The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those ufthe IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by thc author(s) and are Pl?blished to elicit comments and to further debate.There have been several episodes of financial market "contagion" in the 1990s. Is contagion driven by herd behavior? Does it reflect fundamental economic linkages between countries? Or are episodes of contagion driven by investor learning and risk reassessment about a select group of countries? We pursue these questions by studying the persistence in the spillover of shocks following the bond market developments in Hong Kong SAR in 1997. Our results suggest that this contagion, at least for a few countries, was a consequence of adverse sentiment shifts arising from investor learning and was not merely driven by changes in fundamentals.

The assessment provides evidence of market segmentation across Islamic and conventional banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), leading to excess liquidity, and an uneven playing field for Islamic banks that might affect their growth. Liquidity management has been a long-standing concern in the global Islamic finance industry as there is a general lack of Shari’ah compliant instruments that can serve as high-quality short-term liquid assets. The degree of segmentation and bank behavior varies across countries depending on Shari’ah permissibility and the availability of Shari’ah-compliant instruments. A partial response would be to support efforts to build Islamic liquid interbank and money markets, which are crucial for monetary policy transmission through the Islamic financial system. This can be achieved, to a large extent, by deepening Islamic government securities and developing Shari’ah-compliant money market instruments.

The assessment provides evidence of market segmentation across Islamic and conventional banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), leading to excess liquidity, and an uneven playing field for Islamic banks that might affect their growth. Liquidiy management has been a long-standing concern in the global Islamic finance industry as there is a general lack of Shari'ah compliant instruments than can serve as high-quality short-term liquid assets. The degree of segmentation and bank behavior varies across countries depending on Shari'ah permissibility and the availability of Shari'ah-compliant instruments. A partial response would be to support efforts to build Islamic liquid interbank and money markets, which are crucial for monetary policy transmission through the Islamic financial system.This can be achieved, to a large extent, by deepening Islamic government securities and developing Shari'ah-compliant money market instruments.

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