Izlin Ismail

University of Malaya | UM · Department of Finance and Banking, Faculty of Business and Accountancy

Purpose Exchange rate volatility is an important factor affecting investors and policymakers. This study aims to examine the impact of uncertainties, in terms of changes in economic policy, monetary policy and global financial markets, on exchange rate volatility. Design/methodology/approach The study uses the GARCH (1,1) univariate model to calcu...

This study aims to analyze the influence of the system quality and information quality from the Correctional Database System (CDS) on the job performance of correctional Technical Support Officers (TSO) in Sumatra, either directly or through the mediating role of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. This study tested 118 correctional off...

This paper examines the antecedents of cashless payment systems among businesses in Malaysia. The adoption of cashless payment systems by businesses has the potential to reduce the costs related to handling huge amounts of cash in the market and enhance transaction speed. Unfortunately, its current adoption in Malaysia is still small and very littl...

This study investigates whether the trading range breakout technical trading rule can be applied in exchange-traded funds. Using the samples of crude oil exchange-traded funds, namely USO, USL, UCO, and DBO, that track West Texas intermediate (WTI), the results indicate that the trading range breakout technical trading rule outperforms the benchmar...

This study measures the impact of the implementation of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) on firms' green innovation initiatives. We used 20 years of panel data from the Fortune 500 list of the US largest companies. Based on DID, a benchmark regression, the RGGI has a significant adverse effect on the green innovation of Fortune 500 com...

Microfinance has been a silver bullet with a noble goal of assisting impoverished people by providing small loans. Lately, claims are coming that MFIs abandon their social objective and focus more on financial sustainability. Most of the impact assessment of microfinance is based on randomized control trial (RCT) and conventional econometrics appro...

The U.S. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a regional market-based regulatory scheme for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the electric power sector in ten northeastern states. It promotes energy efficiency, renewable energy, direct energy bill assistance to citizens, and technological innovation. Conventionally, green innovation ha...

This study examines the linkages between exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and their benchmark indices from 2013 to 2019 using iShares MSCI of ten Asia-Pacific countries. Our results show, first, that there is a long-run causality running from the benchmark index to ETFs. These findings imply that ETFs may replicate the performance of the benchmark inde...

Motivated by the recent interest of stock traders and investors towards the deep learning neural network, this study employs the deep learning neural networks, namely, multilayer perceptron, long short-term memory, and convolutional neural network, to forecast the Asian Tiger stock markets. One of the challenges to using deep learning neural networ...

This study attempts to predict how long a newly listed corporation, usually termed initial public offering (IPO), will survive on the equity listing market. The three-fold contribution of this study comprises a hand-collected and substantially expanded dataset for listed IPOs (1990–2017) over a maximum tracking period of 31 years (1990–2020) to pre...

Energy efficiency (EE) is an evolving research aspect for researchers, businesses, and policymakers for its undeniable role in meeting increasing energy demand, reducing CO2 emissions, and tackling climate change. This paper provides a review of the current state of EE research by mapping the research landscape in business and economics to understa...

The poverty reduction and financial inclusion of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030 can be significantly facilitated by the microfinance industry. However, it is pertinent to assess the sustainability of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in serving this purpose. The estimation of productivity of MFIs in Bangladesh gives a glimpse of their a...

This paper systematically reviews and examines the regulatory perspective of market manipulation in East Asian emerging markets. Keywords such as market manipulation, corporate fraud, market misconduct, financial regulations, corporate governance practices, institutional quality, and enforcement system for a search in the prominent academic literat...

This study examines factors influencing the adoption of cashless payment in Malaysia using a well-established unified theory of adoption and use of technology, UTAUT2. A total of 301 completed and usable questionnaires were collected from Malaysian consumers to test the hypotheses. Analysis of a moment structures (AMOS) was applied to the data usin...

Purpose This paper investigates the behavior of contrarian strategy payoffs under varying degrees of financial liberalization in the context of Asia-Pacific emerging market namely China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines and Thailand for the period 1997–2017. These markets represent economies that display a gradual change in...

Book Description: This book examines four aspects of Malaysian consumers’ financial vulnerabilities. First, it discusses the issue of over-indebtedness due to excessive reliance on consumer financing. Second, the book investigates why Malaysians are ill-prepared for their golden years in terms of retirement planning and savings. Third, it delves i...

Being in debt seems to be a fact of life for many Malaysians. This may be due to income smoothing over one’s life cycle. On the other hand, over-indebtedness is seen as either an inability in managing one’s finances or the effect of low-income levels relative to the rising cost of living. Household indebtedness in Malaysia stands at 82.7% of GDP in...

The number of Malaysians taking insurance is increasing over time, yet the issue of low insurance penetration rate remains critical in Malaysia. According to Bank Negara Malaysia’s 2019 data, less than 41% of Malaysians own at least an individual or group life insurance or family takaful (Shariah-compliant insurance). Despite having various economi...

The Malaysian population is transitioning into an aged population. The life expectancy of Malaysians is increasing, and by year 2040, the percentage of the elderly aged 65 and above is expected to reach almost 15%. Malaysia’s evolvement into an ageing population will have significant implications on the nation’s economy and social security system....

This chapter explores the prolonged issues of financial frauds in Malaysia. According to Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), financial frauds and scams are generally referred to as a varied range of deceptive practices involving financial transactions by criminals or scammers for the purpose of personal gain. In Malaysia, financial frauds have become a pre...

This study investigates the role of currency order flow in explaining the emerging Asian markets' exchange rates relying on linear and nonlinear modeling. The daily currency order flow of the US dollar relative to the nine important Asian currencies is constituted and explored with the respective exchange rates. First, we find that order flow affec...

This paper systematically reviews and examines the regulatory perspective of market manipulation in East Asian emerging markets. Keywords such as market manipulation, corporate fraud, market misconduct, financial regulations, corporate governance practices, institutional quality, and enforcement system for a search in the prominent academic literat...

The paper examines the impact of economic integration on the relationship between the currency and equity markets for a group of Asian emerging economies using both linear and non‐linear frameworks. We first derive the dynamic conditional correlations between the two markets and then examine the impact of economic integration on their relationship....

The effect of financial liberalization on economic growth in eight emerging Asian countries are analyzed in this study using financial liberalization factors such as foreign equity liability (FEL), Edison & Warnock (EW) ratio as well as the Lane and Milesi-Ferretti (LMF) measure. Results of the study indicate that the financial liberalization facto...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to empirically test the role of heterogeneous investor’s, i.e. institutional investors, individuals and insiders in deteriorating market integrity. Design/methodology/approach The research is conducted by examining the participants of 244 market manipulation cases of East Asian emerging and developed financial...

This study examines the relationship between energy consumption, financial development and economic growth for ASEAN-5 countries, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, over the period from 1980 to 2017. Finance-growth and energy-growth relationships have been well researched; however, the energy-finance-growth nexus i...

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) have been recognized to eradicate poverty through the provision of financial services to the poor in war-torn Palestine and Jordan. To continuously provide banking and financial support to the poor, MFIs need to achieve sustainability by attaining sufficient productivity for long-term economic viability. Hence, this...

This study examines the impact of foreign aid on the institutional quality (IQ) of the OIC countries. Using the data of OIC countries for the three-year average period from 1991 to 2016, the system GMM finds that aid in general deteriorates the IQ for the aid recipient countries. However, quantile regression suggests that the negative impact of for...

This paper aims to quantify the managerial ability of the microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Latin America and the Caribbean countries. Drawing on data for 419 MFIs in 24 Latin America and the Caribbean countries between 2003 and 2014, we find that MFIs' managers with higher managerial ability outperform MFIs' managers with lower managerial abilit...

Malaysia’s migration towards a cashless society is one of the main thrusts towards embracing the digital economy. As a means to enhance financial inclusion further, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) has supported the policy objective of a cashless economy. To understand the pull and push factors in the evolving retail payment landscape towards increased c...

The study investigates the firm’s specific characteristics of manipulated firms in East Asian emerging and developed markets using hand-collected 244 manipulated cases between 2001 and 2017. The empirical analysis is conducted using panel logistic regression to identify which stocks are more likely to be manipulated. Result shows that large and hig...

This paper discusses the impact of Chinese authorities’ 2005 decision to abandon the fixed exchange rate regime on China’s international trade. After such reform, exchange rate volatility tend to arise and that can affect a country’s international trade. As the Chinese economy is highly reliant on international trade, the consequences of exchange r...

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) aim to minimize their operating costs as a way to provide affordable services to the poor and attain financial sustainability for long-term economic viability. To contribute to existing literature, this paper examines the factors affecting the financing cost of MFIs. The study features a balanced panel data of 169 M...

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) aim to minimize their operating costs as a way to provide-affordable services to the poor and attain financial sustainability for long-term economic viability. To contribute to existing literature, this paper examines the factors affecting the financing cost of MFIs. The study features a balanced panel data of 169 M...

This article presents empirical test results of Malaysian foreign exchange market microstructure assessment of exchange rate dynamics. We apply vector autoregressive (VAR) model to estimate the influential role of currency order flow in the determination of the currency exchange rate for the Malaysian ringgit (MYR) against the US dollar (USD). We i...

Uncovered Equity Parity condition states that the foreign equity market outperformance relative to the home equity market associates with foreign exchange rate depreciation. This study examines this condition in the emerging financial markets context using bounds testing approach to the level relations. Our rigorous analysis shows an evidence oppos...

Purpose The essential role that currency order flow plays in the foreign exchange markets of emerging economies in the determination of their currencies in the short and the long-run against major currencies of the world cannot be over emphasized, most especially against the US dollar. Insomuch that, if some of these emerging economies can be succ...

We investigate the empirical relationship between aggregate mutual fund flows and stock market volatility in Asian emerging markets by providing a comparative analysis of equity and balanced funds with market-wide volatility. Using a panel vector autoregressive model, we find that market volatility increases with increase in equity fund flows. Howe...

The global financial crisis of 2008 has significantly increased uncertainty in the financial system; it has also shaken investors’ faith in financial institutions. The current scenario has also created a need to look beyond conventional investment avenues such as the stock, currency, and fixed income markets, with the primary motive of safeguarding...

In recent years, uncertainty in financial markets has stimulated the need to explore the alterna-tive avenues for safeguarding the wealth and managing risk. In this strand of research, gold has been particularly important due to its potential to mitigate risk and preserve wealth. This study investigates the gold behavior against equities and curren...

The contemporaneous growth in ASEAN financial markets over the last two decades raises empirical questions regarding the role of institutional investors in financial market performance. Our study examines the dynamic relationship of aggregate mutual fund flows with market performance variables, i.e. stock market returns and volatility in ASEAN fina...

The aim of this paper is to identify the scope and opportunity of Islamic Micro investment utilizing waqf fund through introducing waqf based Islamic financial schemes and model to alleviate poverty to a significant level. Microfinance has been proved to be a specialized financial mechanism for poverty alleviation by creating micro entrepreneurs. W...

Information and communications technology (ICT) has emerged as a core driver of the modern knowledge based economy with its crucial role in the socioeconomic development and economic growth of a country. ICT based education and socioeconomic development programs provide innovative solutions to defeat poverty. Poverty is the worst dilemma of modern...

The objective of the paper is to identify challenges and opportunities in Islamic micro finance industry by reviewing the present status of Islamic microfinance in Palestine and later suggestinga multiple-stages financing model which will alleviate poverty significantly. To accomplish this purpose, we obtain secondary data from various sources. We...

This research investigates the exchange-rate risk sensitivity of Malaysian bilateral trade flows with its important trading partner, Japan. To this end, bounds testing approach to co-integration is applied using industry level data over the monthly period 2000–2013. Findings suggest that above the one-third of the total co-integrated export (43.86%...

Due to ambiguity in the past literature, researchers have examined exchange rate volatility effect on trade using disaggregated data in recent years. Previous research has focused more on aggregated data having aggregation bias which has led to unnecessarily over-generalized findings. This study investigates the impact of exchange rate volatility o...

Purpose: After exchange rate reforms, currency issue has emerged as a new dimension in portfolio decisions and diversification strategies in Chinese equity markets. This study examines the dynamics between exchange rate and equities contextualizing the current liberal currency regime in China. This investigation also extends the analysis to explore...

Long-Term Equity Anticipation Security or LEAPS is a call option introduced as a more conservative security that can replicate a common stock position. This study’s objective is to examine the effect of applying the strategy of “Buying In-the-Money LEAPS Calls vs. Purchasing Stocks” proposed by CBOE on the performance of traders in terms of risk an...

The ABF was launched on 2 June 2004 as a response to the late 1990s East Asian financial crisis. The purpose of the fund is to provide its member countries with the liquidity needed to defend their currencies against speculative attacks. The sharp reversal of capital flows during the crisis caused depreciation of East Asian currencies as they were...

This paper provides information regarding the effects of domestic political events on the Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX). The JSX was chosen as it has been one of the most hardest hit by the economic crisis and the political upheavals that followed. An event methodology is employed, and the results suggest that the market as a whole and the overall i...