Stability and Resilience of Equity Markets amidst the 2008 Global Financial Crisis: Islamic Versus Conventional Markets

The objective of this study is to empirically explore the impacts of the 2008 global financial crisis on both Islamic and conventional equity markets of Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, the UK, and the US. Daily closing indices, spanning from July 2007 to July 2011, are utilized and analyzed using cointegration technique and impulse response functions. The study found that the conventional equity markets performed marginally poorer than their Islamic counterparts during the 2008 global financial crisis. This finding implied that the Islamic equity markets were more stable and resilient than the Islamic equity markets amidst the crisis period.