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This research aims to review literature on development finance and its challenge and to examine blended learning and insurance as a catalysts of development finance. In particular, this paper provides new insights and practical examples of blended finance and insurance.

This research basically relies on literature review and case study to show the value of the emerging methods of blended learning in development finance and insurance system.

Basic finding in this paper includes new insight of blended finance and insurance as a partnership between public and private sector, which offers new arena for academic research and practice.

As the research relies on literature review and authors' insight, originality may not be valued so much, but if may be introducing or creating new ideas or thinking about development finance or international development cooperation where relevant data or experience is still lacking.

This research aims to provide an insight into large-scale real estate projects in Europe and how they are using a more innovative blend of finance.

The methodology involved a mix of desk-based study, interviews and case studies. Interviews were held with financiers, policymakers, developers, investors, fund managers and academics. The specific case projects were Battersea Power Station Development in London; Leipziger Platz site in Berlin; and the Lammenschans site in the city of Leiden, The Netherlands.

The research found that there is growth in the blend of financial products used in real estate development within large-scale mixed-use projects. This new blend is set with greater equity financing, often from domestic and foreign consortiums generating institutional funds – alongside private debt financing – that utilise a mix of large-scale multi-bank finance.

The scale of the challenge in financing real estate development allied with capital budget constraints has meant that the appetite for innovative finance mechanisms has gained considerable momentum in practice and policy. This research investigates current examples in development finance and provides a discussion of the opinion of key multi-stakeholder participants in the individual cases, and trends more strategically at a broader level.

This detailed study of three major development sites and at a more broader strategic level is significant, in that it provides a better understanding of the differing blends of finance that are being used.

There are many studies related to finance-growth nexus, but existing empirical evidences still have not provided conclusive result of the nature and direction of this relationship. Moreover, there are only few studies about finance-growth nexus seen from Islamic finance perspective, especially in Indonesia. Therefore, this study aims to examine the nature of causal relationship between Islamic finance development and economic growth in Indonesia seen from the development of Islamic banking, sukuk market and Islamic stock market.

By using quarterly data from 2002Q3 to 2017Q4, this study uses vector autoregressive (VAR) model, then uses granger causality and impulse response function to analyze the causal relationship between Islamic finance development and economic growth and also among three main sub-sectors of Islamic finance.

This study found that Islamic banking development and Islamic stock market development support neutrality hypotheses view, while sukuk market development supports supply-leading hypotheses view. Moreover, this study also found that there are unidirectional causalities from sukuk market development to Islamic banking development and from sukuk market development to Islamic stock market development.

This study focuses only on the development of Islamic finance viewed from a macro perspective and only looks at how the three main sub-sectors in Islamic finance develop. In addition, the results of research related to finance-growth nexus are also sensitive to the object of research, the method and the proxies of variables used.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no study that examines the causal relationship between Islamic finance development and economic growth in Indonesia based on its three main sub-sectors simultaneously. So, this study gives empirical evidence to contribute on finance-growth nexus discussion based on three main sub-sectors of Islamic finance development in Indonesia.

The paper aims to study the importance of financial market development and financial structure in explaining the financial policies of firms in emerging market countries.

The paper uses a panel data of 32 countries and the system generalized method of moments approach.

The analysis shows that stock market development is associated with higher use of external finance relative to internal finance, while bond market development is associated with lower use of external finance relative to internal finance. The findings of this study also indicate that stock market development tends to shift the policies of firms towards less debt and more equity, and bond market development is associated with higher debt and less equity in emerging economies.

The value of this study is in respect of its contribution to the extant literature on corporate financial policies in emerging market economies.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the effects of Islamic financial development and conventional financial development on the economic growth for five GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar Saudi Arabia and UAE).

Using generalized least squares, OLS and panel data frameworks, this paper employs different measures of financial development for the period (1996-2011).

Empirical results strongly support the hypothesis that Islamic finance leads to growth in the five GCC countries, however, no significant relationship observed between conventional financial development and growth.

The findings of this paper suggest the need to accelerate the financial reforms for Islamic finance that have been launched in the region since the last decade and to improve the efficiency of these countries’ Islamic financial systems to stimulate saving/investment and, consequently, long-term economic growth.

This study has several contributions to the existing literature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first study that examines empirically the effect of Islamic finance on economic growth in GCC countries. As well, this paper is the first to compare the different effects of Islamic finance and conventional finance on economic growth on a context of countries having the most developed Islamic financial system in the world operating side-by-side with a conventional financial system.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Shariah compliant real estate development financing and investment in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

In this paper, the authors employed desk research and survey to examine issues relating to Shariah compliant real estate development financing and investment. Following the desk research, 18 in‐depth interviews were conducted with senior executives of banks, real estate developers and consultants.

Equity Shariah instruments are found to be in high demand by real estate investors, however they are rarely offered by Islamic banks. In addition, the survey results confirm that Islamic financiers tend to partner real estate companies through land acquisition to post construction, contrary to how conventional financiers operate, therefore reducing moral hazard issues.

As Shariah compliant real estate research and knowledge is limited, the authors faced a challenge in getting respondents who are familiar and willing to participate in the interview. Nevertheless, the 18 respondents gave adequate inputs to enable the authors to write the research paper.

The paper includes challenges and implications for the future developments of Shariah compliant real estate development financing and investment.

This paper provides the Shariah compliant perspective of real estate development financing and investment, where the current knowledge is very limited.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamic link between financial inclusion and financial sector development (FSD) in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper employs a panel vector autoregressive framework to examine the dynamic link between financial inclusion and FSD in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The findings indicate that there is a reverse causality between FSD and financial inclusion in both the Sub-Saharan Africa countries sample and the full sample. It is evident that financial inclusion is a driver of FSD and vice versa.

The practical implication of this study is that financial inclusion should not only be pursued as a policy objective but it could also be an outcome variable of FSD and vice versa. This implies that African economies and governments in their effort to enhance financial inclusion, FSD can serve as a policy tool. This means that policies aimed at promoting financial inclusion will not impede FSD because the two are complementary. This suggests that we can achieve financial inclusion without sacrificing FSD and vice versa.

This paper provides first empirical evidence of the link between financial inclusion and FSD from the Sub-Saharan Africa perspective using data sourced from World Development Indicators spanning from 1990 to 2014 for 48 Sub-Saharan African economies and 217 economies in the world for the full sample.

Historically, the World Bank has been the largest external financier of education in the world, committing a peak amount of just over $5 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 through both its Education Sector projects and multisector projects managed by other sectors (World Bank, 2010b). The World Bank also hosts the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative (EFA FTI). Launched in 2002, EFA FTI is a partnership of governments, civil society organizations, and multilateral agencies such as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Bank, which provides grant funding and technical assistance to implement the basic education components of national education strategies. By providing significant funding for education in low-income countries (LICs) through its own International Development Association (IDA) and by managing the majority of EFA FTI grant funding, the World Bank has a major impact on the direction of education development around the world.

In 2011 the Bank released a new Education Sector Strategy, Learning for All, which sets out the World Bank Education Sector's approach to education development over the coming decade. The analysis in this chapter examines the role of the EFA FTI and the growth of World Bank education operations managed outside the World Bank Education Sector, as well as their influence on Bank education lending objectives in sub-Saharan Africa. We examine trends in World Bank and EFA FTI basic education financing in sub-Saharan African countries that have joined the EFA FTI partnership to compare these two sources of financing for primary education and analyze the extent to which the World Bank is substituting its primary education lending with grants from the EFA FTI. We also assess the results frameworks of 10 multisector operations managed by noneducation sectors (Economic Management and Poverty Reduction; Urban Development; Rural Sector; Population, Health, and Nutrition; and Social Protection) to ascertain the extent to which they include education objectives and indicators. The chapter focuses its research around two questions:1.Is there evidence that financing from the EFA FTI is substituting World Bank financing for education in sub-Saharan Africa?2.Are World Bank multisector operations well designed to achieve education objectives in sub-Saharan Africa?

The research finds that the EFA FTI has almost certainly impacted the demand for IDA financing for basic education development. The comparison of IDA and EFA FTI primary education financing shows country-level substitution is occurring in a number of sub-Saharan African countries, with at least 13 out of 18 EFA FTI grant recipients in sub-Saharan Africa receiving a declining share of IDA financing for primary education since joining the EFA FTI.

Second, multisector operations now account for one-third of Bank education lending and have increased to comprise half of all new education commitments in sub-Saharan Africa. The research finds that multisector operations with education components are not as effective or accountable for education outcomes as those managed by the Education Sector, unless they are explicitly linked to national education plans. Given the disconnect between Education Sector managed education lending, and financing for education managed by other Bank sectors, it is unclear how the latter will be guided by the Bank's Education Sector Strategy, which will only apply to half of all Bank education lending for sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, there is no guarantee that both EFA FTI funding and noneducation sector managed lending will be measured against World Bank education strategy standards, and yet the Education Sector Strategy 2020 does little to address these challenges.