A Five-Factor Asset Pricing Model of Shariah Compliant Firms in the United States

Abstract

Shariah compliant firms operating in an environment with little to no access to a robust Islamic capital market (such as in the United States (US) stock market) will exhibit a consistent bias towards certain corporate financial behaviour. Does this bias subsequently lead to a skewed asset pricing behaviour? To answer this question, this paper investigates the asset pricing behaviour of multiple samples of Shariah compliant firms listed in the US as compared to an overall conventional sample by employing the Fama & French Five-Factor Model. By applying contemporary Shariah stock screening methodology on a sample of all stocks listed in the NYSE, NASDAQ and the IEX from January 2000 to December 2019, this paper shows that asset pricing behaviour differs not only between Shariah compliant and conventional samples, but also amongst Shariah compliant samples themselves. Ultimately, this paper shows that when deriving the appropriate expected return for Shariah compliant portfolios in the US, there are evidence to suggest that the Fama & French Five-Factor model is more suitable compared to the traditional Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) since the additional risk premiums show consistent significance across groups of Shariah compliant firms.