliant or in line with the tenets of Islamic law and thus can be used by Shariah conscious investors to generate superior returns and by policy makers to further build the Islamic capital markets.

The Global Risk Report (2021) identifies ESG risks as the number one risk faced by the global economy. Banks have contributed to this risk and can also contribute to mitigating it. High exposure of Banks to ESG risks will contribute to climate disaster, which in turn will have financial risk implications for banks in the form of disaster events risks and energy transition risks. Depositors can discipline banks in reducing and preferably eliminating their ESG risks through enforcing market discipline by deposit withdrawal. This thesis investigates the extent to which deposit withdrawal works as market discipline against ESG risks in the banks of the OIC region. The thesis also examines the impact of financial risk represented by CAMELS variables on depositors' behavior. The generalized method of moments (System GMM estimator) is used for dynamic panel data models, as well as a sample from 65 countries over the period 2007 to 2016. Our findings indicate that depositors react significantly to environmental and governance risks while depositors' discipline does not exist with social risks. With regard to financial risks, our findings suggest weak evidence of market discipline. However, regressing CAMELS components separately provides better results and understanding than regressing CAMELS components collectively. In the OIC region, the study indicates that depositors tend to be sensitive to changes in capital adequacy, bank earnings and ESG risks, while in the non-OIC region, depositors are only sensitive to management quality.

Malaysian firms have been reported to be involved in Asset-Backed Securities since 1986 when Cagamas Bhd was the pioneer in the field. This research aims to examine the factors influencing spread in Malaysia's securitization market. In order to provide a test of stability and a choice of model, the multicollinearity test was conducted by providing information on the degree of correlation between the explanatory variables used in the multivariate regression analysis. Ordinary Least Square method was used for baseline, and panel data analysis was applied during the study period (2004-2012) for a more robust check of the analysis. The data were obtained from 90 non-financial firms or institutions and the number of observations carried out was 387. The results show that four determinants influence or contribute to the primary market spread and are statistically significant in developing securitisation in Malaysia. It can be concluded that loan to value, maturity, debt and crisis significantly contribute to the determinant primary market spread. From five hypotheses, two hypotheses support that the determinants have a relationship with primary market spread. The result will act as a model and benchmark for other ASEAN countries to use as Malaysia was resilient during the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008. Policy makers can use this study to execute the timing and quantum of issuance securitisation. The other findings of this study have considerable policy relevance. It could be stated that the higher the risk reflects the higher the spread of the firm, especially when there is lower credit rating during crisis periods and higher debt. Therefore, the role of a firm is to reduce the risk in order to reduce the spread, and simultaneously reduce the cost of financing by finding alternative sources of funding. The continued success of the Malaysian securitisation firms depends on their efficiency in using their resources and the competitiveness of the firms.

Technology startups (TSs) are critical to develop economic capacity, support innovation and stimulate entrepreneurial spirit In a nation. As TSs embark on innovative and disruptive journeys, they face their biggest challenge: financing. This study aims to examine the determinants of financing among TSs in Malaysia while critically examining the role of Islamic Finance. The study adopts a triangulation methodological approach, which consists of questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews. It focuses on Malaysian technology startups, entrepreneurs and their financing needs mainly at two stages: the early stage and the later stage. The study examines the following dependent variables as financing determinants: Entrepreneurs' Profiles (EP), Ethnic Culture (EC), innovation (IN) and Government Interventions (GI). It also examines the role of Islamic Finance among TSs. Binary regression analysis was used to analyse the data collected from the questionnaire survey, respectively grounded theory was employed to analyse interview survey data ...

This paper contradicts the existence of a universal value anomaly by studying Malaysia, a country with a unique institutional setting. We investigate this counter-example to attribute the anomaly to: 1) the leverage effect of value firms; 2) the investment pattern of growth firms; 3) the economic environment. We find that the value premium cannot be ascribed solely to risk as it is time varying and dependent on the attributes of the companies. Our results illustrate that small cap value firms perform relatively well during favourable economic conditions. In contrast, large cap growth firms perform better than their counterparts (i.e., large cap value firms) in economic upturns as they are preferentially awarded projects to revive the nation's growth.

This study aims to dispel the myth of the value anomaly by employing the logic of the well-known Austrian British philosopher Sir Karl Raimund Popper, who espoused that positive outcomes of empirical observation cannot confirm an anomaly, such as value premium (Popper, 1953).

This article empirically investigates the presence of financial constraints in the Malaysian capital market. The existence of financial constraints gives firm less access to external funds to finance their investment activities. Therefore, the constrained firm has to rely on internal sources of financing. The severity of financial constraints is relatively different according to firm size. Hence, the sample is divided into large and small firm subsamples. Using the Q model of investment, the results show that financial constraints are present in the Malaysian market using the full sample. The subsample results however show that large firms are not financially constrained. On the other hand, the smaller firms are facing the constraints in their investment decisions.

This study examines the impact of foreign aid on the institutional quality (IQ) of the OIC countries. Using the data of OIC countries for the three-year average period from 1991 to 2016, the system GMM finds that aid in general deteriorates the IQ for the aid recipient countries. However, quantile regression suggests that the negative impact of foreign aid on institutional quality (IQ) is relatively greater in the countries where the existing quality of institution is poor. The findings of the study suggest that improving the existing capacity is essential for reaping the optimum benefit of foreign aid on institutional development.

Recent literature draws attention to the issue of whether heterogeneity in investment horizons has an effect on resulting investor exposures. In this article, using Malaysia as a case study, we make the first attempt to examine comovement dynamics of Islamic equity returns to identify international portfolio diversification opportunities for investors having heterogeneous investment horizons. We use three recent and appropriate methodologies: M-GARCH-DCC, Continuous Wavelet Transforms (CWT), and Maximum Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform (MODWT). The results significantly tend to indicate that effective portfolio diversification opportunities between our sample markets exist mainly for short holding periods while for longer investment horizons, where investor stockholding periods exceed one year, the markets appear to be mostly highly correlated yielding minimal portfolio diversification benefits. Overall, the results critically highlight the significance of heterogeneity in investment horizons and bear important implications for portfolio diversification strategies

Malaysian firms have been reported to involve in Asset-Backed Securities since 1986s where Cagamas is a pioneer. The objective of this study to determine the primary market spread and analyze on firm financial performance. The methodology for this paper using regression analysis for the study period 2007-2012. They are three determinants that contribute and statistically significant for this research paper. The measurement of financial performance does not have any impact during subprime mortgage crisis. The firm results shows increasing profitability, reducing debt, stronger company value and shareholders earning better dividend.

In view of the increasing contributions of social capital in financial development, we examine the relevance of social capital in stock market development by applying Bayesian model averaging on 37 variables across 60 countries from 2000 to 2006. The results demonstrate that trust is a robust and positive determinant of stock market depth and liquidity, and that trust is the most relevant component of social capital in market development. Macroeconomic instability in the form of inflationary changes has a dampening effect on trust in the trading of stock. Further, social capital and its components, particularly trust, are more relevant to stock market development in countries with weak rule of law, non-Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (non-OECD) and Organization of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) countries that are generally characterized by lower formal institutional quality. Our results seek to reinforce the relevance of social capital in complementing the much needed reform of stock markets globally.