Modelling the Term Structure of Hong Kong Inter-Bank Offered Rates （HIBOR）

Different single-factor models are used to estimate the term structure of Hong Kong Inter-Bank Offered Rates （HIBOR）. These models use stochastic differential equations which effectively reflect market characteristics of short- and long-term interest rates, such as capability of mean reversion and interest rate level fluctuation. For the period from 2005 to early 2007, the economy of Hong Kong had been relatively stable with pretty low volatilities in interest rate. However, starting from 2008 to beginning of 2012, the Hong Kong and the world economies had been steering from relatively stable to fluctuations, the 2008 financial tsunami initiated by the U,S. had been causing financial instability globally. With the U.S： government taking quantitative easing monetary policy, U.S. interest rates fluctuated and submerged rapidly. Volatility of HIBOR was extremely sensitive to fluctuation of U.S. interest rates, since Hong Kong dollar exchange rate has been pegged with U.S. dollar. In short, during the period of early 2008 to early 2012, volatility of short-term interest rate was extremely sensitive. Obviously, the term structure of interest rate for these two periods had made major shift, combining the two periods would lead to unfavorable econometric results.

Performance of Islamic and conventional stock indices:empirical evidence from an emerging economy

Background:This study aims to investigate the extent to which the conditional volatilities of both Shari’ah compliant stock and conventional stock are related to those of interest rate and exchange rate in the emerging economy of Pakistan.Methods:We used KMI 30 and KSE 100 indices for Islamic and conventional stock for the period of July 2008 to November 2013.We employed Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedastic in the mean(GARCH-M)model.This framework relaxes constancy assumption of classical linear regression(CLRM)model and allows exchange rate and interest rate volatility to evolve over time.The GARCHM framework also reveals results about risk-return trade-off in the context of both Islamic and conventional stock indices.Results:The findings show positive and statistically significant effect of interest rate volatility on KSE-100,whereas KMI-30 remains unaffected by the same.Exchange rate volatility is found to be significant for both conventional and Islamic indices.The relationship of risk coefficient(γ)and stocks returns,as expected,is positive and statistically significant for both KMI-30 and KSE-100.This result is consistent with the theory of risk-return trade-off.The results of parametric t-test show significant difference between returns of both indices.This implies that Shari’ah compliant stock index(KMI-30)of Pakistan underperforms its conventional counterpart.Conclusion:By using different performance measures(Sharp ratio,Jensen alpha,Treynor ratio),this study also investigates the hypothesis that Islamic stock index has inferior performance compared with unscreened conventional counterparts due to availability of a smaller investment universe,increased monitoring costs,and limited diversification.