Purpose: This study aims to examine the impact of behavioral finance factors on the investment decisions of Gulf investors in the cryptocurrency market. Theoretical Framework: The study is based on the behavioral finance theory, which highlights the role of emotions and cognitive biases in shaping investment decisions. It examines the investment behavior and decision-making of Gulf investors in the cryptocurrency market using a comprehensive set of factors, including herding, heuristics, prospect, market, familiarity bias, and self-attribution bias. Design/Methodology/Approach: Primary data is collected through a survey-based approach using a 23-question distributed at the country level covering the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. The study analyzes the data collected using statistical methods to study the impact of behavioral finance factors on the investment decisions. Findings: The results show that herding and heuristics strongly influence investment decisions in the cryptocurrency market among Gulf investors. The prospect factor positively affects investment decision-making in KSA and Qatar but not in UAE and Kuwait. The market factor is a significant determinant of investment behavior, and investors in UAE and Qatar are more cautious and risk-averse compared to KSA and Kuwait. The familiarity bias factor has different effects on investment decision making in KSA and UAE. Research, Practical & Social Implications: This study offers valuable insights into how behavioral finance factors impact investment decisions in the cryptocurrency market. These findings can be useful to investors and financial institutions in developing investment strategies that take into account the cognitive and emotional biases of investors. Originality/Value: The study uses a comprehensive set of behavioral finance factors and includes respondents from four Gulf countries. Therefore, the study contributes to the existing literature by providing unique insights into the investment behavior and decision-making of Gulf investors in the cryptocurrency market.
This study examines the impact of COVID-19 on health-related cryptocurrencies. More precisely, we use the variable-Lag time-series (VLT) causality to test whether the pandemic caused the price performance and the volume of transactions of these cryptocurrencies. We then employ time-varying parameter (TVP) models to capture the sign of this effect (for the evidenced cases) and the impulse responses among the cryptocurrencies since they may affect one another. The results show there is no certain pattern, which means that for the years of the pandemic, COVID-19,has impacted cryptocurrencies differently, except for one case. Moreover, the results are very unstable during 2021, indicating time-varying characteristics for all cases, while during 2022, the impact of the pandemic on these cryptocurrencies was mostly negative. Similarly, during 2020 the price was negatively affected, but the transaction volume was mainly positively impacted. Spillovers are evidenced only for 2022, for certain cases both in the prices and volume of transactions. The results indicate that the pandemic affected cryptocurrencies heterogeneously, evidencing a different pattern among the three years examined. This finding should be taken into consideration in the adoption of relevant technological advancements in healthcare.
Blanka Škrabić Perić, Petar Sorić, Ivana Jerković
This paper aims to examine the behavioural determinants of Bitcoin trading volume within a cross-country framework of 14 world economies plus the Eurozone. We introduce a basic taxonomy of behavioural indicators, distinguishing between consumer confidence, economic policy uncertainty (EPU), and indicators of financial volatility. Our estimations reveal that the Bitcoin trading volume can be predicted more accurately by EPU than by any other class of indicators. Finally, we identify the COVID-19 shock as a catalyst for a psychologically-driven Bitcoin market and find evidence that Bitcoin was a macro hedging instrument in the pandemic. To obtain our results, we conducted a panel Granger causality test, employing the Least Squares Dummy Variables (LSDV) estimator. Contrary to previous research, we found that market fundamentals (industrial production and equity market volume) became significant drivers of Bitcoin trading during the pandemic. This conclusion was preserved when we used the LSDV corrected estimator, which is more suitable for panels with a smaller time dimension. Apart from the practical implications for traders, this paper provides researchers with detailed steps for applying Granger causality testing in panel data settings.
In the global financial environment, cryptocurrencies have become a disruptive force that offers possibilities as well as problems for firms in numerous industries. The incorporation of cryptocurrencies into small businesses’ operations has gained more attention in recent years as a way to boost their profitability. This study paper intends to provide a thorough examination of the effects of cryptocurrencies on the profitability of small businesses, illuminating the numerous aspects and ramifications of cryptocurrency adoption, but also emphasizing its consequences for the financial performance of small firms, with the aim to fill the knowledge vacuum, as well as to provide insights into the potential and constraints connected with cryptocurrencies in the small company environment by examining revenue generation, cost management, financial transactions, and market growth. For a number of reasons, it is essential to comprehend how cryptocurrencies affect the profitability of small businesses, and in order to accomplish the goals of this study, a thorough analysis of the body of literature will be done, looking at empirical research, case studies, and theoretical frameworks pertaining to the effect of cryptocurrencies on small company profitability. This research study seeks to provide a comprehensive grasp of the topic by combining the existing information. In order to learn more about small company owners’ experiences, difficulties, and possibilities related to bitcoin adoption, as the main cryptocurrency so far, primary data were gathered via surveys or interviews among them. The study adds to the body of information already available and provide useful advice, as well as shared practical experience for academics, policymakers, and small company owners who are interested in learning about the effects of bitcoin integration on small business profitability.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the cryptocurrency market affects the financial stability and economic growth of India. The study used time series quarterly data on bitcoin, financial stability, inflation rate, real GDP, economic volatility uncertainty, exchange rate, and market volatility index for the period 2015Q1–2022Q4. The robustness of the findings was confirmed by the fully modified OLS (FMOLS) and canonical cointegration regression (CCR). The study results demonstrated that an increase in cryptocurrency investments will affect the financial stability of India significantly. Each 1% increase in the cryptocurrency would reduce the financial stability by 5% approximately. However, there was a marginal effect of cryptocurrency on economic growth. The results also found that exchange rate volatility and inflationary pressure would also deteriorate the financial stability of the country. Furthermore, the results also identified positive and significant cointegration between economic growth and financial stability. Due to most transactions in the economy being done through the financial system, it is paramount for economic growth. Going forward, aggressive monetary policy tightening, volatility in capital flows and exchange rates, de-anchoring of inflation expectations, faltering in the economic recovery, disruptions due to global supply chains and climate change will be the major risks to the financial stability and economic growth of India.
This research aims to analyze and explain the importance of diversification benefit of cryptocurrencies and its nature in accordance with its relation with other financial assets before and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic era. This paper will help investors to understand that how to manage a portfolio of cryptocurrencies in parallel with other financial assets and mainly cryptocurrencies since they were a safe investment option during the pandemic period due to the good defense these digital currencies activated against the covid-19 shock back in 2020. Paper used DCC-GARCH model to examine the safety of Bitcoin and Ethereum with financial market of S & P 500 and FTSE100.
We examine how the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war affect volatility spillovers and extreme return movements in the stock, gold, and bitcoin markets. Our study uses the post-pandemic period of up to two and a half years in order to reflect the lingering effects of the pandemic as well as its initial impact. We find that volatility spillover has weakened in the post- versus pre-pandemic period. Additionally, our results suggest that the Russia-Ukraine war has had little impact on volatility spillovers. We subsequently test for extreme return movements separately and find substantial increases in the likelihood that two assets’ extreme returns move simultaneously post- versus pre-pandemic.
Hashim Jusoh, Abdelkader O. El Alaoui, Amina Dchieche, Ahmad Faizol Ismail · 5 authors
We analyze the relationship between Bitcoin and major regional Islamic stock indices during two major events: COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war. The multi-horizon analysis provide evidence of low correlation between Bitcoin’s inter-temporal returns and Islamic indices returns during periods before extreme events. However, there is limited potential for diversification in the long run as their correlations increase significantly. During shocks, Bitcoin cannot be a safe haven for Islamic markets.
Mohammad Ashraful Ferdous Chowdhury, Mohammad Abdullah, Mansur Masih
This paper makes an initial attempt to investigate the risk spillover of the Russia-Ukraine war and oil price on Asian Islamic Stocks and bitcoin. We apply quantile-based connectedness measures using daily return data covering four Asian Islamic stock indices–oil, gold, bitcoin, and war panic–from February 1, 2022, to July 15, 2022. The results indicate higher connectedness in the upper and lower quantiles compared to the middle quantile, which implies that return shocks react more sharply during high war panic.
With the rise of Internet finance and big data, blockchain technology is expected to propose solutions to the challenges faced by agricultural supply chain finance in recent years. This paper will study the problems of food and safety and the low level of technology in rural areas through literature research. There is a gap between China's grain production rate and that of developed countries. Because of its decentralization and precise traceability characteristics, blockchain technology helps to build a distinctive regulatory and accountability system for food and agricultural safety in China. At the same time, blockchain technology with intelligent contract can effectively simplify the business process of agricultural supply chain finance, and reduce the threshold and cost of rural technology promotion, and increase security because of its features that cannot be changed artificially. It can be seen that the blockchain has practical significance to the challenges faced agricultural supply chain finance.
Ahmed Bossman, Mariya Gubareva, Тамара Теплова
The attractiveness of the equities of the Islamic faith-compliant companies as a hedge or possible diversifier has been underscored; however, there is a lack of empirical research on their safe-haven and hedge attributes against changes in the level of cryptocurrency environmental attention (ICEA). We examine whether various distributions of the ICEA possess a significant predictive power on various quantiles of Islamic sectoral stock returns by employing weekly data on the ICEA and Shariah-compliant stocks from 10 sectors of economic activity and base their multi-scale analysis on the complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition (CEEMDAN) approach. We present the asymmetric causality-in-means and quantile-on-quantile regression between the ICEA and Islamic stocks. The empirical results show a significant predictive power of the ICEA on various quantiles of Islamic sectoral stocks in the medium- and long term. We find that the safe-haven and hedging attributes of investments in Islamic stocks are sector-dependent across the medium- and long-term scales. Hence, our findings emphasize that based on market states, possible safe-haven attributes, diversification opportunities, and hedges for cross-sectoral investments with Islamic stocks are viable along various investment horizons for diverse levels of cryptocurrency environmental attention. These findings provide original valuable insights for portfolio management and improving financial stability.
The role of youth in investment is huge when we compare that to the old generation and their perceived attitudes about cryptocurrency investment is getting increased these days in India. This study's primary goal was to assess people's attitudes among young people regarding cryptocurrency awareness and investment. Most of the youth have not yet purchased bitcoin, were just familiar with cryptocurrencies, and lack a comprehensive overview of potential risks. The study’s data was gathered from primary and secondary sources of data. The fundamental information obtained by a questionnaire sent to more than 200 active and passive investors. The secondary sources of data used for the completion of this assignment include journals, magazines, internet websites, textbooks, and a review of literature. Several hypotheses were generated and evaluated with the intention of providing youths with useful suggestions.
Purpose: This study aims to utilize the bibliometric method to investigate the most important characteristics and key research topics in the literature on cryptocurrency research. Theoretical framework: This study used a text mining framework based on domain-level and knowledge structure analysis. Design/methodology/approach: Based on domain-level and knowledge structure analysis, this study used data from the Scopus database, which included 1,685 published articles from 2018 to 2023 on cryptocurrency research. Data analytics and visualization may be accomplished with the bibliometrix package in R software. Findings: The result found that, there has been a fifty percent annual growth in cryptocurrency research since 2018. Studying the most frequently used terms and phrases in the research makes it possible to see which research areas have the greatest impact. According to the results, (1) cryptocurrency market, (2) market efficiency, (3) herding behavior, (4) COVID pandemic, (5) safe haven, (6) stock markets, (7) financial markets, and (8) volatility spillovers should be the emphasis of future research. Research, Practical & Social implications: This article will be useful to scholars and practitioners looking for research directions. Based on the trending topics and knowledge structure of cryptocurrency research, this research also suggests potential new study topics for the future. Originality/value: The value of these findings revealed an increase and a new aspect of cryptocurrency research in the business field related to the continued expansion of empirical research documents, researchers/authors, global collaboration, and co-citations.
This study examines the tendency of short-term return spillover across Bahrain stocks, bitcoin, and other commodity assets factoring in the dynamic effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study employed vector autoregression (VAR) model using the daily returns of Bahrain All Shares Index, bitcoin, crude oil, and gold futures from January 2018 to March 2022. The results showed a persistent unidirectional short-term spillover of return from the Bahrain stock market to the futures gold market for both the period before and during the pandemic. Moreover, the results also showed that the significant positive shock in the bitcoin returns as granger-caused by the returns of the Bahrain stock market is only during the period before the pandemic. Finally, a significant negative contemporaneous short-term effect on the crude oil market returns can be statistically explained by the shocks in the Bahrain stock market only during the COVID-19 period.
The deciding factor in the emergence of cryptocurrency as a global currency depends on the level of acceptance it gains in society. The study is based on primary data collected from a targeted sample of 750 respondents. A theoretical model based on UTAUT and TTAT was developed. A purposive sampling technique was adopted for the study, and the required data were collected using a well-structured and pre-tested questionnaire. PLS-SEM analysis has been used to assess the theoretical model of the study. The study established that perceived threat, attitude, and social influence are the significant factors affecting the adoption of cryptocurrency in India. Effort expectancy and performance expectancy have a considerable impact on the intention to use via attitude. In contrast, perceived severity and perceived susceptibility significantly affect the intention to use via perceived threat. Financial literacy and facilitating conditions don’t seem to impact the intention to use cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange in India.
Jacob Kazungu, Nancy Kagwanja, Huihui Wang, Jane Chuma · 5 authors
<title>Abstract</title> Background Healthcare workers (HCWs) face a high risk of infection during pandemics or public health emergencies as demonstrated in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding how governments respond can inform public health control measures and support health system functioning. An economic impact analysis examining HCW COVID-19 infections in Kenya and three other countries estimated that the total economic costs related to HCW COVID-19 infections costs and deaths in Kenya were US$113.2 million (range US$35.8-US$246.1). We examined the governance arrangements for and implementation of HCW protection during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya between March 2020 and March 2021. Methods We conducted a scoping review of 44 policy and legislative documents and reports on HCW protection and 22 media articles. We adopted the transparency, accountability, participation, integrity and capacity (TAPIC) governance framework to analyse and summarize our findings into policy gaps and implementation challenges. We followed the guidance of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-analysis extension for Scoping Reviews (PRSIMA-ScR). Results Policy design gaps included inadequate provisions for emerging threats, inconsistencies with the devolved context and inadequate structures to monitor, inform and respond to HCW COVID-19 infections. Implementation challenges were attributed to inadequate quantity and quality of PPE, difficulty in accessing medical care for HCWs, delays in HCW remuneration, insufficient infection prevention and control measures, the top-down application of plans, difficulties in working in a decentralized context, and pre-existing public finance management (PFM) bottlenecks. Conclusion Implementation of HCW protection during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond could leverage the revamping of current legislation on labour relations to reflect devolved governance and develop a broader and long-term approach to occupational health and safety implementation that considers all HCWs. Improvements in PFM arrangements coupled with increased investment in the health sector and attention to efficient use of resources will also impact positively on HCW protection.
This paper applies the DCC-MGARCH model to investigate the role of Bitcoin as a hedge for Islamic stocks in Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite being a highly volatile cryptocurrency, evidence of low dynamic correlation between Bitcoin and Islamic stocks is confirmed across the Asian region. We find that Bitcoin’s diversification benefits improve towards the later stages of the pandemic when countries were transitioning to an endemic phase.
Integrating Africa's small farmers to the agricultural supply chains is necessary for their economic growth and development. Nonetheless, the lack of access to finance prevents many African farmers from taking part in the supply chain. the agriculture sector has a persistent problem with getting financial from finance institutions. Smallholder farmers have been mostly excluded from the access to financing services. Blockchain has been applied to resolve a variety of issues in numerous sectors. In the agricultural industry, Blockchain is utilized to increase the supply chain's transparency, security, and traceability. the deployment of Blockchain technology, known as distributed and immutable ledger could be utilized to strengthen agriculture finance. Regarding this, we suggest a systematic literature review to gather all pertinent research on the applications of Blockchain technology for financial inclusion of African small farmers in order to identify current research themes. This research makes a concrete contribution by discussing how blockchain technology might help address the problem of financial exclusion of African small farmers, laying the groundwork for a potential solution that could link these farmers to the global agricultural supply chain.
As the pandemic, Covid-19, spreading across the world from 2020, it changes the habits of people. It helped the development of the online movement. Cryptocurrency investment was one of them. Ethereum is one of the most significant blockchain-based platforms and the second largest proportion of the cryptocurrency market. The price of Ethereum was examined from the last 3 years. The result shows that the price of Ethereum increases drastically at the beginning of the pandemic due to different influences of Covid-19. However, it is decreasing as Covid-19 has become a normal illness to handle recently. In summary, Ethereum is in a strong correlation with Covid-19 and still can fluctuate by illness or movement that increases the interaction of people on the internet. In this paper, vector autoregression model and ARMA-GARCHX model was constructed where VAR model helped to find the relationship between the new infections of COVID-19 in China and Overseas and the return rate of Ethereum and ARMA-GARCHX model was applied to analyze the volatility of the return and predict the future return rate. The models suggest that the return rate can be affected if the number of new infections increases in a short period. However, the number of new infections is not significant to the volatility of the return rate of Ethereum.
The paper examines whether an unanticipated event like the COVID-19 crisis has strengthened the contagion in the cryptocurrency market utilizing samples of data representing the pre-crisis and post-crisis periods. Employing the wavelet coherence and DCC-GARCH(1,1) models, we identify that the cryptocurrency market started integrating from 2018 as volatility within the market reduced. Our main finding is that the cryptocurrency market is highly interconnected and that the contagion strengthened during the crisis period. We draw appropriate policy implications from these findings.
With the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) wave engulfing African governments, the need to do, and use something new has already infiltrated many public sector organizations. While modern technologies are being embraced in the private sector, African governments are emulating new technologies and other Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) to advance their economies while managing the risk that these sophisticated technologies can trigger. Blockchain technology is one of the emerging 4IR technology that is believed to have the capacity to mitigate bureaucratic inefficiencies, although scholars argue implementing such comes at a higher price. To understand how blockchain can help reduce inefficiencies in African bureaucracy, the researchers employed the systematic literature review analysis where documents from various databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were systematically sampled depending on how they offer meaningful data concerning blockchain implementation. The analyses of these secondary sources revealed multiple challenges and opportunities associated with blockchain technology in the African government. The challenges include poor project management, weak institutions that do not uphold accountability and transparency in data entry using blockchain, unavailability of blockchain infrastructure, risk-averse attitude, and absence of institutional readiness. By implementing enabling technology policies in government, the study revealed that blockchain could help improve taxation in African bureaucracies and mitigate data altering and errors while maximizing efficiency. Further merits in public healthcare and education can be realized by using blockchain technology. The conclusions drawn from this study have shown that for African bureaucracy to thrive using blockchain technology, there is a need to prepare public sector institutions to embrace blockchain technology. At the same time, investment in soft and technical skills remains fundamental to mitigate inefficiencies in public service provision. Institutional readiness is another deterrent to blockchain technology as public administration regard this technology as demanding since it may require change, and management where institutions and structures are reshuffled to respond to the demands of blockchain technology in the delivery of public goods.
Blockchain can support the food supply chain in several aspects. Particularly, food traceability and trading across pre-existing contracts can make the supply chain fast, error-free, and support in detecting potential fraud. A proper algorithm, keeping in mind specific geographic, demographic, and additional essential parameters, would let the automated market maker (AMM) supply ample liquidity to pre-determined orders. AMMs are usually run by a set of sequential algorithms called a ‘smart contract’ (SM). Appropriate use of SM reduces food waste, contamination, extra or no delivery in due course, and, possibly most significantly, increases traceability. However, SM has definite vulnerabilities, making it less adaptable at times. We are investigating whether they are genuinely vulnerable during stressful periods or not. We considered seven SM platforms, namely, Fabric, Ethereum (ETH), Waves, NEM (XEM), Tezos (XTZ), Algorand (ALGO), and Stellar (XLM), as the proxies for food supply-chain-based smart contracts from 29 August 2021 to 5 October 2022. This period coincides with three stressed events: Delta (Covid II), Omicron (Covid III), and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We found strong traces of risk transmission, comovement, and interdependence of SM return among the diversified SMs; however, the SMs focused on the food supply chain ended up as net receivers of shocks at both of the extreme tails. All these SMs share a stronger connection in both positive shocks (bullish) and negative shocks (bearish).