The inflation hedging capacity of Islamic and conventional equities

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Journal of Economic Studies

Publication Date

5-4-2020

Abstract

© 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: This study analyzes the inflation hedging of Islamic and conventional equities by employing 26 indices for the period ranging from January 1996 till August 2018. The authors investigate the decoupling hypothesis for Islamic versus conventional equities across various investment horizons. Design/methodology/approach: The authors employ a vector autoregressive framework coupled with bootstrapping procedure to compute inflation hedging measures. The hedging measures employed account for the inflation hedging capacity in terms of hedging effectiveness as well as the cost of hedging (efficiency). The authors account for various investment horizons ranging from one month to ten years. Findings: Although, the authors do not find consistent evidence for the decoupling hypothesis of Islamic and conventional equities in terms of their inflation hedging capacity. However, the authors document that certain Islamic equity indices can be employed to effectively hedge against the risk of inflation. Originality/value: The main contribution of this study is that the existing literature on the comparative performance of Islamic versus conventional equities against inflation risk is sparse. The purpose of this study is to analyze the inflation hedging attributes of Islamic versus conventional equities, that is, whether Islamic equities render better real returns than their conventional counterparts. It will contribute to the growing literature on the comparison between Islamic and conventional equities by documenting the real return attributes of these two, apparently different, assets. A further contribution is that in order to account for the different investment horizons for different types of investors, this study will quantify the real return attributes of Islamic and conventional equities for short-, medium- and long-term investors.

ISSN

0144-3585

Publisher

Emerald Group Holdings Ltd.

Volume

47

Issue

6

First Page

1377

Last Page

1399

Disciplines

Business

Keywords

Conventional equities, Inflation hedging, Islamic equities, Long-term investments

Scopus ID

85085097145

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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