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The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of thin trading on the day‐of‐the‐week effect in the emerging equity markets of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Researchers have stated that emerging markets are typically characterized by low liquidity, thin trading and possibly less well‐informed investors with access to unreliable information and considerable volatility. It is well known that thin trading can affect the results of empirical studies on patterns of equity markets by introducing a serious bias into the results.

This study applies a stochastic dominance approach to detect the day‐of‐the‐week effect. The reason for utilizing this approach is that the parametric tests are not strictly appropriate for assets with non‐normally distributed returns. In fact, stochastic dominance is a useful tool for making comparisons among distributions without relying on parametric assumptions.

The findings indicate that there is day‐of‐the‐week effect in published daily prices, while daily effect vanishes when data are corrected to remove any measurement bias arising from thin trading. The stochastic dominance results show that the day‐of‐the‐week effect in the UAE equity markets is not present when we correct raw data for thin and infrequent trading.

There has been no research in the literature testing the day‐of‐the‐week effect on the emerging financial markets in the UAE. The study provides empirical evidence on their degree of market efficiency. If the day‐of‐the‐week effect exists, this means that the Abu Dhabi Securities Markets and the Dubai Financial Markets are inefficient. These results will help investors to develop a good investment strategy

This paper investigates the generalized Fisher hypothesis for nine equity markets in the Asian countries. It states that the real rates of return on common stocks and the expected inflation rate are independent and that nominal stock returns vary in a one‐to‐one correspondence with the expected inflation rate. The regression results indicate that stock returns in general are negatively correlated to both expected and unexpected inflation, and that common stocks provide a poor hedge against inflation. However, the results of the VAR model indicate the lack of a unidirectional causality between stock returns and inflation. It also fails to find a consistent negative response neither of inflation to shocks in stock returns nor of stock returns to shocks in inflation in all countries. It appears that the generalized Fisher hypothesis in the Asian markets is as puzzling as in the developed markets.

Vector‐autoregression (VAR), integration, and cointegration models are used to investigate the causal relations, dynamic interaction, and a common trend between interest rates and inflation in nine countries in the Pacific‐Basin. This paper finds that for all countries, short‐ and long‐term interest rates and the spread between the long‐term interest rates and inflation are non‐stationary I (1) processes. The nominal interest rates and inflation are not co‐integrated. In addition to this study’s inability to find a unidirectional causality between inflation and interest rates, when the VAR model is used, it also fails to find a consistent positive response either of inflation to shocks in interest rates or of interest rates to shocks in inflation in most of the countries studied. The VAR model results are consistent with the cointegration tests’ results, that is, nominal interest rates are poor predictors for future inflation in the Pacific‐Basin countries.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the Saturday effect in three emerging stock markets (Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia) by taking into consideration the thin trading that is normal in such capital markets.

The paper applies the stochastic dominance (SD) approach, which is not distribution‐dependent and can shed light on the utility and wealth implications of portfolio preferences by exploiting information in higher order moments, to investigate empirically the existence of the Saturday effect in the three Gulf stock markets.

The findings indicate that the Saturday effect does not manifest itself in the three Gulf stock markets and that the SD results show that the Saturday effect in these markets is not present when raw data are corrected for thin and infrequent trading.

This paper is believed to be the first to use SD approach to examine the Saturday effect.

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors which affect loss provision for loans and investment in Murabaha, Musharka, and Mudarabah for banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. The effect of prior period earnings, legal and statutory reserves, size of the bank, level of debt, and loan and investment to deposit ratio on the loss provisions of banks are examined for the period 2000‐2003.

To test the factors that explain the loan loss provision and to test the income smoothing hypothesis, debt to equity hypothesis, and reserve hypothesis, a single stage regression model was developed and tested.

The results indicate that when return on assets (ROA) before tax and loss provisions for the current year is higher than the prior year ROA and the actual capital reserve is below the legal required reserve, then management is expected to increase loss provisions for the current year. This result is robust for all the years of this study.

While prior research has examined the issue of the loan loss provision in USA, Japan, and Europe, no research has examined the issue of the loss provisions in the GCC region. This study demonstrates that the income smoothing hypothesis is relevant across different regulatory requirements, economic conditions, and different accounting standards. Managers of banks in the GCC region use the loss provision, among other things, to smooth earnings to achieve certain objectives.

After adjusting for thin trading, this study seeks to examine the market efficiency for six emerging stock markets in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

This study uses the LOMAC single variance ratio (VR) test and the Wright's rank and sign VR tests to examine informational efficiency after correcting the data for thin trading that typically characterizes these indexes.

As the observed indexes in thinly traded markets may not represent the true underlying index value, there is a systematic bias toward rejecting the efficient market hypothesis. The results of this study show that after removing the effect of infrequent trading the random walk hypothesis was not rejected in all GCC equity markets.

To the best of the author's knowledge this is the first study that applies the Wright's rank and sign VR tests after adjusting for thin trading in GCC equity market.