• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.515-521
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• 2021

The popularity of Islamic financial instruments among Muslims is not surprising. The Islamic capital market is where sharia-compliant financial assets are transacted. It works parallel to the conventional market and helps investors find sharia-compliant investment opportunities. At a time of collective confusion when the COVID-19 epidemic is contributing to unprecedented change, this paper is keen to understand how attractive conventional and Islamic stock markets have been to investors recently. Second, this paper takes advantage of the time-scale decomposition property of the wavelet to simultaneously capture risk exposure and distinguish the risks faced by short- and long-term investors. To this end, this research conducted a two-step investigation of the daily closing equity market price indices for three Islamic stock markets and their conventional counterparts. Given that different financial decisions occur with greater or less frequency, the paper examines the connectedness of stock markets operating at heterogeneous rates and identifies the timescales using wavelet-DCC-GARCH analysis to take account of both the time and the frequency domains of stock market connectedness. The paper findings highlight the strong evidence of contagion that can be seen in nearly all conventional stock markets in the COVID-19 pandemic; they reach a high level of dependency in such health crises. Furthermore, Islamic stock markets prove to be a rich ground for global diversification.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.31-38
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• 2021

The study investigates the diversification behavior of Islamic stocks against US financial uncertainty. Considering limitations found in the literature, a comprehensive index of financial uncertainty (FU) is used, developed by Jurado, Ludvigson, and Ng (2015). The empirical analysis uses monthly data from four Islamic markets - Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Turkey - for the period from January 2010 to September 2019. Results of the bivariate EGARCH models show that Islamic stocks can be used for diversification purpose against the financial uncertainty of the US because the volatility of US uncertainty does not propagate in the Islamic stock markets. Moreover, findings show that the spillover effect of financial uncertainty varies with the FU forecast horizon. The spillover effect of FU increases with an increase in the FU forecast horizon and becomes significant over 3-month and 12-month periods in the case of Saudi Arabia. The current volatility of Islamic stock returns is independent of the size of shocks in past volatility. The leverage effect and asymmetry have been found in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. The findings validate the arguments of the literature that Islamic markets are resilient facing uncertainties and perform well during crisis periods. The findings are important for investors in making better portfolio decisions.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.759-770
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• 2021

Using a DCC - GARCH model analysis, this paper examines the existence of financial contagion from the U.S. stock market to the Vietnamese and the Philippine stock markets during the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. We use daily data from the S&P 500 (U.S.), VN-Index (Vietnam), and the PSEi (the Philippines). As a result, there is no evidence of contagion from the U.S stock market to the Philippine stock market that can be found during global financial crisis, while the Vietnamese market is influenced by this effect. Besides, both these developing stock markets (the Vietnamese and Philippine stock markets) are influenced by the contagion effect in COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Another finding is that the contagion effect during the coronavirus pandemic crisis in Vietnam is smaller than that during the global financial crisis, however, the opposite is the case for the Philippines. It is noticed that the Philippines seems to be more affected by the contagion effect from the COVID-19 pandemic than Vietnam at the time of this study. Because financial contagion is important for monetary policy, asset pricing, risk measurement, and portfolio allocation, the findings in this paper may give some useful information for policymakers and investors.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.37-65
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• 2016

This research intends to investigate the progress made in East Asian bond market integration thus far. Price-based measures (AAD indicator and beta-convergence measure), quantity-based measures and econometric techniques (co-integration test, error correction model based Granger causality test) are employed in the analysis. Even though East Asian government bond markets have become more integrated since 2001, the differentials among the markets still remain significantly high. The bond market integration process seems slow. The convergence of bond markets sped up in 2003 and after the 2008 world financial crisis, implying the important role of government policies in integrating the regional bond markets. East Asian bond market integration may need more government-directed measures.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.97-115
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• 2012

This paper investigates the relationship between financial markets and output growth for a panel of 27 Asian countries over 1960-2009. It utilizes the recently-developed panel cointegration techniques to test and estimate the long-run equilibrium relationship between real GDP and financial development proxies. Real GDP and financial development variables are found to have unit roots and to be cointegrated, based on various panel unit root tests and panel cointegration tests. We find that there is a statistically significant positive bi-directional cointegrating relationship between financial development and output growth by three distinct methods of panel cointegration estimation. Empirical findings suggest that financial market development promotes output growth and in turn output growth stimulates further financial development.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.11
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• pp.11-19
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• 2021

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the stock prices of the companies traded on the UAE financial markets (Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and Dubai Financial Market). The time series regressions have been applied to estimate the impact of COVID-19 data on the companies' stock prices movements. The data cover the period between January 29^th, 2020, and January 5^th, 2021. The data was collected from the website of the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre of the UAE. The empirical results of this study show that the stock prices are negatively and significantly affected by the number of COVID-19 positive cases and the number of death while they are positively and significantly affected by the number of recoveries. The results vary from one industry to another. These results would be important to the policymakers and financial regulators in developing the needed policies to improve the stock markets' resilience and maintain financial and economic stability. In addition, the findings would be useful to the investors and portfolio managers in taking the most appropriate investment decisions and managing more efficiently their portfolios. This paper will shed light on the responsiveness of the UAE financial market to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.747-757
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• 2021

The primary purpose of the study is to investigate the volatility spillover from financial uncertainty (FU) of the United States (US) to the stock markets of SAARC member countries including India, Sri-Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The empirical literature overlooked SAARC countries and the FU index. Based on the estimation method, the data of FU is available for three different forecast horizons including 1-month, 3-months, and 12-months. For empirical analysis, monthly data is used from February 2013 to September 2019. EGARCH model is employed to investigate the volatility spillover effects. The findings of the study show that the spillover effect of FU varies with the forecast horizon. The FU with a higher forecast horizon has a significant spillover effect on more countries. The spillover effect of US financial uncertainty is negative in most of the SAARC countries. Bangladesh stock market is influenced by FU with all three forecast horizons whereas the volatility of the Pakistan stock market is not influenced by FU with any forecast horizon. The findings are consistent with the concept of "limited trade openness" in the financial markets of emerging economies. The emerging economies avoid financial market openness to minimize the risk of spillover of other countries.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.11-19
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• 2021

This study aims to analyze the causality relationship between sectoral stock markets (agricultural, financial, industrial, and mining sectors) and economic growth in the short and long term as well as to analyze whether it has similar types or not. The data used is quarterly time-series data (first quarter 2009 to fourth 2019). To determine the causality relationship, this study conducts a variable and multivariate causality test. The results of the varying granger causality test show that there is only a one-way relationship, where the economic growth of the agriculture sector affects its shares. A one-way relationship also occurs in stocks of the industrial sector, which has an influence on economic growth. The multivariate causality test shows that the economic growth of the agricultural sector has a two-way causality relationship, and it also exists between the industrial sector and the financial sector stock markets. The two-way causality relationship between the stock market and sectoral economic growth is a convergence towards long-term equilibrium. The findings of this study suggest that the government through the Financial Services Authority and the Indonesia Stock Exchange have to maintain stability in the stock market as a supporter of the national economy.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.171-179
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• 2021

In the international markets, financial variables can be volatile and may affect each other, especially in the crisis times. COVID-19, which began in China in 2019 and spread to many countries of the world, created a crisis not only in the global health system but also in the international financial markets and economy. The purpose of this study is to analyze the contagious effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the volatility of selected financial variables such as Bitcoin, gold, oil price, and exchange rates and the connections between the volatilities of these variables during the pandemic. For this aim, we use the ARMA-EGARCH model to measure the impact of volatility and shocks. In other words, it is aimed to measure whether the impact of the shock on the financial variables of the contagiousness of the epidemic is also transmitted to the markets. The data was collected from secondary and daily data from September 2th 2019 to December 20th, 2020. It can be said that the findings obtained have statistically significant effects on the conditional variability of the variables. Therefore, there are findings that the shocks in the market are contaminated with each other.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.11
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• pp.241-250
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• 2020

This study examines the relationship between the attributes of board structure and the likelihood of financial distress for the non-financial sector of an emerging market characterized by concentrated ownership and family-controlled business. The present study utilized panel logistic regression to estimate the relationship between board structure attributes and the likelihood of financial distress. We used Altman Z-Score as a proxy for firm financial distress, as this tool measures the financial distress inversely. The study finds a significant relationship between board size and the likelihood of financial distress. The results show that a one-unit increase in board size would decrease the probability of financial distress by 3.4%. Further, we observe that a greater level of board independence is associated with a lower likelihood of financial distress. A one-unit increase in board independence would decrease the probability of financial distress by 20.4%. We also find a significant positive impact of leverage on the likelihood of financial distress. The present study contributes to the body of literature on board structure attributes and likelihood of financial distress in emerging markets, like Pakistan. Furthermore, the findings would be beneficial for corporate policymakers and investors in formulating corporate financial strategy and predicting business failure.