Master

In current time there are many discussions relating to the question of social justice and how exclusion affected people s ability, opportunity, and dignity. Although inclusion is a worthy pursuit by itself, other characteristic of society such as mobility and cohesiveness are also pursued. Thus, we may look at the relationship of these social objectives, and how they relate to each other, thus helping policy makers in making a better choice for implementation of policies. In general, as will be see in this paper, we see a positive correlation between mobility and inclusion, and cohesion and inclusion. However, since terms such as mobility, inclusion and cohesion are coarse, and usually used to define many good things aspire by society, our specific definition of the terms will see different relationship. Thus, absolute mobility and relative mobility have different relationship with different factors of inclusion. Furthermore, the use of education standard may neglect traditional schooling for many OIC countries, reflecting some differences between those countries and developing countries in general. Here, using horizontal trust among citizens as proxy for social cohesion we see across countries positive correlation between cohesion and our measures of inclusion.

Innovation is a key factor in propelling a country into a sustainable economic advancement. The neoclassical model of growth and thereafter the endogenous growth theories have repeatedly pointed to technological improvements in productivity as the catalyst to changes in the way we produce and consume. The ecosystem to nurture this outcome is not simple. It requires building a strong foundation. This study posits the notion that 5 key pillars of Infrastructure, Industry, Institution, Knowledge, Human Capital and Research & Development (R&D), and finally Finance & Investments are the essential ingredients to building the foundation. We analyse the policy gaps of Muslim countries within these themes against the most innovative countries and test our hypothesis through a regression model for the Muslim countries. From our study, we discern that R&D expenditure was rarely prioritized, and foreign talent was heavily leveraged upon as opposed to skilling the endowed labour force. For budding entrepreneurs, they found themselves limited in acquiring funds with venture capital rarely in presence. Many of the countries in the Muslim world are undergoing their own transformation journey. The proof in the pudding will be determined by their execution, commitment, and transparency. To this end, we have suggested a few recommendations to focus resources to.

From the start of 21st century, there has been rapidly increasing awareness of the environmental impact of people’s way of life and usage of resources. This impact arises from overconsumption, pollution, destruction of natural resources which result in emission of greenhouse gases, and permanent destruction that mankind cause to the planet. As the awareness of the serious and far-reaching consequences of climate change continues to grow, communities are looking for solutions to slow down, halt, and mitigate these effects. The renewable energy projects emerge as winning proposition against the current climate and environmental concerns which are the consequence of unsustainable economic activities. This study aims to exhibit great potential of Islamic finance in providing instruments for renewable energy projects. It explains and compares the financial structures used in both conventional finance and Islamic finance for green energy investments, resulting that Islamic finance has plenteous numbers of instruments for financing these projects. The research finds that Islamic finance, compared to its conventional counterpart offers better structures for renewable energy projects thanks to its asset based nature.