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In Islamic finance (IF), the safety-first rule of investing (hifdh al mal) is held to be of utmost importance. In view of the instability in the global financial markets, the IF portfolio manager (mudharib) is committed, according to Sharia, to make use of advanced models and reliable tools. This paper seeks to address these issues.

In this paper, the limitations of the standard models used in the IF industry are reviewed. Then, a framework was set forth for a reliable modeling of the IF markets, especially in extreme events and highly volatile periods. Based on the empirical evidence, the framework offers an improved tool to ameliorate the evaluation of Islamic stock market risk exposure and to reduce the costs of Islamic risk management.

Based on the empirical evidence, the framework offers an improved tool to ameliorate the evaluation of Islamic stock market risk exposure and to reduce the costs of Islamic risk management.

In IF, the portfolio manager – mudharib – according to Sharia, should ensure the adequacy of the mathematical and statistical tools used to model and control portfolio risk. This task became more complicated because of the increase in risk, as measured via market volatility, during the financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007. Sharia condemns the portfolio manager who demonstrates negligence and may hold him accountable for losses for failing to select the proper analytical tools. As Sharia guidelines hold the safety-first principle of investing rule (hifdh al mal) to be of utmost importance, the portfolio manager should avoid speculative investments and strategies that would lead to significant losses during periods of high market volatility.

We examine whether the percentage of independent members sitting on the audit committee, in different institutional settings, impacts the market reaction (measured by the abnormal stock returns variance and the abnormal trading volume) to earnings announcements. For our sample composed of more than 7'600 earnings announcements made by European firms from 15 countries between 2006 and 2014, we find that the market reactions to earnings announcements are significantly larger when the audit committee is more independent in countries with weak institutional setting. Our results generally hold after controlling for numerous methodological issues. We conclude that more independent audit committees are substitutes for weak institutions to increase the credibility of earnings announcements. Our results should be of great interest for European regulators who recently introduced new requirements for public firms regarding audit committees’ independence.

This paper attempts to propose the uses of a capital budgeting tool, the Economic Value Added (EVA)for a university. Although there are reports of widespread use of the EVA in many for‐profit organisations, there is no evidence in literature that it has been adopted as a capital budgeting tool for a university. In this paper the application of the EVA for a university is proposed. It shows how the EVA can increase the awareness of the importance of asset utilisation in universities and guide universities to better resource management. EVA is proposed for use in a university setting in two different segments: for‐profit and non‐profit. The EVA has been adjusted with a new measure, Academic Value Added Ratio (AVAR) to reflect the university’s objective. The perception of academic staff in the case study university in Thailand with regards to the concept of applying the EVA to a university is further investigated. The results indicate that most members of management staff do not oppose this concept if it is implemented in a proper way.

The purpose of this paper is to show that multivariate t-distribution assumption provides a better description of stock return data than multivariate normality assumption.

The EM algorithm is applied to solve the statistical estimation problem almost analytically, and the asymptotic theory is provided for inference.

The authors find that the multivariate normality assumption is almost always rejected by real stock return data, while the multivariate t-distribution assumption can often be adequate. Conclusions under normality vs under t can be drastically different for estimating expected returns and Jensen’s αs, and for testing asset pricing models.

The results provide improved estimates of cost of capital and asset moment parameters that are useful for corporate project evaluation and portfolio management.

The authors proposed new procedures that makes it easy to use a multivariate t-distribution, which models well the data, as a simple and viable alternative in practice to examine the robustness of many existing results.

This article addresses the issue of cumulative losses that fund managers, reinsurers, and bankers all face. The author shows how to estimate expected multi‐period (cumulative) losses, given projections of single‐period trading losses or insurance claims. For fund managers, these results provide guidelines for interpreting the fund's daily Value‐at‐Risk (VaR) in cumulative‐loss terms, for calibrating the short‐ and long‐term risk appetites of the fund against each other, and for setting loss limits. For bankers, these results have direct implications for the range of validity of the much‐debated regulatory mandate for international banks to hold in reserves three times their VaR.

A method of estimating lifetime parameters from doubly censored data is given on the basis of the maximum likelihood principle. Consistency and asymptotic normality of the proposed estimator is established. When the observation window is defined by the interval of time between the first and the pth events in a homogeneous Poisson process, asymptotic variances and efficiencies are analyzed assuming exponential lifetime distribution.

Uncertainty is inevitable in real-world engineering optimization. With an outer-inner optimization structure, most previous robust optimization (RO) approaches under interval uncertainty can become computationally intractable because the inner level must perform robust evaluation for each design alternative delivered from the outer level. This paper aims to propose an on-line Kriging metamodel-assisted variable adjustment robust optimization (OLK-VARO) to ease the computational burden of previous VARO approach.

In OLK-VARO, Kriging metamodels are constructed for replacing robust evaluations of the design alternative delivered from the outer level, reducing the nested optimization structure of previous VARO approach into a single loop optimization structure. An on-line updating mechanism is introduced in OLK-VARO to exploit the obtained data from previous iterations.

One nonlinear numerical example and two engineering cases have been used to demonstrate the applicability and efficiency of the proposed OLK-VARO approach. Results illustrate that OLK-VARO is able to obtain comparable robust optimums as to that obtained by previous VARO, while at the same time significantly reducing computational cost.

The proposed approach exhibits great capability for practical engineering design optimization problems under interval uncertainty.

The main contribution of this paper lies in the following: an OLK-VARO approach under interval uncertainty is proposed, which can significantly ease the computational burden of previous VARO approach.

Using the notions of unit root, cointegration theory and Granger‐Akaike’s synthesis of modelling strategy, this paper examines the nature of stationarities, cointegration properties and Granger causal relationship between domestic savings and aid based on a sample of 27 developing countries. The KPSS unit root test results indicate that variables of interest in a trivariate vector autoregressive system such as aid inflows, domestic savings and income exhibit a dissimilar trend in the majority of countries, with the exceptions of Bolivia and Korea. The cointegration test results based on the Johansen and Juselius testing procedure found evidence of cointegration among the variables, domestic savings, aid and income in Bolivia and Korea. However, the presence and direction of causality between aid inflows and domestic savings are mixed across countries. Whilst the findings are indicative of a causal independence in a majority of the cases, little support is attached to either Griffin’s dependency hypothesis or Papaneck’s reverse causality hypothesis.