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The purpose of this paper is to consider borrower-specific characteristics to understand the factors affecting both the probability and quantum of loan default by individual borrowers under Islamic and conventional banking.

Borrower-specific characteristics that explain the probability of default may not necessarily be similar factors that determine the quantum of default. The authors therefore apply a Box-Cox double hurdle model to treat both the probability and quantum of default in a two-step approach. The authors also explain the differences in default risk and quantum of default between Islamic and conventional banking borrowers from their behavioral perspectives following the Sharia principles in financial transactions between lenders and borrowers. The authors use borrower-specific information of two separate bank branches of the United Arab Emirates that solely deal with either Islamic or conventional banking products.

The paper demonstrates that the probability of default and the quantum of default appear to be influenced by different set of client-specific factors. The results suggest that the probability of default does not vary significantly between Islamic and conventional banking borrowers. The evidence also shows that Islamic banking defaulters, compared to those in conventional banking, repay a large quantum of overdue when their financial leverage improves. However, they do not tend to reduce their outstanding quantum of overdue faster than conventional banking defaulters.

Availability of data from only two bank branches may limit the explanatory power of empirical findings.

The study findings will enable the Islamic and conventional banks to appropriately address Basel Capital requirements based on the borrowers’ behavior.

The study findings have the potential for Islamic and conventional financing institutions to be more flexible with equity in their lending practices.

Religious beliefs are crucial in borrower’s default behavior in Islamic banking.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze significant determinants to assess the probability of insureds’ intent to buy (ITB) insurance and willingness to pay (WTP) quantum of dollars for security benefits.

The authors use the Double Hurdle Model (DHM) and Neural Network (NN) architecture to analyze the insureds’ behavior for ITB and WTP. The authors apply these frameworks to all the 503 insureds of a branch of a leading insurer in the United Arab Emirates.

The DHM identified age, loans & liabilities, body mass index, travel outside the UAE, salary and country of origin (Middle Eastern and African) as significant determinants to predict WTP for social security benefits. In addition to these determinants, NN architecture identified insurance replacement, holding multiple citizenship, age of parents, mortgages, country of origin: Americas, length of travel, income of previous year and medical conditions of insured as additional important determinants to predict WTP for social security benefits; thus, NN is found to be superior to DHM due to its lowest RMSE and AIC in the holdout sample and also its flexibility and no assumptions unlike econometric models.

Insureds’ data used from one UAE Branch limit the generalizability of empirical findings.

The study findings will enable the insurers to appropriately design the insurance products that match the insurers’ behavior of ITB and WTP for social security benefits.

The study findings have the potential for insurance institutions to be more flexible in their insurance practices through public–private partnerships.

This is the authors’ original research work.

This study sets out to analyze the efficiency and productivity issues of the insurance sector from both the policymakers' and investors' points of view to insulate the business and financial risks of UAE corporate houses.

The paper uses two inputs of “administrative and general expenses”, and “equity and change in legal reserves”, versus two outputs of rate of “return on investments” and “liquid asset to total liabilities ratio” to assess the allocative efficiency of the companies using DEA. Using the the Malmquist productivity index the efficiency is broken down into technical and scale efficiency to evaluate the performance of the insurers.

While the scale of operation of insurers is, by and large, acceptable, there is a considerable degree of managerial inefficiency among the insurers, with the least efficiency in 2000, and higher efficiency in 2004. Further, the insurers on average achieved a mere 0.8 percent annual gain in total factor productivity over the period in question.

The data set is narrow with 19 insurers in the region, which is the limitation.

The results have policy implications for the regulators and managerial implications for the existing insurers to face the growing competition in the region.

This is the first study to investigate the productivity changes of insurance sector operations in a developing economy: the UAE in the Middle‐East region. The study findings help the insurers to take appropriate managerial steps to improve the efficiency of their operations.

Commercial and Islamic banks are important players in the UAE financial market. However, little is known about their financial distress because these financial institutions usually resolve financial distress within their own organisations, which means that outsiders cannot explicitly observe distress. The purpose of the research is therefore to identify the main drivers of financial institutions' financial distress.

The paper estimates a probability distress prediction model using the BankScope Database and the annual reports of UAE financial institutions submitted to UAE Security Exchange Authority. The paper also analyses the impact of macroeconomic information for forecasting financial institutions' financial distress.

The fundamentals of financial institutions in terms of cost income ratio, equity to total assets, total asset growth and ratio of loan loss reserve to gross loans (all these variables with a lag of one year) positively impacted the probability of financial distress in the next year. Recent findings for emerging economies have cast some doubt on the usefulness of macroeconomic information for financial institutions' risk assessment. Similar results are found for UAE financial institutions in predicting the probability of financial distress.

This is the first study to provide empirical evidence on the drivers of financial distress of commercial and Islamic banks in UAE during 2000‐2008, and to examine the extent of the financial distress that can be can be attributed to internal bank‐specific fundamental factors and external factors in the economy.

There is growing demand for research approaches that consider the functioning of financial markets in the emerging economy. The current paper aims to examine cointegration and volatility persistence of six Middle East emerging Arabian Gulf Cooperation council (AGCC) equity markets with developed markets.

The study uses the MGARCH and VAR methodology to analyze the cointegration and volatility spillover across emerging AGCC markets and developed markets. Time series stock return data for six AGCC countries from February 2003 to January 2006 are used from Shuaa Capital Market together with MSCI world developed market index.

The study shows that AGCC markets exhibit significant own and cross spillover of innovations and volatility spillover and persistence in these markets. Emerging markets in AGCC derive relatively more of their innovations and volatility persistence from within the domestic market.

The results imply that, emerging AGCC markets are susceptible to conditions within the AGCC region. This increases potential benefits of international diversification for international investors. The study findings have implications for security pricing within AGCC markets, for hedging and other trading strategies, and for regulatory polices conducted within financial markets.

The paper provides empirical evidence and justification for investors, both individual and foreign institutional, to adjust their portfolios through diversification.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the knowledge of thermal transport of magneto hydrodynamic non-Newtonian fluid flow over a melting sheet in the presence of exponential heat source.

The group of PDE is mutated as dimension free with the assistance of similarity transformations and these are highly nonlinear and coupled. The authors solved the coupled ODE’s with the help of fourth-order Runge–Kutta based shooting technique. The impact of dimensionless sundry parameters on three usual distributions of the flow was analyzed and bestowed graphically. Along with them friction factor, heat and mass transfer rates have been assessed and represented with the aid of table.

Results exhibited that all the flow fields (velocity, concentration and temperature) are decreasing functions of melting parameter. Also the presence of cross-diffusion highly affects the heat and mass transfer performance.

Present paper deals with the heat and mass transfer characteristics of magnetohydrodynamics flow of non-Newtonian fluids past a melting surface. The effect of exponential heat source is also considered. Moreover this is a new work in the field of heat transfer in non-Newtonian fluid flows.

The purpose of this paper is to test a number of hypotheses concerning the differences between senior and non‐senior travelers in the particular context of holiday rentals. A further aim is to provide exploratory evidence for these differences.

A brief review of the extant literature leads into the formulation of some hypotheses. The hypotheses are tested using survey data. Data from the same survey are used to explore further data.

It was possible not only to find some evidence to support the hypotheses, but also to find significant differences between the preferences of seniors and non‐seniors, as well as between pre‐seniors and seniors. Thus, pre‐seniors exhibit a higher willingness to pay for holiday rentals than seniors, whereas seniors have a higher preference for domestic travel. Seniors are less interested in technology than other age groups. Originality/value –This paper reports on survey findings for a segment of the tourism market that has received practically no attention in the literature – the holiday rental market. The results pave the way for further investigations within this segment.

Enormous amount of biomedical wastes (BMW) produced everyday across the world. Management of BMW depends on adherence to protocol. BMW management at generation point, definitely, depends upon the awareness, attitudes and practises of health-care staff, the purpose of this study will assess the awareness, attitude and practise regarding different aspects of BMW.

An observational with appropriate checklists, and a cross-sectional study, involving questionnaires, was conducted during 7-24 January 2016. The existing system of BMW management, funds, resources, etc., knowledge, attitude and practises about BMW were assessed amongst 273 health-care workers in selected public health-care institutes of Karnataka.

Of 273 study participants, majority (54%) of them have not received any training pertaining to BMW. The results showed a poor level of knowledge and awareness of BMW management amongst health-care personnel. Merely, 43% of the participants correctly knew the categorization of BMW and its disposal in proper colour-coded bins/bags. Awareness is very poor amongst the lower age group, male participants, lab-technicians/pharmacists and supporting staff. Doctors were good at theoretical knowledge such as rules, legislation and public-health importance of BMW management than the practical aspects such as categorization and colour-coding. Further, the attitude of health-care staff is favourable about BMW. Immunization for hepatitis-B was very poor amongst waste handlers (43%).

As the awareness and practise regarding BMW management were poor across different health-care staff there is a need to conduct periodic training and regular monitoring with special focus on the proper use of personal protective equipment. Further, precautionary immunization should be provided, especially waste handlers and sanitary workers.

This paper aims to investigate how professionals such as accountants, auditors, senior civil servants and academics perceive the use of audit sampling strategies adopted by professionals to increase detection rates of frauds and corruption within the public sector in Africa. It also examines the respondents’ perceived values regarding the reasons for committing frauds, types of fraud and corruption, as well as the aspects of audit sampling strategies to tackle frauds.

This research uses non-parametric statistics and logistic regression to analyse the respondents’ opinions regarding the state of frauds and corruption in Africa (particularly in Tunisia and non-Tunisia countries), the common factors behind people committing frauds, including the types of frauds and corruption and the respondents’ opinions on the use of audit sampling strategies (non-random and random) to examine the instances of frauds and corruption.

The findings indicate that most respondents prefer to use non-probabilistic audit sampling rather than more robust sampling strategies such as random sampling and systematic random sampling to detect frauds and corruption. In addition, although there are some minor statistical differences between the countries in terms of the respondents’ perceived values on skimming fraud and on the use of audit random sampling to tackle rampant corruption in Africa, the overall findings indicate that opinions do not significantly differ between the respondents from Tunisia and other countries in terms of the types of fraud, the reasons for committing fraud and the auditing sampling strategies used to investigate the frauds.

This research serves as an analytical exploratory study to instigate further audit sampling research to combat rampant fraud and corruption in the public sector in Africa.

There are few or non-existent studies investigating the application of audit sampling strategies in Africa countries, particularly to examine the application of audit random sampling and audit non-random sampling strategies to detect fraudulent activities and corruption. Correspondingly, this research carries strategic implications for accountants and auditors to successfully detect fraudulent activities and corruption in Africa.

The paper aims to identify main approaches to seniors’ tourist behaviour. Population ageing has contributed to increasing interest in seniors’ tourist behaviour in the developed countries over the past decades. Over time, several aspects have been examined such as travel constraints, motivations, market segmentation or the dynamic nature of the senior market. Considering the wide-ranging scope of the literature on seniors’ tourist behaviour, as well as the differing views of an older person, the purpose of the paper is to identify main approaches to seniors’ tourist behaviour.

The approaches to seniors’ tourist behaviour were identified through a literature review of empirical studies on the topic. The studies were examined in terms of three key elements: the temporal dimension, travel constraints and the segmentation criteria. The approaches were described in light of life cycle and generational theory, highlighting key variables and empirical results.

Four approaches, that reflect intertwining characteristics of seniors’ tourist behaviour, are found: analysis of constraints, comparative analysis, analysis of heterogeneity and temporal analysis. Overall, how seniors’ tourist behaviour is approached is related to how seniors are viewed. Two broad views are suggested: seniors seen as an ageing group or as a heterogeneous group.

The paper provides an overview of the literature on seniors’ tourist behaviour, which deepens understanding of the complexity of the topic, and describes different ways of approaching it. It contributes to the literature by proposing a synthesis of approaches, which can be useful for bridging the gap between different approaches in future research.