Bitcoin—A hype or digital gold? Global evidence

This study explores whether Bitcoin constitutes as a hedging instrument whilst seeking portfolio diversification opportunities among sustainable, conventional and Islamic asset classes since Bitcoin emerges as a distinct alternative investment and asset class across the world. We apply multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic-dynamic conditional correlation and continuous wavelet transforms based on the recent data set ranging from August 18, 2011, to September 10, 2018. First, our findings show that Bitcoin returns are mean-reverting which implies that its value tends to come down to mean value in the long run and not completely crushed to zero irrespective of price changes suggesting Bitcoin as a sustainable asset class. Second, the time-invariant model shows that Bitcoin offers portfolio diversification opportunities with almost all equity indices, in particular, Dow Jones Islamic followed by FTSE 4 Good index. Finally, the time-variant analysis reconfirms that Bitcoin offers portfolio diversification benefits both in the short and long run. These findings carry meaningful policy considerations for fund managers and cross-country investors.     

The stability of money demand in China: Evidence from the ARDL model

This study examines the demand for broad money (M2) in China using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration framework. The results based on the bounds testing procedure confirm that a stable, long-run relationship exists between M2 and its determinants: real income, inflation, foreign interest rates and stock prices. Importantly, our results reveal that stock prices have a significant wealth effect on long- and short-run broad money demand; its omission can lead to serious misspecifications in the money demand function (MDF). This finding is consistent with the notion that asset inflation (deflation) has systematic influence on the pattern of monetary aggregates.     

Temporal causality and the dynamic interactions among macroeconomic activity within a multivariate cointegrated system: Evidence from Singapore and Korea

Temporal Causality and the Dynamic Interactions among Macroeconomic Activity within a Multivariate Cointegrated System: Evidence from Singapore and Korea. — The main purpose of this paper is to discern the dynamic causal relationship (in the Granger (temporal) sense) among real output, money, interest rate, inflation and exchange rate in the context of two small open economies, such as Singapore and Korea. The Granger-causal chain implied by the authors’ evidence that real output more often the authors’ predominantly leads (rather than lags) money supply followed by other three endogenous variables, is consistent more with the recent Real Business Cycle theory than with the other two major macroeconomic paradigms such as the Keynesian and the Monetarist.     

Fractional cointegration,low frequency dynamics and long-run purchasing power parity: an analysis of the Australian dollar over its recent float

A relatively new but generalized concept of fractional cointegration is applied to shed some light on the validity of purchasing power parity (PPP) as a long-run equilibrium condition, by examining the long-run relationship between quarterly consumer price indices and bilateral exchange rates of the Australian dollar and seven major OECD trading partners, over Australia's recent float. The paper demonstrates that relaxing the condition that the residual from the cointegration equation must be a I(0) process, provides a wide range of cases of parity-reversion with processes that are CI(1,d) with 0 < d < 1. Findings tend to suggest that, while standard tests of cointegration fail to support cointegration between nominal exchange rates, domestic and foreign prices, and thus the empirical favour for PPP as a long-run phenomenon, the fractional cointegration analysis permits deviations from equilibrium to follow a fractionally integrated process and hence captures a much wider class of parity or mean-reversion behaviour. Results are mainly supportive of long-run PPP. Furthermore, an analysis of the short-run dynamics propelling the long-run relationship (through a VECM) reveals that domestic prices are consistently the initial receptor of an exogenous shock to the equilibrium and the long-run equilibrium is restored through the short-run adjustment of the nominal exchange rates. These findings are shown to hold clear policy implications.     

Testing the Conventional and Islamic Financial Market Contagion: Evidence from Wavelet Analysis

This study is a first attempt at testing the extent of contagion for conventional and Shari’ah-compliant stock indices. We examine the period surrounding the U.S. subprime crisis of 2007–9 and the Lehman Brothers collapse of 2008 to determine the relative extent of contagion. We find no clear evidence of contagion during the subprime crisis however, during the Lehman collapse most conventional indices showed contagion. Interestingly, the Shari’ah-compliant indices mostly do not show evidence of contagion. Collectively, our results have important implications for fund managers in terms of asset allocation risk and policymakers seeking an optimal policy response to crises.     

Religion of Islam and Microfinance: Does It Make Any Difference?

This study is the initial attempt to investigate first whether microfinance institutions (MFIs) perform differently in the OIC countries where Islam is the prevailing religion and second, how Islamic microfinance institutions are different (if any) from the conventional MFIs. To accomplish these objectives, we employ a dynamic difference and system-generalized method of moments estimators. Our findings tend to indicate that there are significant differences in the way Islamic MFIs performed and operated as compared to that of the conventional MFIs in certain regions. However, in other regions, there were no significant differences in operation and performance between the Islamic MFIs and Conventional MFIs. The study presents important insights for the Islamic microfinance managers and donors as well as the policy makers.     

Re-Examining the Determinants of Islamic Bank Performance: New Evidence from Dynamic GMM,Quantile Regression,and Wavelet Coherence Approaches

This study is the first attempt to conduct a comparative analysis of the internal and external determinants of the Islamic banks’ profitability in the GCC region applying dynamic GMM, quantile regression, and wavelet coherence approaches. The dynamic GMM tends to indicate that equity financing and operating efficiency and macroeconomic variables such as money supply, and inflation are significantly related to Islamic banks’ performance. The bank-specific variables such as credit risk, equity ratio, and cost-efficiency ratios are not significant at different percentiles. ROA is driven by credit risk, equity ratio, and cost-efficiency ratios (as evidenced in wavelet coherence analysis).