This study presents Professor M. Kabir Hassan's productivity, citations, collaborations with fellow researchers, publications, and content analysis with future research direction in conjunction with his 30th academic anniversary which is marked in 2021. The bibliometric and thematic analysis of the scientific legacy of Professor M. Kabir Hassan was conducted based on his publications from 1991 to 2021. During his long career, he has published 346 journal articles with 23,059 citations and collaborated with 292 authors globally. The findings of conceptual and empirical research papers published by Professor M. Kabir Hassan are crucial for the theoretical developments of Islamic finance, as well as its practical developments as a distinctive discipline. We have derived several research areas for future research based on the research works published by Professor M. Kabir Hassan, as follows: i) the issue of Islamic common market that needs to be examined further in the light of new data and changing global perspectives; ii) a study on the issues faced by Islamic banks in adopting Basel III and capital adequacy framework for Islamic banks; iii) new models for takaful need to be explored; iv) the cost of faith-based investing needs to be studied in the recent times, especially to understand the impact of the pandemic on it; v) a study to understand the perception of the government of Bangladesh, and international and multilateral organisations on the role of zakat to alleviate poverty; vi) the level of technology adoption by Islamic banks can be studied; and vii) the successful implementation of equity-based Islamic finance contracts could be empirically studied. It is anticipated that this research will motivate young and emerging scholars, as well as existing scholars, to excel in their arenas by producing quality research and publications in a consistent manner

This paper investigates the effects of religious screening on payout behavior of US firms. Shariah compliant (SC) indices serve as suitable sample as they are emerging as alternative investment class in the last two decades. Through an analysis of a sample of US firms belonging to Dow Jones proprietary database for the period 2006-2018, this study provides evidence that SC firms are more prone to make total payout, cash dividends and repurchases. We use panel logistic regressions with industry and year fixed effects. The findings reveal that the drivers of higher propensity of total payout are higher profitability, higher retained earnings, lower debt capital structure and lower asset growth. The factors that contribute to likelihood of paying higher cash dividends are higher profitability, lower governance levels and lower market/book assets ratio. Moreover, better governance, lower asset growth and lower equity/assets increase the propensity of SC firms to make higher repurchases. These findings are important contribution to the Islamic corporate finance and dividend policy literature.

Capital structure serves as an important device for mitigation of agency conflicts and, although firms combine debt and cash dividends to address the agency conflicts, debt is preferred as a bonding device by many managers due to its lower cost as compared to equity (John, Knyazeva & Knyazeva, 2015). However, shariah-compliant firms (SCF) cannot use this device due to prohibition of interest-bearing loans in Islam. In this scenario, the dividend payout policy becomes a highly important tool of corporate governance for shariah-compliant investors. Moreover, the managers of these firms cannot maintain stable dividends by issuing bonds and, therefore, the dividend policy of such firms would be different. This chapter highlights the dividend payout behaviour of SCF by comparing them to conventional firms.

The aim of this article is to investigate the motivation of CEOs to invest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. To carry out this analysis, we assess a sample of US conventional and Shariah Compliant (SC) firms, from Dow Jones Indices. As SC firms undergo business and financial screening, they are expected to follow different managerial styles and capital structures as compared to conventional firms. This comparison is important in view of the growing size of the Islamic Financial Services Industry that has surpassed total asset values of USD 2.00 Trillion. Existing literature argues that, for conventional firms, CEOs spend on CSR either to promote their private benefits (agency view) or to reduce conflicts among shareholders (conflict resolution view). Our results provide evidence that across both types of firms, CEOs do not invest in CSR initiatives to pursue selfish motives but to resolve conflicts among stakeholders to maximize firm value. The findings are also robust across different specifications and methods in order to address endogeneity issues. This article contributes to the growing literature on managerial styles, capital structure and Islamic Finance, carrying out important implications for the investment industry and for the long-term value of the firm.