Islamic Finance

Hundreds of verses of the Quran deal with the spending of money, trade, social class, charity and other forms of economic transactions. While ideals and debates about the role of Islamic economics in the development process abound, this paper presents a case study of the role of Islamic economic practices in the development process in Egypt. Islamic economic practices are diverse and have distinct roles to play in society when aligned with requisite institutions.

The United Kingdom has the most highly developed Islamic financial services industry of any Muslim minority country. Its development has been actively supported by successive governments, from a variety of motives.

In response to global warming and growing emission levels countries have shown great concern to make efforts to reduce emissions. Under the Koyoto Protocol countries with higher level of emissions have developed a mechanism to buy credits from countries with low emissions. High levels of polluters are issued allowances by their national governments to cut down emission equal to the value of allowances issued. They are either to abate the emissions or to sell these allowances to companies or countries with low emissions, whichever is cheaper.

This paper examines the effects of currency and banking crises on economic downturns in North Africa and GCC countries based on a Financial Stress Index (FSI). The paper identifies episodes of financial turmoil according to FSI values, and proposes an analytical framework to assess the impact of financial stress - in particular the effect of Islamic banks distress and conventional banks distress - on the economic downturn.

Since 2006, Gaza Strip has been under siege that resulted in exceptional conditions where both imports and exports are not allowed. The way to deal with this situation is to focus on locally available resources to meet the needs of the population while making sure that scarce resources do not deteriorate especially in the agricultural sector. Therefore; the Palestinian government found itself in a position to plant agricultural crops in governmental lands (known as settlements before Israelis withdrew from Gaza), to sustainably meet the needs of the population.

This study investigated the various factors that impede both the access to and use of the requisite financial resources for entrepreneurial development in Nigeria. Data was collected via a survey questionnaire administered on micro-entrepreneurs in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. A measurement model using the structural equation modeling approach was adopted. The paper concluded that both the voluntary and involuntary financial exclusion factors significantly account for financial exclusion in Nigeria. However, voluntary exclusion signals more problem.