According to proponents of Gold Dinar particularly Meera and Aziz (2002), termed as Dinarists, the fiat monetary system is inherently unstable. In providing an empirical perspective on this contention, this paper investigates monetary dynamics of a Muslim economy, Malaysia. To this end, the paper adopts a vector autoregressive (VAR) framework to document dynamic interactions between money supply and various macroeconomic variables including real output, price level, interest rate and stock prices. The results seem to provide some support for the Dinarists' contention. First, the results portray clearly an important causal role of money supply for other macroeconomic variables. Second, we document some evidence that expansion in money supply is inflationary. Lastly, money supply ,interest rate and money supply stock price interactions are destabilizing. More importantly, expansion in money supply has the potential of breeding asset price bubbles. However, apart from the above findings, we also find that money supply reacts positively to increase in real output. Since the accommodative role of money supply is necessary or a pre-condition for expansion in production, arguments for Gold Dinar need to be qualified. Moreover, the viability of Gold Dinar comes into question when political and international aspects of monetary standards are considered.

This paper assesses the impact of changing competition landscape and Islamic bank penetration on bank risk, profitability and capitalization. This study utilizes an unbalanced panel dataset consisting of 37 commercial banks over the period 1997 to 2015. The paper uses a panel VAR methodology to discern the interactions between bank competition and Islamic banking presence on one hand and bank performance on the other hand. We find evidence supportive of both competition - stability and competition - fragility views for conventional banks. The results suggest that bank competition improves conventional bank risk and, at the same time, lower profitability and capital holdings. As for Islamic banks, competition seems to robustly influence only bank profitability. Finally, we note that increasing Islamic bank penetration improves the risk profile of conventional banks and, as expected, reduces their market power. These results bear important implications on the design of competition policies in a dual banking system as well as on the development of the Islamic banking sector.

This paper investigates the presence of financial constraints among firms in Malaysia using firm level panel data analysis. The empirical results based on panel GMM demonstrate that financial constraints are present in the market, which indicate that the firms are unable to access to external forms of financing. In addition, the presence also signifies the presence of asymmetric information problem between the firm and its financer. Thus, the neoclassical investment theory which based on assumption of complete information such that only factor prices and technology determine firm’s desired capital stock is simply rejected. Eventually, their investments are much affected by fluctuations in their cash flows or retained earnings.

For the first time, this study investigates whether, in mimicking conventional banks, Islamic banks have become less stable than their theoretical equivalent: cooperative banks in Europe. Theoretically, the prohibition of interest should have pushed Islamic banks towards mutuality and profit-sharing, which have been argued as stabilising. In practice, however, banks are pushed for growth under a debt-driven commercial banking model, which is not only antithetical to the Shariah but is also destabilising. This may explain why empirical findings are still divergent in Islamic banking stability studies. Our study employs the generalised method of moments (GMM) system to compare the stability of 37 Islamic banks against 1,536 cooperative banks in Europe during the 2008 crisis and post-non-crisis years. Interestingly, we found consistent and significant evidence that Islamic banks are less stable than cooperative banks in both macroeconomic conditions. This has significant policy implications, the most important of which is to steer reform efforts away from refurbishing Islamic commercial banks and towards building an entirely new Islamic cooperative bank, based on the model in Europe.

This paper examines the complementarity/substitutability of international trade and financial development in the mitigation of carbon emissions for a panel sample of 62 middle-income countries from 1991 to 2010. Applying the bias-corrected LSDV estimator, the paper yields interesting results. For the full sample, international trade and financial development play an interactive and complementary role in reducing CO2 intensity of energy use. That is, the environmental benefit of international trade is materialized only if a country has a well-developed financial market. Likewise, financial development is beneficial to the environment only in a highly open economy. Having stated these, the analysis also uncovers evidence that these results may be different across levels of income or across regions. The results bear important policy implications for the abatement of the environmental problem in the middle-income countries.

This paper investigates the impact of non-intermediation activities of banks on economic growth and volatility of OIC. For the purpose, we utilize LSDVC estimation approach using the sample of Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) member countries for the period of 2001-2013. We find non-intermediation income to be insignificant for both economic growth and volatility of OIC member countries in general though it reduces volatility of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies. Intermediation activities are found to be insignificantly related with the growth of OIC member countries, but on the other hand, they are found to reduce volatility in OIC member countries. Our results are robust across different specifications and estimators.

Islamic finance as a field of research continues to be exciting and has been evolving with coverage that goes beyond mere comparison with conventional finance. With rapid development in Islamic banking to reach the status of being systematically important in many jurisdictions, the following questions seem pertinent: Should Islamic banking diversify to non-intermediation activities such that it can rival and become a truly alternative to conventional banking in the provision of banking services? How should Islamic banks structure their financing? And what are the financial and real impacts of Islamic banking? As for the Islamic stock markets, in light of on-going research and still inconclusive findings, investment opportunities provided by Shari'ah compliant stocks remain a central issue. The question is: what is the role of Islamic stocks in investment strategies especially from the lens of price discovery? Apart from these traditionally-focused Islamic finance areas, Islamic finance research starts to emphasize other equivalently important areas, among which include Islamic corporate finance and Islamic microfinance.

In view of the increasing contributions of social capital in financial development, we examine the relevance of social capital in stock market development by applying Bayesian model averaging on 37 variables across 60 countries from 2000 to 2006. The results demonstrate that trust is a robust and positive determinant of stock market depth and liquidity, and that trust is the most relevant component of social capital in market development. Macroeconomic instability in the form of inflationary changes has a dampening effect on trust in the trading of stock. Further, social capital and its components, particularly trust, are more relevant to stock market development in countries with weak rule of law, non-Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (non-OECD) and Organization of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) countries that are generally characterized by lower formal institutional quality. Our results seek to reinforce the relevance of social capital in complementing the much needed reform of stock markets globally.

Rapid development of financial markets particularly stock markets has been a main feature of many emerging markets. The conventionally held view, which has a basis in the seminal work of Schumpeter (1911), is that the stock market development is beneficial to the economy since it provides liquidity and an avenue for risk sharing and diversification, allows efficient allocation of resources to productive investment, reduces information and transaction costs and, consequently allows firms to undertake profitable investments. This view has been supported by various early empirical studies noting a positive relation between stock market development and economic growth. It has also been supported by recent studies utilizing advanced time series econometrics and finding the causal influences of stock market development on economic performance. Still, against this view and empirical evidence, some have also noted potential detrimental effects of stock market development through saving reduction, facilitation of counterproductive corporate takeovers, attraction of speculative inflows and reversal of financial capitals.

The rapid growth of Islamic finance, especially Islamic banking, and its perceived resiliency during the global financial crisis have been key features in recent Islamic finance literature. The Islamic banking business model has also started to attract empirical attention from economists as to whether it can instil the much needed stability into the financial system. While some studies have offered evidence that Islamic banks are relatively more stable and resilient than their conventional counterparts (Cihak and Hesse, 2010; Hasan and Dridi, 2010), there still remain several concerns over whether Islamic banks can play a distinct role in the stability of the financial system and can better allocate financial resources ...

This study investigates the impact of bank concentration and financial development on economic volatility for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries. Employing dynamic panel models, we find no evidence that bank concentration is significantly related to economic volatility when it is entered independently in the models. Meanwhile, financial development lowers economic volatility. Extending the models to include market structure - financial development interaction, we note that the impact of bank concentration on volatility depends on the level of financial development within OIC countries. More specifically, the volatility-increasing effect of bank concentration tends to be moderated by financial development. Accordingly, in the wake of banking sector consolidation in these countries, policymakers and regulators in OIC countries should focus on further developing their financial markets such that the negative consequences of resulting market concentration can be mitigated.