Abstract-This study examines the impact of oil price volatility on firm performance in the context of an emerging market, Malaysia. The effect of crude oil price on the performance is examined for the period of January 1986 to December 2011 using GARCH and EGARCH models reflecting the evaluation on volatility and asymmetric effects. Results indicate the significant effect of oil price volatility on stock market volatility and also the asymmetric effects. For policy makers, the findings help to clarify the dilemma of whether the government should subsidize or totally depend on global oil prices in ensuring the sustainability and competitiveness of Malaysian companies. In addition, the results may assist businessmen in managing cost structures in the event of rising oil prices in relation to both short term and long term planning and provide investors with a better picture of the exposure to oil price risks when investing in Malaysian companies.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether market conditions have an effect on investors’ propensity to herd in an emerging economy’s stock market. Additionally, given the lack of research on Islamic behavioral finance, the authors further investigate if the herding phenomenon is distinct in Islamic versus conventional stocks. Design/methodology/approach The authors used daily data for the period of 1995–2016 according to the herding behavior model of Chang et al. (2000), which relies on cross-sectional absolute deviation of returns. Findings Findings reveal the herding behavior of investors among Shariah-compliant during up and down market exits with non-linear relationship to the market return, while for conventional stocks herding behavior does not exist with linear nor nonlinear relationships during the up and down market. Furthermore, for the whole market, herding behavior only exists during upmarket with a nonlinear relationship to the market return. However, this relationship is not significant. Moreover, the results of this study are robust with respect to the effect of the Asian and global financial crisis. Practical implications The findings are useful for investors to identify which market conditions are associated with rational and irrational behavior of investors. Originality/value Most of the theoretical and empirical studies on herding behavior have focused on developed countries. Only a few studies have paid attention to the herding behavior in Islamic financial markets, particularly in the context of an emerging market such as Malaysia. This study fills this void.

ABSTRAK Kajian ini menganalisis hubungan kecekapan bank dengan risiko kecairan ke atas 16 bank Islam dan 27 bank konvensional di Malaysia bagi tempoh 1994Malaysia bagi tempoh -2014

This study assesses and compares the productive efficiency of the national healthcare system of the ASEAN region which includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam amidst rising mortality rate from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) era. Nonparametric data envelopment analysis technique based on the Malmquist Productivity Index is performed and its components, total factor productivity change, technical change and technological change are compared across the region. Two different models are considered in assessing and comparing the technical efficiency of the national healthcare system across the region with life expectancy at birth and mortality rate from NCDs as parallel health care output for both the models. The mean value of total factor productivity is 0.983 and 0.974 which suggests that national healthcare system productivity efficiency decays by 1.7% for Model I and 2.6% for Model II, respectively. This suggests that the health care system inefficiencies across the ASEAN region have not made life expectancy to improve as much as it should be and curtailed the mortality rate from growing chronic NCDs within a decade. The region is likely to lag behind in achieving SDGs 3 target 4 on reducing by one‐third premature mortality from chronic NCDs unless the health care system's technical efficiency is improved across the region. The finding suggests a microlevel study on each country to identify major sources of healthcare system inefficiency in a bid to ameliorate it.

This paper presents the determinants of liquidity risk and performance in conventional and Islamic bank. The data have collected from 2008 to 2014 and panel data analysis was used. The results revealed that the most significant factor is the capitalization. Capitalization also has a strong relationship with performance using parsimonious model. The best model from the result is Bahrain conventional bank. Based on finding, problem of liquidity risk related to regulatory requirement will decrease and this will gives banks to increase their profitability and improve their financial performance.

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This study investigates the impact of foreign exchange (forex) exposure and Shariah-compliant status on firms' decision to practise hedging. It employs panel multiple and multinomial logistic regression on 702 firm-year observations from 117 non-financial listed firms over the period from 2010 to 2015. The sample consists of 70% Shariah-compliant firms, representative of the 74%-85% Shariah-compliant firms listed on Bursa Malaysia during the study period. From the multinomial logistic regression, this study finds total and net foreign currency exposures are significant in predicting hedging for firms that practice one and two hedging instruments. Moreover, the results also reveal that Shariah-compliant status always significantly and directly influence firms that hedge, except for firms that use four hedging instruments. This study contributes to the literature by introducing direct measurements of foreign currency exposure which prove to be significant indicators of forex exposure. Accurate measurement of forex exposure is crucial as it has implications on the firms' ability to predict its cash flows, commit to future projects, and subsequently, increase its value. Since firms do not disclose whether the instruments used are conventional or Shariah-compliant, this study assumes that all instruments are conventional and therefore, being Shariah-compliant hinder the firms from practising hedging. However, the results reveal those firms that hedge are indeed Shariah-compliant. This finding should raise a great concern among the Islamic capital market regulators to require stricter rules and greater transparency among Shariah-compliant firms.

The present study investigates the return and volatility spillover between the stock markets of the US, Japan and Malaysia using weekly data concerning the S&P 500, NIKKEI Financial markets play a prominent role in economic growth and development by encouraging the accumulation of capital and facilitating the link between savers and investors for efficient capital allocation. Financial market volatility, particularly stock market volatility, may harm the smooth functioning of economic systems (Merton & Bodie 1995;Mala & Reddy 2007). Volatility, which is measured by the conditional standard deviation of the underlying asset return, denotes the risk and uncertainty of financial assets (Tsay 2010;Brooks 2008). The analysis of volatility among stock markets is an interesting and important subject in modern financial literature because stock market volatility directly affects stock pricing, investing and economic performance. On the other hand, a stable stock market indicates stability in the economy of that particular country and will thereby attract investment to the country (Sharpe 1964;Lintner 1965;Gee & Karim 2010). Therefore, the importance of exploration to determine the sources of volatility in financial markets cannot be denied.The subject of stock market volatility in emerging markets has attracted the attention of international portfolio managers in recent years because emerging markets provide opportunities for portfolio diversification; and a high rate of return for investors due to the risky nature of such markets (Gee & Karim 2010). The Malaysian stock market has attracted the attention of portfolio manager because Malaysia, which is deemed to be an emerging Chap 9.indd 101