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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between Islamic banking and industrial production by decomposing Islamic financing (IF) into profit and loss sharing (PLS) and non-profit and loss sharing (non-PLS) modes of financing.

This paper applies the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach and Toda and Yamamoto causality test on the monthly data set for Malaysia from 2010M1 to 2018M6.

The results reveal that IF plays an important role in boosting industrial production in the short run, as well as in the long run. Moreover, this positive effect mainly comes from non-PLS financing. In contrast, no significant relationship was found between PLS financing and industrial development neither in the short run nor in the long run.

The results have several policy implications. The existence of a time lag between the pooling of funds through PLS contracts and their channeling to industrial activities imply that Malaysian Islamic banks should maintain a long-term relationship with investment account holders. In addition, Islamic banks are called to increase the portion of PLS financing. The positive relationship between the industrial production index and IF (through non-PLS techniques) in the short and the long runs implies that policymakers in Malaysia should multiply their efforts to further expand the Islamic banking industry.

The originality of this study lies in decomposing Islamic banks’ financing into PLS financing (muḍārabah and mushārakah) and non-PLS financing to assess the contribution of each mode of financing in industrial development.

This paper aims to investigate whether the COVID-19 pandemic leads to the formation of herding behaviour among investors in Shariah-compliant stocks.

This study uses a sample of the stocks that constitute the Dow Jones Islamic Market Malaysia Titans 25 Index, over the period from 6 December 2017 to 12 March 2021.

This paper provides robust evidence on the contribution of the COVID-19 pandemic to the formation of herding behaviour in Shariah-compliant stocks. The findings also reveal that herding behaviour occurs only during falling market.

The findings provide useful implications for policymakers and portfolio managers seeking to understand the behaviour of investors in Shariah-compliant stocks during turbulent periods. The presence of herding behaviour begs the question on the market efficiency and limits its potential to offer diversification benefits to investors. The findings suggest that policymakers and investors should mitigate misvaluations that occurred during the COVID-19 outbreak because the herding behaviour can drive stock prices away from their equilibrium values. Thus, regulators should adopt appropriate policies to enable the market to reach a more efficient level by monitoring and improving the quality of information and facilitate their transmission to the market. The misevaluation opportunity enables market timers to sell overpriced stocks and purchase underpriced stocks. The findings also imply that investors should implement effective hedging strategies to mitigate the downside risk. In addition, the results suggest that investors should devise their trading strategies in falling and rising markets during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is meagre literature on the effect of the COVID-19 outbreak on the formation of herding behaviour among investors. Studies conducted on herd behaviour are widely focused on Shariah non-compliant stocks, only a few ones deal with Shariah-compliant stocks. The novelty of this paper consists in addressing this gap in the literature through examining the presence of herding behaviour on the part of investors in Shariah-compliant stocks in Malaysia before and after the COVID-19 outbreak.

In this paper, the author aims to examine the effect of perceived level of corruption on bank profitability.

The analysis is based on a balanced panel of ten commercial banks in Tunisia over the period 2003-2014. The author uses the generalized method of moments estimator technique described by Arellano and Bover (1995).

The author finds a positive relationship between the bank profitability and the corruption level. This surprising result suggests that Tunisian commercial banks take advantage from the high level of corruption. Regarding the others determinants, the findings reveal that bank profitability is positively related to capitalization level and liquidity. By contrast, a low asset quality is associated with low profitability.

The novelty of this study consists in the inclusion of the corruption level as a determinant of bank profitability.

This study examines whether the Russia–Ukraine war affects herding behavior in the Moscow Exchange.

The authors employ the daily stock closing prices of 40 firms, which constitute the MOEX Russia Index from June 16, 2021, to November 30, 2022. The period before the invasion ranges from June 16, 2021, to February 23, 2022, while the post-invasion period runs from February 24, 2022, to November 30, 2022.

The findings suggest that the Russia–Ukraine war led to the formation of herding behavior among investors in Moscow Exchange. However, this herding behavior seems to be prevalent only during market downturns.

The results are important for policymakers and fund managers since they help them understand behavior patterns of investors during periods of war. Given the devastating effect of herd behavior on market stability, policymakers should implement a strategy to avoid this behavior. The formation of herding behavior during the Russia–Ukraine war indicates that uncertainty and fear caused by Western sanctions lead investors to imitate others which, in turn, could lead to equity mispricing. Thus, firm managers should take into account this evidence in equity issuance decisions in order to time the market. The findings raise questions about the validity of the efficient market hypothesis during the periods of war.

This study represents the first attempt to explore whether the Russia–Ukraine conflict contributes to the appearance of herding behavior among investors on Moscow Exchange.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it attempts to determine the factors that influence the stability of Islamic and conventional banks. Second, it focuses on the relationship between the regulatory capital and bank soundness.

Thus, the authors use the Z-score to assess the stability of Islamic and conventional banks operating in the Middle East and North Africa region over the period 1999 to 2014.

The comparative analysis reveals that Islamic banks seem to be less stable than their conventional peers. With regard to the determinants of bank stability, the findings suggest that the regulatory capital represents the primordial factor that reinforces the soundness of banking systems. The authors also find that bank stability depends on both bank-specific variables as well as macroeconomic and institutional variables. Interestingly, the corruption level turns out to have a significant negative effect on financial strength in the both types of banks.

The authors believe that investigating the relationship between regulatory capital and the failure risk in a comparative study between Islamic and conventional banks deserves a particular attention and looks very interesting because it will allow them to identify the difference between the factors explaining the failure risk of each type of banks. The authors also believe that the analysis of the relationship between corruption and bank stability is very interesting because corruption can be seen as an example of moral hazard which forces Islamic banks to use non-PLS instruments.

This study aims to identify calendar anomalies that can affect stock returns and asymmetric volatility. Thus, the objective of this study is twofold: on the one hand, it examines the impact of calendar anomalies on the returns of both conventional and Islamic indices in Indonesia, and on the other hand, it analyzes the impact of these anomalies on return volatility and whether this impact differs between the two indices.

The authors apply the GJR-generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model to daily data of the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) and the Jakarta Islamic Index for the period ranging from October 6, 2000 to March 4, 2022.

The authors provide evidence that the turn-of-the-month (TOM) effect is present in both conventional and Islamic indices, whereas the January effect is present only for the conventional index and the Monday effect is present only for the Islamic index. The month of Ramadan exhibits a positive effect for the Islamic index and a negative effect for the conventional index. Conversely, the crisis effect seems to be the same for the two indices. Overall, the results suggest that the impact of market anomalies on returns and volatility differs significantly between conventional and Islamic indices.

This study provides useful information for understanding the characteristics of the Indonesian stock market and can help investors to make their choice between Islamic and conventional equities. Given the presence of some calendar anomalies in the Indonesia stock market, investors could obtain abnormal returns by optimizing an investment strategy based on seasonal return patterns. Regarding the day-of-the-week effect, it is found that Friday’s mean returns are the highest among the weekdays for both indices which implies that investors in the Indonesian stock market should trade more on Fridays. Similarly, the TOM effect is significantly positive for both indices, suggesting that for investors are called to concentrate their transactions from the last day of the month to the fourth day of the following month. The January effect is positive and statistically significant only for the conventional index (JCI) which implies that it is more beneficial for investors to invest only in conventional assets. In contrast, it seems that it is more advantageous for investors to invest only in Islamic assets during Ramadan. In addition, the findings reveal that the two indices exhibit lower returns and higher volatility, which implies that it is recommended for investors to find other assets that can serve as a safe refuge during turbulent periods. Overall, the existence of these calendar anomalies implies that policymakers are called to implement the required measures to increase market efficiency.

The existing literature on calendar anomalies is abundant, but it is mostly focused on conventional stocks and has not been sufficiently extended to address the presence of these anomalies in Shariah-compliant stocks. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study to date has examined the presence of calendar anomalies and asymmetric volatility in both Islamic and conventional stock indices in Indonesia.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a comparative analysis of internal and external determinants of bank’s performance in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries.

The authors use a static unbalanced annual panel data of banks operating in eight countries pertaining to the MENA region (Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Lebanon, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) over the period from 1999 to 2014.

The findings reveal that the determinants of intermediation margins in the MENA region differ across countries. Overall, banks interest margins are explained by both bank-specific variables and macroeconomic factors except for Saudi Arabia in which interest margins exclusively depend on bank-specific factors.

These findings contribute to the clarification and critical analysis of the current state of bank’s performance in some countries located in MENA region, which would have several crucial policy implications.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the impact of corruption on the asset quality of banks operating in emerging market economies over the period 2008-2012. This issue is of crucial importance given the role of banking systems in economic development and the worldwide spread of corruption. Using panel data set of 22 countries, our findings provide a strong and robust support to the hypothesis according to which corruption aggravates the problem with non-performing loans. This evidence suggests that corruption may hinder economic development through the misallocation of loanable funds. Other results are as follows: economic expansion and capitalization level improve the loan portfolio quality. By contrast, unemployment deteriorates the debt servicing capacity of borrower which in turn contributes to lower the bank asset quality.

The authors use panel data techniques on a sample of 22 emerging market economies over the period 2008-2012 to test the relevance of corrupt practices on the soundness of banks.

Their findings reveal a robust positive relationship between corruption and non-performing loans (NPLs). This evidence corroborates previous results on the detrimental effect of corrupt practices on financial development. The subdivision of our main sample into two groups on the basis of the level of corruption reveals the importance of the effectiveness of collateral and bankruptcy laws in reducing the effect of corruption on loan portfolio. Moreover, we find that the accessibility to more credit information is helpful only in low corrupt countries since it enhances the soundness of banks by facilitating lending decisions.

The novelty of this paper is to take into consideration the implications of corruption in investigating the determinants of credit risk.

The distinctive feature of Islamic financial intermediation is its foundation on profit-and-loss sharing which reinforces solidarity and fraternity between partners. Thus, the bank margin and its determinants may differ between Islamic and conventional banks (CBs). The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess the main factors that explain the bank margin in a panel of Islamic and CBs operating in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This study will permit to identify the common and the specific determinants of the intermediation margins in dual banking systems.

The authors use a dynamic panel approach. The empirical analysis is carried out for a sample of 50 Islamic banks (IBs) and 126 CBs from 14 MENA countries.

The results reveal that net profit margins of IBs may be explained for the most part by risk aversion, inefficiency, diversification and economic conditions. With regard to CBs, their margins depend positively on market concentration and risk aversion and negatively on specialization, diversification, inefficiency and liquidity.

The significant impact of the degree of diversification on margins suggests that any policy analysis of the pricing behavior of banks should rely on its whole output. The high levels of margins in Islamic and CBs based in the MENA region may represent an obstacle to these countries to pursue their development process. Thus, policy makers in these countries should consolidate the role of capital markets and nonbanking financial institutions to provide alternative sources of funding and stimulate more competition.

The positive relationship between concentration and net interest margins requires that policy makers should create competitive conditions if they want to lower the social cost of financial intermediation. The creation of competitive conditions may be achieved through encouraging the establishment of new domestic banks or the penetration of foreign banks.

The present study aims to contribute to the existing literature on the determinants of bank margins in three ways. First, the authors identify the factors that most explain bank margins for both conventional and IBs. The majority of previous studies examine the determinants of the profitability or the overall performance of banks and in particular conventional ones. Second, this paper employs two generalized method of moments (GMM) approaches introduced by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Arellano and Bond (1991). It differs from Hutapea and Kasri (2010) who employed the co-integration technique to examine the long-run relationship between Islamic and CB margins and their determinants in Indonesia. Third, unlike previous studies focusing on MENA region that use a small number of countries and a short sample period, the period of study covers 16 years from 1999 to 2014 and a large sample of countries (14 countries). This paper differs from Lee and Isa (2017) who applied the dynamic two-step GMM estimator technique introduced by Arellano and Bond (1991) to study the determinants of intermediation margins of Islamic and CBs located in Malaysia.