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The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been causing knock-on effects worldwide. The supply and price of major commodity markets (oil, gas, platinum, gold, and silver) have been greatly impacted. Due to the ongoing conflict, financial markets across the world have experienced a strong dynamic regarding commodities prices. This effect can be considered the biggest change since the occurrence of the financial crisis in the year 2008, which explicitly influenced the oil and gold markets. This study attempts to investigate the impacts of the Russian invasion crisis on the dynamic connectedness among five commodities and the G7 and BRIC (leading stock) markets. We have applied the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) method, which reflects the way spillovers are shaped by various crises periods, and we found extreme connectedness among all commodities and markets (G7 and BRIC). The findings show that gold and silver (commodities) and the United States, Canada, China, and Brazil (stock markets) are the receivers from the rest of the commodities/market’s transmitters of shocks during this invasion crisis. This research has policy implications that could be beneficial to commodity and stock investors, and these implications could guide them to make many decisions about investment in such tumultuous situations. Policymakers, institutional investors, bankers, and international organizations are the possible beneficiaries of these policy decisions.

Islamic finance has grown rapidly in the recent years particularly in the Middle East and the world. It receives a great attention of bankers and financial scholars due to its stability during financial shocks and crises. The paper uses empirical analysis to test the role of Islamic banking in enhancing the economic growth of United Arab Emirates (UAE). Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross formation (GF), and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) are used as representatives for economic growth, while Islamic banks’ investments are used as a representative for Islamic financial sector in the UAE. The study uses time series techniques to test the link between the variables. In the current study, co-integration along with error correction models is utilized. All econometric work is done using Eviews. The findings reveal that the causal relationship between Islamic banks’ investments and economic growth of UAE is supply-leading direction. Furthermore, the findings depict that Islamic investments have contributed in increasing investments and in bringing FDI into the country in the long-term. The study also shows that there is two-way association between Islamic banks’ investments and FDI. It shows that FDI supports Islamic banking and Islamic banking brings FDI. The paper concludes that authorities of the UAE should devote more attention for this growing banking sector by facilitating regulations for establishing new Islamic banks and then creating a suitable environment for their growth and progress in the UAE.

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The current wave of COVID-19 outbreak has created new strategical challenges for policy officials of the industrial sector across the world. The effect of COVID-19 is more in developing economies where industrial sector is already struggling for its stability. This study introduces the impact of COVID-19 on the corporate investment behavior of non-financial publicly listed firms of Pakistan. To achieve the objective, we employ the panel data ranging from 2010 to 2020 and apply the difference-in-differences (DID) model to quantifies the empirical relationship. The outcomes of DID model suggest that the pandemic period and treatment have a significant and negative impact on corporate capital investment behavior. During pandemic spread period, the enterprises have limited their investment into fixed assets due to less productive use of such assets. Similarly, industries that exist in high-impact areas face a negative investment growth rate due to quarantine policy, fewer social movements, and high installing cost of new machinery. However, this negative effect diminishes across those firms that have a quick cash inflow rate and more availability of bank loans. These two factors serve as a financial setback against the adversities of pandemic. By drawing upon the empirical reasoning on the effect of COVID-19, this study also presents possible solutions to alienate unfavorable impacts of this pandemic. Current analysis can be considered as an early attempt towards investigating the consequences of COVID-19 on investment decisions of industrial sector.JEL Classification: G32: G31: G40: C33 Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-SPER-11 Full Text: PDF

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The issue of co-movements is still crucial and arguable in international finance. An optimum and significant level of co-movement is highly desirable to investors, and it mostly depends on investors’ decisions (behavior and psychology). We use frequency–time bands and multi-scale-based wavelet analysis to investigate the co-movement between developed and emerging countries’ stock markets for better asset allocation and portfolio diversification strategies. The results show that a significant level of co-movement is observed between conventional and Islamic stock markets in developed and emerging countries, and it varies in terms of its time–frequency domain properties. Particularly, the dependency among conventional and Islamic stock markets is strong at 4–512-band scales. However, the USA Islamic stock market illustrates a higher level of coherency with the UK, Japan and China’s Islamic stock markets, while a relatively lower level of co-movement is detected with the Chinese composite, Malaysian and Indonesian Islamic stock markets. The findings further confirm that the developed countries’ stock markets are substantially influenced by the GFC in 2007–2008 and the European debt crisis in 2012, while this trend is surprisingly not observed in the emerging markets on a similar scale. Therefore, these crises have opened the door for the grabbing of portfolio diversification benefits from the emerging countries’ stock markets. These findings give some interesting insights to policymakers, investors and fund managers for portfolio diversification and risk management strategies.