4. Theses

Although literature on shadow economy has been growing, the examination is scarce in the case of developing countries, especially the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) economies. In this study, we develop various testable hypotheses related to shadow economy. We investigate the determinants of shadow economy across a large sample of 141 countries and examine whether it varies across OIC (42) and non-OIC (99) countries. The average size of the shadow economy in OIC countries is 34.36% of gross domestic product (GDP) while it is 30.57% of GDP in non-OlC economies. The approach of exploring various definitions, historical development, types, Islamic viewpoint and the determining factors behind people's preference to join shadow economy is adopted in order to provide a deeper understanding of shadow economy. As far as our first objective Is concerned, we explored the determinants of shadow economy in OIC and non-OIC countries (1995-2015). Our results show that economic growth and institutional variables have negative association with shadow economy in both types of countries whereas government expenditure has a positive effect on shadow economy in both groups ...

In spite of the expanding number of studies investigating the effect of institutional quality on capital flows, a very few attempts has been made to investigate the impact of capital flows on the institutional quality of host countries.This study investigates the role of capital flows on the institutional infrastructure of the OIC countries, which are divided into three separate essays. The first essay investigates the impact of the official development assistance (ODA) on the institutional development of the OIC counties. The research uses system GMM, and the data for this study is obtained from 40 OIC countries for the three-year average period from 1991 to 2016. Empirical findings suggest that aid reduces the Institutional quality for the aid recipient countries. For robustness test and heterogeneous relationship among aid recipient countries, this study uses panel quantile regression and finds that foreign aid generally reduces Institutional quality, and its reduction effect is greater in less institutionally developed countries ...

Islamic finance is often criticized for its non-practicality in today's modern economics. The principles of promoting exchange and prohibition of interest-rate based transactions are understood as endorsing risk sharing economic system is said to be incompatible in an open and modern market like today. This view was contrary to the spirit of the 2012 Kuala Lumpur Declaration, where Islamic-scholars, jurisprudents, and economists all vouched to force the enactment of risk sharing principle into our economic system ...