Theory and Practice of Modern Islamic Finance seeks to contribute to the existing body of work in the area of Islamic finance through examining the extent of divergence in practice of Islamic financing from the traditional Shari`ah in the Australian context. The author makes a discursive analysis of the regulation of Islamic finance in Australia in terms of (a) the financing instruments used, (b) certainty of transactions between participants in the system, and (c) institutional risk management of Islamic financial institutions. The work's objectives are two-fold: (a) to analytically study the extent to which Islamic Financial Services Providers (IFSPs) of Australia differ from the traditional Shari`ah in their current practices of Islamic legal financial system by their use of different f...

International Journal of Finance and Policy Analysis (IJFPA) ISSN 0974-3499 aims to publish high quality papers that are of interest to academicians and practitioners. IJFPA is peer-reviewed and publishes both applied and theoretical papers bi-annually. The journal only considers original manuscripts for publication. IJFPA welcomes contributions in the areas of corporate finance, investments, corporate governance, international finance, financial markets & institutions, credit analysis, financial planning, financial risk management, behavioural finance, financial services management, capital structure, international financial market linkages, portfolio management, financial analysis, financial market regulations, and international banking. Other papers that might be of interest to the read...

International Journal of Finance and Policy Analysis (IJFPA) ISSN 0974-3499 aims to publish high quality papers that are of interest to academicians and practitioners. IJFPA is peer-reviewed and publishes both applied and theoretical papers bi-annually. The journal only considers original manuscripts for publication. IJFPA welcomes contributions in the areas of corporate finance, investments, corporate governance, international finance, financial markets & institutions, credit analysis, financial planning, financial risk management, behavioural finance, financial services management, capital structure, international financial market linkages, portfolio management, financial analysis, financial market regulations, and international banking. Other papers that might be of interest to the read...

International Journal of Finance and Policy Analysis (IJFPA) ISSN 0974-3499 aims to publish high quality papers that are of interest to academicians and practitioners. IJFPA is peer-reviewed and publishes both applied and theoretical papers bi-annually. The journal only considers original manuscripts for publication. IJFPA welcomes contributions in the areas of corporate finance, investments, corporate governance, international finance, financial markets & institutions, credit analysis, financial planning, financial risk management, behavioural finance, financial services management, capital structure, international financial market linkages, portfolio management, financial analysis, financial market regulations, and international banking. Other papers that might be of interest to the read...

International Journal of Finance and Policy Analysis (IJFPA) ISSN 0974-3499 aims to publish high quality papers that are of interest to academicians and practitioners. IJFPA is peer-reviewed and publishes both applied and theoretical papers bi-annually. The journal only considers original manuscripts for publication. IJFPA welcomes contributions in the areas of corporate finance, investments, corporate governance, international finance, financial markets & institutions, credit analysis, financial planning, financial risk management, behavioural finance, financial services management, capital structure, international financial market linkages, portfolio management, financial analysis, financial market regulations, and international banking. Other papers that might be of interest to the read...

International Journal of Finance and Policy Analysis (IJFPA) ISSN 0974-3499 aims to publish high quality papers that are of interest to academicians and practitioners. IJFPA is peer-reviewed and publishes both applied and theoretical papers bi-annually. The journal only considers original manuscripts for publication. IJFPA welcomes contributions in the areas of corporate finance, investments, corporate governance, international finance, financial markets & institutions, credit analysis, financial planning, financial risk management, behavioural finance, financial services management, capital structure, international financial market linkages, portfolio management, financial analysis, financial market regulations, and international banking. Other papers that might be of interest to the read...

This book examines contemporary legal and policy issues facing banking and micro-finance supervision and regulation in Zambia. The book sets out an interdisciplinary exposition of the law. It provides an interface of financial services law and practice. Relevant aspects of business management and economic theory are examined as well. The book attempts to permeate intellectual spheres that have not been explored in depth before. In essence, this is not a simple textbook on the introductory aspects of a particular field of law, as is often the case with many books that have titles such as "Introduction to Business Law" or "Fundamentals of Tort Law", and so forth. By contrast, the book breaks new ground in the area of financial services regulation. Indeed, a law in context approach is present...

Based on data on publicly traded insurance firms, the first essay examines questions about the effect of large catastrophic events on insurance firms. Rather than looking at a single event, thirty catastrophic events were aggregated into quintiles and the cumulative abnormal returns around these events were found to be significantly positive over a 25 day trading window. There is no significant evidence that post-catastrophic stock returns are correlated to the magnitude of the catastrophe. The second essay analyzes the effect of a large land grant university, the University of Illinois, on the State Treasury of Illinois. If the State Treasury were acting as its own agent trying to maximize revenues, would it choose higher education as an investment versus other alternative investm...

The famous Black-Scholes model was the starting point of a new financial industry and has been a very important pillar of all options trading since. One of its core assumptions is that the volatility of the underlying asset is constant. It was realised early that one has to specify a dynamic on the volatility itself to get closer to market behaviour. There are mainly two aspects making this fact apparent. Considering historical evolution of volatility by analysing time series data one observes erratic behaviour over time. Secondly, backing out implied volatility from daily traded plain vanilla options, the volatility changes with strike. The most common realisations of this phenomenon are the implied volatility smile or skew. The natural question arises how to extend the Black...

Computational Finance, an exciting new cross-disciplinary research area, depends extensively on the tools and techniques of computer science, statistics, information systems and financial economics for educating the next generation of financial researchers, analysts, risk managers, and financial information technology professionals. This new discipline, sometimes also referred to as “Financial Engineering” or “Quantitative Finance” needs professionals with extensive skills both in finance and mathematics along with specialization in computer science. Soft-Computing in Capital Market hopes to fulfill the need of applications of this offshoot of the technology by providing a diverse collection of cross-disciplinary research. This edited volume covers most of the recent, advanced r...

Developments in Islamic Banking Practice: The Experience of Bangladesh examines global developments in the Islamic banking practice, and provides an in-depth analysis of the theory and practice of Islamic banking in Bangladesh, the third-largest Muslim country in the world, with over 150 million Muslims. This book is the first of its kind to examine Islamic banking principles and practices in Bangladesh on such a broad scale. Learners, teachers, researchers, and those practically involved in the burgeoning financial industry will derive value from this book. Readers from all disciplines will become familiarized with the key differences between the principles and practices of two distinct banking systems: the interest-free Islamic banking and the interest-based conventional banking. Wi...

The role of legal origin was first introduced in the Law and Finance Literature by La Porta et al. (1997) in an original study of legal determinants of external finance. Their study is timely given that investor protection is crucial because in many countries, expropriation of minority shareholders and creditors by controlling shareholders or corporate insiders is extensive. This dissertation intends to replicate the original La Porta et al. (1997) study for Property stocks in 23 countries whose legal jurisdictions falls into the four of the legal fraternities established by La Porta namely, English, French, German and Scandinavian. The primary motivations for this thesis, is that the Property stocks broadly captures several critical aspects of the original La Porta study. Specifically, Pr...

The book examines principles of arbitration law as they apply to many common law and civil law jurisdictions. In many countries, the use of alternative dispute resolution to resolve matters in areas relating to, say, foreign direct investment and industrial unrest has been heralded by many as a cost-effective way of settling disputes. Chapters in the book cover, among other things: the efficacy of the legal framework for arbitration in Zambia under the Arbitration Act 1933; the efficacy of the legal framework for arbitration under Zambia's Arbitration Act 2000; aspects of international law applicable to the legal framework for arbitration; and efforts to develop international and regional frameworks for arbitration.Other books by this author include: Banking Supervision and Systemac Bank R...

Quasi-Monte Carlo methods, which are often described as deterministic versions of Monte Carlo methods, were introduced in the 1950s by number theoreticians. They improve several deficiencies of Monte Carlo methods; such as providing estimates with deterministic bounds and avoiding the paradoxical difficulty of generating random numbers in a computer. However, they have their own drawbacks. First, although they provide faster convergence than Monte Carlo methods asymptotically, the advantage may not be practical to obtain in "high" dimensional problems. Second, there is not a practical way to measure the error of a quasi-Monte Carlo simulation. Finally, unlike Monte Carlo methods, there is a scarcity of error reduction techniques for these methods. In this dissertation, we attempt to pro...

The Islamic Moral Economy is an academic book that analyzes the religious permissibility or lack thereof of the existing repertoire of financial instruments used in Islamic banking and finance. The work is both timely and sound, especially considering the growth of the international Islamic banking and insurance industries, and the Great Recession of 2007-2010. The Islamic Moral Economy is an excellent introductory book for academics and finance professionals wishing to gain a better understanding of Islamic moral constraints on economic transactions and how most current Islamic banking transactions are structured. More specifically, the author examines the utopian nature of the Islamic moral economy with a special emphasis on riba (i.e., financial interest and illogical increase), ...

The Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of 1990 drastically changed the state’s entire educational system in ways of curriculum, governance, and finance. KERA has served as somewhat of a blueprint for reform legislation in a number of other states. A literature review revealed that traditionally the relationship between K-12 reform and higher education (teacher preparation) in the United States has not been very strong. Although the connections between the two were unclear early on in Kentucky’s reform efforts, much progress has been made in linking KERA to the teacher preparation programs in the state. Some documentation on how the state colleges and universities have responded to the legislation exists. Very little literature, however, on how the private institutions have respon...

The enhanced access of developing countries to the international financial market since the seventies has been characterized by boom-bust cycles of unfettered external borrowing followed by abrupt financial crises. The first chapter analyzes the macroeconomic effects of volatile capital flows to a developing country. The analysis shows that investment, consumption, and the current account deficit depend positively on the expected availability of external finance. If international investors may unexpectedly decide to reduce their exposure to financial assets issued by the country, the optimal cost of external borrowing should exceed the interest rate paid by domestic residents in the international financial market. In the absence of insurance markets for this type of risk, a tax on capital ...

This book is the first of its kind to offer readers a comprehensive view of the complex array of executive, operational, financial, human resource, technological and other management issues that collectively impact organizational performance. Utilizing real-world accounts, each section examines one of the major strategic management mistakes that companies have made when trying to resolve problems with their performance. You will gain valuable insight into the underlying issues in each case, including: An understanding of the detrimental effect that departmentalized business structures and functions have had on organizational decision-making. An appreciation of the strategic importance of the Finance, Human Resources and Information Technology functions. Greater awareness of th...

In the last ten years there has been an explosion in the use of computer technology in many facets of our lives. Many industries such as finance, manufacturing, and retail have embraced modern technological advances through the use of advanced computer and telecommunication technology. Unfortunately, the international health care community has been quite slow to effectively integrate new computer technology into the daily care of patients. Nevertheless, governments across the world are developing strategic plans and allocating financial resources to support the use of technology in healthcare. Medical Informatics Around The World: An International Perspective Focusing On Training Issues provides a global snapshot into such activities in 13 different countries (Australia, China, Hong Ko...

Cross Language Text Retrieval (CLTR) has been defined as the retrieval of documents in a language different from that of the original query. To make this possible some kind of mechanism has to be applied in order to translate the information contained in the source sentence. Many different approaches have been carried out with the purpose of transferring the information from the source language query to the target language one. Though all these methods deal with a way of translating as much information as possible from the source query, little research has been conducted in relation to the field of Machine Translation (MT). The purpose of this research work is to determine the feasibility of using MT techniques for CLTR. Specifically, I will describe how a MT system has been adapted withou...

Major Players in the Muslim Business World is a comprehensive guide for businessmen, researchers, and students who aim to learn more about the contemporary Muslim business world. Included are facts about the leading countries, companies and business persons in this world, as well as a brief introduction of Islamic principles related to business. Current information about opportunities and leaders in relatively new industries, such as Islamic Finance, Halal and Takaful sectors is also presented. Instead of the partial overview usually provided in competing guides, Major Players in the Muslim Business World offers a complete analysis of the most important topics, including the largest Muslim economies today, Muslim countries with the higest GDP per capita, Muslim companies on the Forbes Glob...

The purpose of business is to employ capital factors in such a manner as to generate value for its customers and profits for its owners. To achieve these ends, management must make at least three distinct decisions – the operating, investment, and financing decisions. The purpose of this study is to formulate a modeling methodology that harmonically analyzes and explains how the investment decision and capital elasticity influence competitive advantage. The research explores the descriptive literature for the current states of computational modeling, accounting theory and practice, managerial finance, macroeconomics, capital theory, and harmonic analysis in order to provide evidence supporting the content validity of a proposed modeling framework, which encodes, m...

This text provides a comprehensive overview on how modern cruise ships are run, covering the most important topics of today’s shipboard operation involving Deck, Engine and Hotel divisions, with a focus on the recent innovations in the Culinary Arts, Entertainment productions, Spa and Beauty facilities and a specific reference on how to maximize "onboard revenues" such as Casino, Bar, Duty-Free Shops, Shore Tours, Photo Gallery, and onboard Art Auctions. A special chapter is dedicated to the procedures to prevent virus outbreaks including Norovirus and Coronavirus. World Class Shipboard Hospitality is addressed to all those who want to get an unbiased understanding of today’s cruise industry such as worldwide media professionals, tourism and hospitality college teachers, cruise indu...

The core issue underlying the bulk of scholarly research into the Japanese political economy is the relationship between the bureaucracy and the politicians. My study investigates whether there has been a relative decline in bureaucratic influence and whether politicians are displaying more independence in the policy making process than they did during previous decades. My main hypothesis is that the loss of bureaucratic influence has largely been a function of the declining position of former bureaucrats within the ruling Liberal Democrat Party (LDP), and that it has largely been politicians who were able to enter the Diet at a young age due to hereditary recruitment who have gained influence. Their ability to build up seniority has placed them at an advantage in promotion to key party...

How to invest like the Very Rich illustrates the author's experience, knowledge and familiarity with the financial markets. It is skillfully written, clear and jargon-free. The historic references are timeless. Nelson W. Diebel, Jr., PhD Professor of History (retired) How to invest Like the Very Rich is an excellent, easy to understand, overview of financial investments written in an elegant style. Larry Bridwell, PhD Professor of Management Accounting Pace University This book puts a human face of the ghostly specter of money and finance. His historical references to the evolution of our system of financial markets demystify a rather complex international structure. Use his book as a compass to navigate your portfolio through the new millennium. Michael Servodidio, JD, CPA, ...

Managing Bids, Tenders and Proposals shows suppliers and vendors how they can gain competitive advantage by being more effective and productive when pursuing sales opportunities and competing to win new contracts. Suppliers and vendors can also learn how to identify and reduce delivery risk and commercial risk. Responding to requests-for-tenders (RFTs) and requests-for-proposals (RFPs) is frequently a challenging time for the supplier and vendor bid teams. Within tight timeframes, they must finalise their win strategy, determine their delivery plans and create compelling documentation that responds to the customer's questions and requirements. This essential reference work explores what needs to happen when responding to RFTs and RFPs and explains the essential knowledge needed by the bid...

One of the primary concerns in a small business is the problem of risk. Many who begin the start-up process terminate it in less than one year. Of those that survive, many are unable to achieve sustained growth and profits. Small-to-medium business enterprises (SME) have a 50% to 90% chance of failure within the first five years. While there are measures of personal risk behavior of entrepreneurs, the literature contains no measure of risk orientation for the enterprise. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a researcher-designed instrument to measure the critical forces of business risk. The 37-item Entrepreneurial Risk Assessment Scale (ERAS) was developed from key theoretical concepts grounded in economics, marketing, management, finance, and entrepreneurship literatu...

Just as schools educate young people to become responsible citizens who can navigate the world of post-secondary education, careers, and social life, dedicated parents also want their child to mature and be independent and happy. Youth who transition to adulthood encounter many obstacles, including finances, skills for independent living, job security, and social connections. Transitioning from School to Adulthood: Practical Activities for Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Other Disabilities is a collection of descriptions, instructions, and practice activities for young people who face more barriers than most emerging adults. These activities are helpful for teachers, service providers, and parents assisting individuals with ASD, along with other disorders, such as Cognitive D...

It may not be polite to talk about money, but no-one said we shouldn't write about it. This accessible, humorous book is written to appeal to a broad spectrum of women irrespective of their age, lifestyle or level of financial awareness. This book is relevant to every woman who earns, or simply spends, money. This book aims to change the way women think about money - forever. Money provides protection. If you fall upon hard times, the money you have saved will support you. Money also provides freedom - freedom to travel, to educate yourself, to treat your family and friends. Making the most of your money, like everything else in life, is a matter of habit and discipline. This book aims to get you into the habit and give you that discipline. No matter how much money you have, this book...

It may not be polite to talk about money, but no-one said we shouldn't write about it.This accessible, humorous book is written to appeal to a broad spectrum of men irrespective of their age, lifestyle or level of financial awareness. This book is relevant to every man who earns, or simply spends, money. This book aims to change the way men think about money - forever. Money provides protection. If you fall upon hard times, the money you have saved will support you. Money also provides freedom - freedom to travel, to educate yourself, to look after your family and friends. Making the most of your money, like everything else in life, is a matter of habit and discipline. This book aims to get you into the habit and give you that discipline. No matter how much money you have, this book will ...