Search results

Based on a sample of 1,872 firm-year observations for 573 global firms over the period 2013–2016, this study aims to provide empirical evidence on how environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance affects corporate creditworthiness as measured by credit default swap (CDS) spreads.

The authors use a regression model that accounts for country, industry and time-fixed effects as well as the instrumental-based Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) approach to dynamic panel modeling.

This study finds that improvements in ESG performance, especially in its governance pillar, reduce credit risk. Further, the authors uncover evidence suggesting the complementarity between ESG performance and country-level sustainability. The results indicate a stronger risk-mitigating impact of ESG performance in countries with higher sustainability scores.

In terms of practical implications, the findings suggest that corporations should strengthen governance frameworks and procedures to reduce credit risk, prior to embarking on environmental and social objectives. Further, the finding that country sustainability is an important determinant of CDS spreads suggests that country-level sustainability initiatives would not only help to preserve natural capital and promote social capital but also be beneficial to businesses and financial stability.

The study adds to the literature on the effects of ESG performance on credit risk by (1) utilizing a measure of ESG performance that considers the financial materiality of ESG issues across different industries; (2) utilizing a market-based measure of credit risk and CDS spreads; (3) examining the relative importance of ESG components to credit risk, rather than just the aggregate measure; and (4) assessing the influence of country sustainability on the relationship between ESG and credit risk.

The purpose of this paper is evaluate the interrelations between Islamic financing and key economic and financial variables including real output, price level, interest rate and stock prices for the case of Malaysia.

The paper makes use of a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model to discern the influences of key economic and financial variables on the behavior of Islamic financing.

The basic results indicate that Islamic financing responds positively to innovations in real output. In addition, the price level shocks also tend to have significant but lagged effects on the financing provision of Islamic banks. Most interestingly, Islamic financing is impacted negatively and immediately by positive interest rate shocks, contradicting the argument that Islamic bank operations are shielded from interest rate fluctuations. Indeed, the excess sensitivity of Islamic banks to interest rate fluctuations and their lagged responses to price level shocks are found to be robust across alternative SVAR specifications.

Operating under a dual banking system, Islamic banks are not immune from monetary conditions of the country. Indeed, it seems to be exposed to the interest rate risk, an aspect that needs to be accounted for by Islamic banks in their risk management.

With the emergence of Islamic finance industry, understanding the implications of various macroeconomic factors on Islamic financing is essential. This study adds to this understanding, which has received limited attention.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influences of real share prices on aggregate consumption for Malaysia with the focus on whether there is asymmetry in the long‐run relation of the two variables.

The paper specifies aggregate consumption to depend on real income and real share prices. Alternatively, imposing long‐run budget constraint, the paper specifies the relation between aggregate consumption and real share prices as ratio to real income. Then, it applies an asymmetric cointegration and error correction modeling.

The cointegration tests indicate the presence of a long‐run relation between consumption‐income ratio and share price‐income ratio. More interestingly, while changes in share prices exert short‐run causal influences on Malaysia's private consumption, evidence is found for the adjustments of consumption – income ratio to the long‐run equilibrium path only when it is above its long‐run value. The paper interprets the finding as suggesting downward revisions in the consumption patterns when there are adverse shocks in share prices and, accordingly, supports the existence of especially negative wealth effect for Malaysia.

Owing to data limitations, the paper relies on aggregate consumption and aggregate income data. It acknowledges that the sum of non‐durable consumption and flow‐of‐services from durable purchases and labor income are more appropriate measures of, respectively, consumption and real income.

The findings have important implications for understanding consumption behavior in a developing country and can provide insight on the effectiveness of monetary policy.

Analyzes dynamic linkages between stock prices and four macroeconomic variables for the case of Malaysia using standard and well‐accepted methods of cointegration and vector autoregression. Empirical results suggest the presence of a long‐run relationship between these variables and the stock prices and substantial short‐run interactions among them. In particular, documents positive short‐run and long‐run relationships between the stock prices and two macroeconomic variables. The exchange rate, however, is negatively associated with the stock prices. For the money supply, documents immediate positive liquidity effects and negative long‐run effects of money supply expansion on the stock prices. Also notes the predictive role of the stock prices for the macroeconomic variables. However, there seems to be irregularity in the data when observations from the recent crisis are included. Finally, documents the disappearance of the immediate positive liquidity effects of the money supply shocks and unstable interactions between the stock prices and the exchange rate over time.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the implication of trade on carbon emissions in a panel of eight highly trading Southeast and East Asian countries, namely, China, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong, The Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

The analysis relies on the standard quadratic environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) extended to include energy consumption and international trade. A battery of panel unit root and co-integration tests is applied to establish the variables’ stochastic properties and their long-run relations. Then, the specified EKC is estimated using the panel dynamic ordinary least square (OLS) estimation technique.

The panel co-integration statistics verifies the validity of the extended EKC for the countries under study. Estimation of the long-run EKC via the dynamic OLS estimation method reveals the environmentally degrading effects of trade in these countries, especially in ASEAN and plus South Korea and Hong Kong.

These countries are heavily dependent on trade for their development processes, and as such, their impacts on CO₂ emissions would be highly relevant for assessing their trade policies, along the line of the gain-from-trade hypothesis, the race-to-the-bottom hypothesis and the pollution-safe-haven hypothesis.

The analysis adds to existing literature by focusing on the highly trading nations of Southeast and East Asian countries. The results suggest that reassessment of trade policies in these countries is much needed and it must go beyond the sole pursuit of economic development via trade.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between gold return and stock market return and whether its relation changes in times of consecutive negative market returns for an emerging market, Malaysia.

The paper applies the autoregressive distributed model to link gold returns to stock returns with TGARCH/EGARCH error specification using daily data from August 1, 2001 to March 31, 2010, a total of 2,261 observations.

A significant positive but low correlation is found between gold and once‐lagged stock returns. Moreover, consecutive negative market returns do not seem to intensify the co‐movement between the gold and stock markets as normally documented among national stock markets in times of financial turbulences. Indeed, there is some evidence that the gold market surges when faced with consecutive market declines.

Based on these results, there are potential benefits of gold investment during periods of stock market slumps. The findings should prove useful for designing financial investment portfolios.

The paper evaluates the role of gold from a domestic perspective, which should be more relevant to domestic investors in guarding against recurring heightened stock market risk.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically evaluate the wealth and credit‐price effects in the relations between housing prices and stock prices for Thailand using quarterly data from 1995 to 2006.

The analysis relies on a four‐variable vector autoregression (VAR) framework consisting of house prices, stock prices, real output and consumer prices. Granger causality tests, impulse‐response functions and variance decompositions simulated from the estimated VAR systems are adopted as bases for inferences.

The results obtained from Granger causality tests, impulse‐response functions and variance decompositions all suggest a unidirectional causality that runs from stock prices to house prices. Thus, the wealth effect is unequivocally supported for the Thai case. The paper also documents the importance of real activity in influencing both house and stock prices. Likewise, stock prices do exert significant effects on real output and to some extent the general price level. These results have an implication that stock market stability is critical for the stability of the housing market as well as the goods market.

The paper provides an emerging market perspective on stock price – house price relations, which seem to be lacking in the literature.

The paper evaluates the international linkage of Indonesian stock market during pre‐crisis and post‐crisis periods using time series techniques of cointegration and vector autoregression (VAR). We find evidence for lack of cointegration among the Indonesian market, other ASEAN markets (Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) and two advanced markets (the US and Japan) during both pre‐crisis and post‐crisis periods. Looking at short run dynamics, we document evidence for substantial interactions among the ASEAN markets. However, it seems that the Indonesian market becomes more segmented from other ASEAN markets during the post‐crisis period. Additionally, while most ASEAN markets respond quickly to shocks in the US regardless of the sample period and seem to be less influenced by the Japanese market post crisis, the Indonesian market becomes more responsive to the developed markets of the US and Japan during the post crisis period.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the oil price pass‐through into consumer price inflation for a developing country: Malaysia. The focus is on whether aggregate consumer prices and different consumer price components or sub‐price indexes are related in different ways to oil price in the long run and in the short run.

The analysis adopts the Phillips curve framework augmented to include the oil price. In modeling, a proper consideration is given to the integration and cointegration properties of the variables under consideration. Moreover, the asymmetric effects of oil price changes are also examined.

The paper finds evidence for a long run relation or cointegration of the oil price with only the aggregate consumer price and food price indexes. Moreover, in the short run, the oil price changes have significant bearings on the consumer price inflation, the food price inflation, the rent, fuel and power price inflation and the transportation and communication price inflation. In addition, the short‐run asymmetry in the oil price – food price inflation is also evident. Finally, the authors observe the neutrality of the medical care and health price index to the oil price changes.

The result that the inflationary consequence of oil price hikes is likely to work mainly through the food prices has important implications on the effects of oil price changes on the poor and policy directions to contain inflation.

The paper contributes to existing literature that has a predominant focus on the inflationary effect of oil prices at the aggregate level by looking at the relations between oil price and disaggregated good prices in the long run, short run, or both.