This study examines the impact of financial development on bank risk-taking, measured as bank capitalization and bank income diversification. We observe the relationship using annual bank-level data from countries with dual-banking systems. The dataset spans from 2000 to 2014. Our results suggest that the impact of financial development on bank capitalization is heterogeneous across Islamic and conventional commercial banks. Moreover, the effect is different across listed and unlisted banks. However, on average, the response of income diversification to financial development is similar across most specifications. Additionally, bank risk is found to be countercyclical, suggesting that bank risk increases in good times. On average, these results (countercyclical evidence) hold across bank types (Islamic and conventional) and ownership structure (listed and unlisted). However, these results are contingent on the size (small vs. large) factor. The results are robust to alternative proxies of financial development.

There are different ways through which debt exerts pressure on managers to align their interests with those of shareholders. For instance, it does this by reducing free cash flows (Jensen, 1986; Stulz, 1990), by increasing monitoring by debt holders (Ang, Cole, & Lin, 2000) and by increasing takeover threats (Williams, 1987). In this respect, another line of arguments indicates that good corporate governance is associated with lower agency issues (McKnight & Weir, 2009; Rashid, 2016). As per this view advanced by La Porta, Lopezde-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny (2000), both debt and governance mitigate agency conflicts and essentially play the same role; therefore, they can be good substitutes for each other.

Sustainability trends present risks and opportunities for companies and various stakeholders. Profits can be derived from doing good: Islamic sustainability equity in vesting offers competitive risk-return profiles at the levels of individual asset and portfolio of global assets particularly during economic expansion, equity bullish and subprime crisis periods. Islamic finance industry should proactively drive main stream sustainability investing.

This paper examines the effectiveness of the bank lending channel in a dual banking system in Malaysia, where both conventional and Islamic banks operate alongside each other. It also investigates the impact of bank competition on lending channels in financial systems. Using panel data from both Islamic and conventional banks in Malaysia, our findings indicate the ineffectiveness of the bank lending channel. Further, the empirical results suggest that the impact of monetary policy on bank lending does not depend on bank competition. In other words, the effectiveness of the lending transmission channel does not depend on the market power of the individual banks. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the lending channel appears to be independent of whether the bank is Islamic or conventional. This result is probably explained by the fact that the vast majority of Islamic banks in Malaysia are subsidiaries of conventional banks. Policymakers therefore do not need to differentiate between conventional and Islamic banks in regard to the effectiveness of the bank lending channel.

This paper examines the financial performance of ethical funds in different regions and concludes that there is a cost attached to ethical investing. An analysis of 964 mutual funds comprising of Socially responsible funds (SRFs) and the Shariah-compliant equity funds (SCFs) suggests that: a) except for global funds, both types of funds underperform in the market, b) both types of funds are preferred for investment in growth and momentum stocks, c) SRFs are preferred for small capitalized stocks whereas SCFs do not follow any specific style or investment strategy, d) unlike SRFs, SCFs do not provide a safe haven for investors during crises. These findings are probably due to the lack of diversification opportunities and poor managerial skills. The results are robust to various asset pricing models and macroeconomic factors.

The slides highlight the research questions on: 1) would the presence of Islamic finance be associated with lower shadow economy; 2) are Islamic finance and the financial development complementary in reducing the shadow economy sector?

The motivation to examine flow-performance relationship of Shariah compliant funds (SCFs) and Socially responsible funds (SRFs) is that investors investing in these two funds have certain non-financial motives such as religious, ethical, environmental etc. Renneboog et al., (2011) explained that more the investor is averse to certain non-ethical or non-religious corporate behavior the more satisfaction he/she gets by investing in the funds that are in line with his/her ethical or religious position. The above conjecture that the SRF and SCF investors chose funds based on a dual objective of socially responsible/religious investing and financial gains is in line with the way generally these funds advertise their funds emphasizing the importance of socially responsible/religious investing.

The purpose of this paper is to appraise the effectiveness of monetary policy actions in variant market conditions for Islamic stocks. These stocks offer ground for a natural experiment as they have restrictions on the line of business and their distinguished capital structure does not allow them to combat the liquidity crisis through the use of leverage. The paper uses the quantile regression approach for a multi-country sample of Islamic stock indices to assess the impact of domestic as well as US expansionary monetary policy on stock returns of Islamic indices at various locations of distribution of returns. It is found that, at lower return levels, an expansionary monetary policy has a negative effect on the returns. In other cases, there is no significant impact of policy rate change on index returns. It is more appropriate to use firm level data of Islamic stocks instead of stock indices. However, the information regarding index constituents is not publicly available ...

The primary goal of this paper is to explore the viability of initiating Islamic finance (IF) in an unchartered economy. Canada is taken as a case study for this paper. To achieve our objective, we proceed in two stages. The first stage involves the analysis of market opportunities for IF. More precisely, the first stage involves the cost/benefit analysis which would enable the IF industry to see whether it is feasible for them to initiate. Second, the more challenging stage involves the analysis with regard to the barriers in offering IF products.

The slides highlight: 1) the needs of Islamic finance; 2) sources of Shariah; 3) prohibition in Islamic finance.

Benchmarks serve multiple purposes in financial markets and hence play a critical role. They serve as a reference point for pricing instruments, reflect the opportunity cost and also serve as a reference rate for the relative performance of a portfolio. Hence, a benchmark that is transparent, liquid, easy to calculate and non-manipulative is considered critical for the efficiency of financial markets. In this paper, we suggest a model proposed, by Mirakhor (1996) which can well serve the purpose of a potential benchmark for pricing. We also show the feasibility of the model in contemporary financial system. The main motivations behind the paper are, a) to move away from any fixed rate of return, b) to present a benchmark that reflects the return based on real sector of an economy as far as possible and, c) to present a non-manipulative benchmark.

We assess the managerial skills of globally invested 686 ethical funds taking into consideration the macroeconomic efficiency and fund inflows/outflows. It was observed that managers exhibit negative selection and market timing skills but no consistent pattern for style timing. A cursory glance at the literature indicates little support for superior managerial abilities, especially in terms of timing skills. Notwithstanding, some have highlighted the importance of including fund flows in the traditional models and argue that excluding it can lead to spurious timing skills (Bollen and Busse, 2001). The findings indicate that the investors increase their exposure to funds during a bullish period and reduce it during a bearish period.

We use a sample of 5,863 US firms to investigate how religious constraints affect the product market fluidity for Shariah compliant (SC) firms. The study is important as Islamic asset management is emerging as an alternative investment class. We find that SC firms are less exposed to product market threats in relation to Shariah non-compliant (SNC) firms. They are more competitive in the case of less concentrated markets, lower market share, equity multiplier, market/book assets ratio, experience lower asset growth, and spend little on research and development. Their competitive position is strengthened when their return on assets, sales and retained earnings are lower.

Shariah screening discards the firms that belong to impermissible business sectors (or sin industries) and follow capital structure with high debt and current assets. This study tests whether the firms passing Shariah screening have better (or worse) governance quality as compared to firms not subjected to Islamic screening. The screened firms may have lesser governance quality as they cannot use debt to discipline managers or achieve optimal capital structure. On the contrary, they may be better governed as these firms get higher presence of institutional investors and better analyst coverage. This paper provides comparison of governance quality of Shariah compliant (SC) firms in United States by using proprietary dataset of Dow Jones US Indices. The screened firms offer ground for a natural experiment as they pass negative ethical screening and meet financial criteria for the inclusion in the index. The findings suggest that the SC firms have lesser governance quality than Shariah Non-Compliant firms. The lower level of governance can be attributed to lower Size, lower Profitability, higher Dividend Payout, higher Total Risk and lower Free Cash Flow. Various robustness tests are performed to validate the findings and the results remained robust. These findings provide useful insights about the governance mechanism of SC firms that are emerging as an important alternative investment class in the last two decades.

The mutual fund industry observed a remarkable growth of two distinct types of mutual funds during the last two decades, namely, Shariah-compliant funds (SCFs) and Socially responsible funds (SRFs). These alternative investment avenues were created for investors who are keen on investments that are Shariah-compliant and have better ethical standards than conventional funds. To fulfil these needs, the funds' investment strategies incorporate specific non-financial screening criteria based on ethical and religious guidelines, besides the typical risk-return financial screening.

According to the substitution hypothesis and recent evidence, firms that are better governed carry less debt and experience fewer agency problems. This may also imply that firms with lower debt are better governed and experience lower agency costs. We test this hypothesis by comparing the agency costs of Shariah compliant (SC, and therefore low debt) and Shariah noncompliant (SNC) firms, using a proprietary dataset comprising constituents of the Dow Jones Islamic index for the period 2006-2015. The findings support the hypothesis but are contingent on the firm's idiosyncratic risk; SC firms with low idiosyncratic risk have higher agency costs.

The mutual fund industry has seen rapid growth in the last two decades or so as an alternative investment scheme. The growth of the mutual fund industry saw a jump of 13% from the year 2012 to 2013 as assets under management (AuM) increased from $60.9 trillion in 2012 to $68.7 trillion in 2013 (Boston Consultancy Group, 2014). As far as regional growth is concerned, it has slowed down in most of the emerging markets but increased steadily in MENA and Asian countries. Its growth has varied in Australia, Asia, Japan, the Middle East and Africa and North America and varied from 14 percent to 20 percent. As far as Europe and Latin America is concerned, the average growth rate has been 8% and 7%, respectively.

This thesis is structured into three essays. The first essay provides evidence on the comparative risk-return profile and investment style of SCFs and the SRFs. As the long list of literature claims the superiority of these funds during the crisis period, the validity of this claim is also examined using a larger sample and a longer analysis period. The findings of this research can be summarized as follows; first, both types of funds underperform the market suggesting there is cost attached to ethical and religious based investment but SCFs, to some extent, manage to do better than the SRFs. Second, in terms of investment style, SRFs investments are biased towards small capitalized stocks whereas SCFs do not follow any specific strategy ...

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.