The examination of the topic of market risk management in Islamic finance is a complex endeavour. At a basic level, the subject matter, being multifarious in a manner that mixes religion and economics, requires the conjoining of religious faith with scientific objectivity in order to ascertain the truth contained in the scripture as it pertains to the Mua’amalat (dealings between individuals) matter of entering into financial contracts with others to manage market risk exposures. Moreover, the complexity is compounded due to the need to disentangle the ambiguity that has beset the discourse on the topic due to historically being mostly legal-centric with a focus on debating the contractual elements rather than attempting to comprehensively address the myriad issues that relate to market risk management in contemporary contexts. These issues, for the most part, revolve around the reliance on market risk transfer as a strategy and derivative contracts, with monetary underlying variables, as tools to implement that strategy. Thus, the journey of investigating the rationale, permissibility, and usage of derivative hedging instruments for market risk management in Islamic finance is, essentially, an undertaking that seeks to engage in a wide-ranging and multi-layered examination of the subject matter as well as the exploration of new areas of relative significance. This, in turn, and subsequent to the analysis of data generated from documentary sources and forty-one interviews which were collected from numerous sources within four locations, led to the elaboration of the contention that market risk management through derivative instruments for legitimate hedging purposes should not be prohibited in the Shari’a, albeit with certain conditions that limit unproductive behaviour. The basis for the aforementioned contention is built on the fact that market risk management has undergone a paradigm shift in how exposures are identified and measured as well as in the emergence of innovative tools which can result in a better ability to address the opportunities and challenges facing institutions that provide value to society (i.e., the real sector). Moreover, there is little substantive evidence that proves that the utilization of derivative instruments for hedging purposes leads its users to partaking in transactions that circumvent the prohibition of Riba (usury), Gharar (excessive uncertainty), and Maysir (gambling). In effect, the derivative instruments used for the management of market risks are not only disassociated from usurious debt transactions, they are also transacted in the financial markets in a manner that is transparent to all the parties involved. Along the same lines, the prohibition of Maysir, which is apparently an overarching concern, should be conceptualized with the focus on the proscription of the act of gambling, not necessarily the instruments (e.g., derivatives) and/or any particular framework (e.g., zero-sum arrangements). Ultimately, one should be cognizant of the fact that the true intentions of Islamic jurisprudence in Mua’amalat (as a manifestation of divine guidance) always centre on human well-being. Accordingly, the religious prohibitions are, in essence, within the realm of acts that adversely affect human well-being. This is a constant theme that is present throughout the thesis; and is one that exists at the heart of a wider aspiration of its adoption to a greater extent than is currently present in the Islamic finance discourse.

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Before the global financial crisis around 2008, the priority of the credit margin was comparatively low and was not taken into consideration as much as today. Many actors believed that credit risk could be neglected at various valuations. Due to that a lot of parties went bankrupt because of the low priorities. Today, this is a natural component in the financial market due to the capital regulation CRR and the Capital requirement directives (CRD IV), which are directly related to Basel III. In this thesis the authors have created a Credit valuation adjustment model, or a CVA-model, on behalf of the consulting firm AGL who want to use it in negotiations of interest rate swap with financial institutions. Factors as expected exposure, loss given default and probability of default are estimated in order to estimate a fair value for CVA. As a final product, the authors have created a model in VBA that can price CVA for individual contracts. This model is then evaluated and a sensitivity analysis is performed to see what impact credit rating and maturity have on the result.

Of the many analytical methods collectively referred to as Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is the most familiar to today’s generation of students of finance. The popularity of the CAPM arises from its success in expressing a powerful theoretical insight in a simple, usable form. The primary use of the CAPM is to determine minimum required rates of return from investment in risky assets. The variable in the CAPM is called ‘beta’, a statistical measure of risk which has become familiar to all finance professionals. Over the past decade, beta has become the most widely recognised and applied measure of risk in the investment community. The model has been extensively tested in the developed capital markets, mainly in the United States of America. But the model has not been extensively tested in other developed and developing countries, often due to the size of the capital market and the lack of the data in these countries. This study attempts to fill this vacuum and tries to update the earlier tests done on the Stock Exchange of Singapore. On addition, a review of the validity of the CAPM over time, as proxied by the stationarity of the beta, is performed. Also, tests regarding heteroskedasticity and its implications have been undertaken. / Master of Commerce (Hons)

This thesis examines the relationship between stock market returns and systematic risk factors in twelve industrial countries. Using the APT framework, the thesis investigates the notion of international stock market integration versus segmentation in terms of pricing risk, international stock market efficiency in terms of eliminating arbitrage opportunities across domestic markets, and the validity of the international version of the APT according to a model that specifies purely domestic factors. Starting with ordinary least squares estimation the thesis investigates the responses of investors in their national stock markets to systematic shocks. By employing iterative non-linear multivariate seemingly unrelated regression estimation, this work avoids the statistical problems encountered in the second-pass test of the two-stage procedure. This study found that the international stock market was neither integrated nor efficient and that the IAPT was not supported by the results during the period investigated. It was demonstrated that partial and regional integration, regional efficiency, and regional IAPT validity cannot be ruled out. Moreover, the alternative model proved to be practically valid.

Στην παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία παρουσιάζεται μια μαθηματική προσέγγιση της θεωρίας κινδύνου. Η ποσοτικοποίηση των κινδύνων είναι σημαντική τόσο για τους χρηματοοικονομικούς οργανισμούς όσο και για τις ρυθμιστικές αρχές, ώστε να εξασφαλίζεται η επάρκεια των χρηματοοικονομικών ροών και η ασφάλεια των κεφαλαίων. Αρχικά αναφερόμαστε σε δύο σημαντικές μεθόδους μέτρησης κινδύνου, την Αξία-σε-Κίνδυνο (VaR) και το Αναμενώμενο Κατώφλι (Expected Shortfall), καθώς και στην σχέση μεταξύ τους. Στην συνέχεια επικεντρωνόμαστε στον υπολογισμό του κινδύνου αγοράς μέσω των μεθόδων διασποράς-συνδιασποράς, ιστορικής προσομείωσης και Monte Carlo. Ακολουθούν δύο στοιχειώδεις προσεγγίσεις του λειτουργικού κινδύνου: η προσέγγιση με βασικό δείκτη (BI) και η τυποποιημένη προσέγγιση. Ιδιαίτερη μελέτη πραγματοποιήθηκε στα μοντέλα μέτρησης του πιστωτικού κινδύνου που διακρίνονται στα κατασκευαστικά και τα μοντέλα μειωτικού-τύπου. ‘Ενας ακόμα σημαντικός κίνδυνος είναι ο συνιστάμενος, που συμβάλλει στην εύρεση ορίων, καθώς και στη διανομή του κεφαλαίου στους επιμέρους κινδύνους επιτυγχάνοντας την ασφάλεια της επένδυσης. Τέλος, αντικείμενο μελέτης αποτελούν τεχνικές που εφαρμόζουν τις παραπάνω μεθόδους μέτρησης κινδύνων στην οικονομία και πιο συγκεκριμένα στον χώρο των ασφαλίσεων. / -

The paper describes an attempt to gain insight into the relationship between cash and futures markets for US lean hogs and EU live pigs, and the opportunity of arbitrage hedging. In doing so, the authors use newer methods of threshold cointegration analysis for time series from 1999 until 2008. Besides the existence of a long-run equilibrium, asymmetric price adjustments can be demonstrated. This is especially the case for the EU live pigs, where price variations of the basis are higher and exhibit lower standard deviation. The results also perfectly show that cash prices follow the futures market more than the other way round. Furthermore, a grid search has revealed that the residual-based threshold in either market is near zero and therefore coherent with economic interpretation. Thus, at least theoretically, arbitrageurs in those markets are able to exploit the price differences between the two markets and reap no-risk monetary benefit. Hence, the results are in line with the statement that "speculating the basis" generates a better return. (authors' abstract)

Cálculo do VaR de uma Carteira de Renda Fixa composta por LTNs utilizando modelo de fatores. / Market risk monitoring through Value at Risk is a task undertaken by almost all financial institutions in Brasil due to the regulatory environment set by Banco Central. However, VaR calculations of a portfolio of investments can get quite complicated involving the calculation of matrixes. One must bear in mind that the matrix dimensions increases geometricaly as the number of assets of the portfolio increases. This reality is a fertile soil for researchers to find simpler methodologies for VaR calculations. The proposed framework in this work shows a simpler methodology for VaR calculations of fixed income portfolios of government securities.

The recent U.S. subprime mortgage crisis rapidly spread throughout the world and put the global financial system under extraordinary pressure. The main implication of the recent crisis is that complex banking regulations failed to adequately identify and limit riskiness of banking systems at both domestic and international levels. In spite of a large empirical literature on the causes and remedies of the recent crisis, there remains substantial uncertainty on (i) how risk measuring models performed during crisis, (ii) how systematic factors such as house prices affected the financial system, and (iii) how effectively government policy responses resolved the financial crisis. This thesis seeks to narrow this gap in the literature by offering three empirical essays. The first essay investigates the performance of alternative parametric VaR models in forecasting riskiness of international equity portfolios. Notably, alternative univariate VaR models are compared to multivariate conditional volatility models with special focus given to conditional correlation models. Conditional correlation models include the constant conditional correlation (CCC), dynamic conditional correlation (DCC), and asymmetric DCC (ADCC) models. Various criteria are then applied for backtesting VaR models and to evaluate their one-day-ahead forecasting ability in a wide range of countries and during different global financial conditions. It is found that most VaR models have satisfactory performance with small number of violations during pre-crisis period. However, the number of violations, mean deviation of violations, and maximum deviation of violations dramatically increase during crisis period. Furthermore, portfolio models incur lower number of violations compared to univariate models while DCC and ADCC models perform better than CCC models during crisis period. From risk management perspective, most single index models fail to pass Basel criteria for internal VaR models during crisis period, whereas empirical evidence on the choice between CCC, DCC, and ADCC models is mixed. The recent crisis also raised serious concerns about factors that can systematically destabilise the whole banking system. In particular, the collapse of house prices in the United States triggered the recent subprime mortgage crisis, which was associated with a sharp increase in the number of nonperforming loans and bank failures. This in turn demonstrates the key role that house prices play in systematically undermining the whole banking system. The second essay investigates the determinants of nonperforming loans (NPL) with a special focus on house price fluctuations as a key systematic factor. Using a panel of U.S. banking institutions from 1999 to 2012, the analysis is carried out across different loan categories, different types of banks, and different bank size. It is found that house price fluctuations have a significant impact on the evolution of nonperforming loans, while the magnitude of their impact varies across loan categories, institution types, and between large and small banks. Also, the impact of house price fluctuations on nonperforming loans is more pronounced during crisis period. The last essay of this thesis investigates the effectiveness of the U.S. government strategy to combat the crisis. As a comprehensive response to the recent financial crisis, the US government created the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The Capital Purchase Program (CPP) was launched as an initial program under the TARP. The CPP was designed to purchase preferred stocks or equity warrants from viable financial institutions. Using a large panel of the U.S. commercial banks over the period 2007Q1 to 2012Q4, survival analysis is used to investigate the impact of TARP funds on the likelihood of survival in the recipient banks. It is found that larger recipient banks are more likely to avoid regulatory closure, while receiving capital assistance does not effectively help banks to avoid technical failure. This implies that governmental capital assistance serves larger banks much better than their smaller counterparts. In addition, TARP recipients are more likely to be acquired, regardless of their size and financial health. In summary, the empirical findings reveal that capital infusions do not enhance the survival likelihood of the recipient banking institutions.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2004. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Risk managers and regulators are primarily concerned with ensuring that there is sufficient capital to withstand the effects of adverse movements in market prices. The accurate prediction of the maximum amount that a financial institution can expect to Jose over a specified period is essential to guard against catastrophic losses that can threaten the viability of an individual finn or the stability of entire markets. Value-at-risk (VaR) is a quantile-based measure of risk that is widely used for calculating the capital adequacy requirements of banks and other financial institutions. However, the current models for price risk tend to underestimate the risk of catastrophic losses because the entire return distribution is used to calculate the value-at-risk. By contrast, Extreme Value" Theory uses only the largest observations to model the tails of a distribution, which should provide a better fit for estimates of extreme quantiles and probabilities. The semi-parametric Hill (1975) estimator has often been used to fit the tails of financial returns, but its performance is heavily dependent on the number k" of order statistics used in the estimation process and the estimator can be very biased if this choice is suboptimal. Since k" depends on unknown properties of the tail, it has to be estimated from the sample. The first truly data-driven method for choosing an optimal number of order statistics adaptively was introduced by Beirlant, Dierckx. Goegebeur and Matthys (1999) and modified by Beirlanl. Dierckx and Stmca (2000) and Matthys and Beirlanl (2000b). Their methods are based on an exponential regression model developed independently by Beirlant et a/. (1999) and Feuerverger and Hall (1999) to reduce the bias found in the Hill estimator. The reduced bias of these adaptive estimators and the associated estimator for extreme quantiles developed by Matthys and Beirlant (2000b) makes these estimators attractive from a risk management point of view, but more work needs to be done on characterising their finite sample properties before they can be used in practice. In particular, it is crucially important to establish the smallest sample size that will yield reliable estimates of extreme quantiles and probabilities and to determine the widths and coverage probabilities of confidence intervals. This study project reviews the probability and statistical theory of univariate Extreme Value Theory from a financial risk management perspective. It is clear from a survey of the literature that the most worthwhile direction to pursue in terms of practical research will be intimately connected with developments in the fast-moving field of EVT with a future emphasis not only on fully evaluating the existing models, but indeed on creating even less biased and more precise models. Keywords and phrases: Extreme value index, Pareto-type distributions, maximum likelihood estimation, bias reduction, exponential regression model, market risk. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Risikobestuurders en -reguleerders is hoofsaaklik gemoeid met die versekering dat genoegsame kapitaal beskikbaar is om die effek van ongunstige beweging in markpryse die hoof te kan bied. Die akkurate vooruitskatting van die maksimum verlies wat 'n finansiele instelling oor 'n spesifieke tydperk kan ly, is noodsaaklik as beskerming teen katastrofiese verliese wat die voortbestaan van 'n individuele firma, of die stabiliteit van die totale mark, mag bedreig. Waarde-op-Risiko (WoR) is 'n kwantiel gebaseerde maatstaaf van risiko wat algemeen vir die berekening van kapitaaltoereikendheid van banke en ander finansiele instellings benut word. Die huidige prys risikomodelle neig om die risiko van katastrofiese verliese te onderskat, omdat die totale opbrengs verspreiding gebruik word om WoR te bereken. In teenstelling benut die Ekstreme Waarde Teorie (EWT), slegs die grootste waarnemings om die eindverdelings te modelleer en is as sulks meer geskik om ekstreme kwantiele en waarskynlikhede te bepaal. Die semi-parametriese Hill (1975) skatter word gereeld gebruik om die stertgedeeltes van finansiele opbrengste te beraam, maar sy verrigting is swaar afhanklik van die getal k~ van rangstatistieke wat in die skattingsproses gebruik word en die skatting kan baie sydig wees indien die keuse suboptimaal is. Weens die afhanklikheid van kn van onbekende eienskappe van die stertgedeeltes, moet dit geskat word vanuit die steekproefdata. Die eerste data-gedrewe metode vir die keuse van die optimale rangordestatistieke, is deur Beiriant, Dierckx, Goegebeur en Matthys (1999) ontwikkel en aangepas deur Beirlant, Dierckx and Starica (2000), asook Matthys en Beirlant (2000b). Hul metodes is op 'n eksponensiele regressiemodel gebaseer, en is onafhanklik deur Beirlant et at. (1999), en Feuerverger en Hall (1999) ontwikkel met die doel om die sydigheid van die Hill skatter te verminder. Die verminderde sydigheid van hierdie adaptiewe skatters en die verwante skatter vir ekstreme kwantiele, ontwikkel deur Matthys en Beirlant (2000b), maak hierdie skatters aantreklik vanuit 'n risikobestuur oogpunt, maar meer werk word benodig met die karakterisering van hul eindige steekproefeienskappe, alvorens dit in die praktyk benut kan word. In besonder is dit van uiterste belang dat die kleinste steekproefgrootte bepaal sal word wat die betroubare skattings van ekstreme kwantiele en moontlikhede sal verseker, en wat ook benut kan word om betroubaarheidsintervalle op te ste!. Hierdie studie bied 'n oorsig van die moontlikhede en statistiese teorie van die eenveranderlike EWT vanuit 'n finansiele risikobestuur perspektief. Dit is duidelik vanuit die literatuurstudie dat die mees nuttige rigting om voort te gaan met praktiese navorsing, verband hou met die ontwikkeling in die vinnig ontwikkelende veld van EWT met toekomstige fokus, nie slegs op die volle evaluering van die bestaande modelle nie, maar ook op die ontwikkeling van minder sydige en meer akkurate modelle.