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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significant factors determining foreign direct investment (FDI) in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (ASEAN3) and Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore (ASEAN5).

This paper applies the first differencing technique to estimate the parameters on the constructed panel data starting from 2000 to 2011.

Due to the different stages of economic development between ASEAN3 and ASEAN5, the determinants of FDI are different. We found that there are significantly positive effects of infrastructure facility, level of openness, and negative effect of inflation on FDI inflow in ASEAN3; while real exchange rate, gross domestic product and net official development assistance have no effect on its FDI. The finding in ASEAN5 showed that market size and infrastructure facility are significant factors to attract FDI. Furthermore, even though there are an increase in inflation rate as well as a decrease in level of openness measurement, ASEAN5 are still attractive to foreign investors.

The time variant and invariant unobserved effects that are ignored in the previous studies are considered in this study.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of debt culture in the conventional financial systems and then to compare the existing or emerging trends in the Islamic finance industry. It provides critical insight into why economic policies that are delinked from some fundamental wisdom about sustainable lifestyle might be increasingly less effective.

The paper identifies various areas of impact of the debt culture and provides qualitative analysis based on relevant data.

The data presented in the paper shows that the Islamic finance industry is clearly biased in favor of debt-creating modes, which is expected to lead to promoting the same kind of debt culture as experienced in the conventional financial system.

Finding comprehensive and current data for Islamic financial institutions is a challenging task. The IFIs are not as transparent as their conventional counterparts in sharing relevant data and information.

The paper highlights and analyzes a problem – i.e., the debt culture. Dealing with this problem would be indispensable in the long run for any credible as well as sustainable solutions to contemporary crisis.

Debt culture is more than an economic phenomena. The paper identifies/analyzes several areas, including consumption explosion, speculation, ethics, that are related to debt culture.

This is probably the first research paper that looks into the issue of debt culture in the context of Islamic finance. The contemporary, ongoing global crisis underscores the kind of conventional problems that Islamic finance needs to avoid.

The purpose of this paper is to assess orthodox theories of well-being in western civilization at first, and second, to investigate Islamic views regarding this concept. Then, comparing these two groups of views, it tries to show that there is a kind of convergence between them that it provides a common point for political aspect of well-being.

To investigate this convergence, orthodox theories of well-being were analyzed critically and Islamic views were revealed. Both orthodox theories and Islamic views of well-being were discussed theoretically (not practically) via descriptive-analytical method and based on a philosophical approach. Since the problem that this paper is going to involve and resolve is conceptual (concept and nature of human well-being and finding a common point among different theories), so the proper method will be the descriptive-analytical and dialectic discussion.

This paper found that, despite some similarities between orthodox theories and Islamic views of well-being, the most important difference between Avicenna and hedonistic view is his approach to the concept of enjoyment and his spreading of the meaning of it. Molla Sadra’s approach to well-being is close to the objective list theories of well-being – particularly that of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s. It is concluded that there is a convergence in theories based on movement from instrumental reason to the intellect in specification and investigation of people’s well-being and its elements.

There is a kind of convergence, so that we can achieve a common point which could be the base for policy making in national and international level to solve problems arising from complexity, ambiguity and boring and dismal disagreements regarding this concept which is an important obstacle in front of the policy makers. Moreover, moving from instrumental reason to the intellect and considering ethical virtues in people’s well-being could be helpful in removing some social problems such as conflicts between labor and employers and financial crises.

Description and calcification theories of well-being especially for economists that they are very far from these subjects and introducing of Islamic views via philosophical approach is absolutely original in this paper. Moreover, paper attempts to show the convergence in orthodox theories and between orthodox and Islamic views in which it provides a common point for practical aspect of well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive classification of quid pro quo exchange transactions, so as to distinguish the different ways that desired exchange outcomes can be determined and that transactional processes can be conducted. This permits reflection on the generality of the theory of the individual embedded in neoclassical (orthodox) economics.

The approach adopted is to draw upon the contending dichotomies in epistemology (naturalism or hermeneutics) and ontology (agency or structure) to demarcate and depict a set of Weberian archetypal social actors, so as to explore their cognitions and behaviors in a transactional arena. These archetypal social actors are hypothetical role-playing actors – they do not describe real people.

These archetypal social actors, collectively, are suggestive of the profuseness of ways people can engage in exchange transactions. Each archetype’s credibility is contingent upon the veracity of its ontological and epistemological standpoints. Each, indeed, has blindspots that permit the denied standpoints to be ignored without analytical detriment. None can, therefore, claim the status of a general theory of exchange process.

The paper’s originality is that it explores exchange transactions from a variety of epistemological and ontological perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to identify whether personality traits can help explain the outcomes that arise in bargaining outcomes.

Experiments with subjects playing the alternating-offers bargaining game are considered. Both full information and asymmetric information treatments are considered. Subjects also complete standardized Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessments.

Personality type measurements are shown to help explain the opening offers, rejections, and resulting wealth in the negotiations. It is shown that interactions between the personality dimensions are important and that the interaction between personality and information play a key role in bargaining outcomes.

The research utilizes laboratory experiments to generate data. This expands our understanding of individual-level behavior, but suffers from the limitation of not replicating realistic bargaining situations.

The work should serve as a guide to organizations to identify traits of effective negotiators.

Bargaining is a central economic activity. Being able to identify the root of differences in outcomes from negotiations should be able to inform institutional design issues.

Little work has been done connecting the rich literature in social psychology and management on personality to economic outcomes. The research on bargaining neglects to incorporate individual-level traits into the process. This research begins to bridge this gap and informs both bargaining theory as well as emphasizes on the importance of personality in application.

The purpose of this paper is to see whether Government of India is successful to make credit accessible to the poor; to examine the role of competition in microfinance sector in ensuring credit to the ultra poor borrowers; to see the role of subsidy in microfinance movement.

The paper is based on secondary data. This paper examines, in an analytical framework with a variety of assumptions, the role of microfinance institutes (MFIs) in bringing capital to the ultra poor.

In an attempt to make credit accessible to the poor, Government of India took several measures, but did not succeed to a significant extent. This paper has shown that the microcredit has become accessible to the “working poor,” but not to the ultra poor. Initially the model shows that in the absence of competition MFI and moneylender are equally exploitative to the ultra poor borrowers. The model further shows that in the presence or absence of competition in the credit market, credit may be accessible to the ultra poor borrowers under certain conditions. Excessive subsidies might drive out the poor borrowers from the microfinance sector.

For the poor clients served by the microfinance institution, the argument goes, the access not the cost (interest rate) that matters (Robinson, 2001). Here the implicit assumption is that the interest rate elasticity of demand for micro credit is close to zero (Emran et al., 2006). In an interesting paper Deheja et al. (2005) has shown that the interest rate elasticity of loan in the microfinance system is significantly negative. The author is of the opinion that this is the cost of credit as well as inability to pay a minimum price of credit, which denies the access to credit.

It is generally recognized that consumer cooperatives are at a disadvantage when raising capital as compared to conventional capitalist firms. The purpose of this paper is to explore a method for consumer cooperatives to issue transferable membership shares as financial securities and raise non-redeemable equity. The author examines if such a method can strengthen the financial viability of consumer cooperatives in the market economy.

The author first explain the mechanism by using diagrams of the circular flow of factors of production and the product. The author then developed a simple formal model and compare the amount of equity capital raised by a capitalist firm and a consumer cooperative.

The author found that the amount of equity that a consumer cooperative can raise by issuing shares of membership is greater than the amount of equity that a capitalist firm can raise by issuing shares of stock.

More research effort is required to apply the theory discussed in this paper for practical use.

Consumer cooperatives have many good features that conventional capitalist firms do not have. However, the scale and scope of consumer cooperatives have been quite limited partly because of the problem of finance. The method presented in this paper is expected to improve the financial viability of consumer cooperatives and promotes their activities in the market economy.

This paper regards the membership of a consumer cooperative as a kind of financial security and as a tool for procuring capital for investment. As far as the author knows, the present paper is the first one that presents such a concept.

Church giving and attendance are two important indicators of church health and performance. In the literature, they are usually understood to be simultaneously determined. The purpose of this paper is to estimate if there a sustainable church congregation size using Wintrobe’s (1998) dictatorship model. The authors want to examine the impact of youth and adult ministry as well.

Using the data collected from among Canadian Baptist churches in Eastern Canada, this study investigates the factors affecting the level of the two indicators by the panel-instrumental variable technique. Applying Wintrobe’s (1998) political economy model on dictatorship, the equilibrium level of worship attendance and giving is predicted.

Through various simulation exercises, the actual church congregation sizes is approximately 50 percent of the predicted value, implying inefficiency and misallocation of church resources. The paper concludes with insights on effective ways church leaders can allocate scarce resources to promote growth within churches.

The authors are the only researchers getting the permission from the Atlantic Canada Baptist Convention to use their mega data set on church giving and congregation sizes as per the authors’ knowledge. The authors are also applying a theoretical model on dictatorship to religious/not for profits organizations.

In Indonesia, the Islamic Economics and Finance Sector is growing rapidly, but the literature on Islamic financial literacy is still minimal. This study aims to show research opportunities with the theme of Islamic financial literacy, especially inclusive Islamic financial planning through bibliometric analysis of Scopus and connected papers.

A comma separated value (CSV) file containing more than 2,000 references meta data was used for analysis on Vos Viewer in the period of 1963–2020. The grouping of network visualization maps is done using six keywords, namely, “Financial Literacy,” “Financial Inclusion,” “Islamic Financial Literacy,” “Financial Planning,” “Personal Finance” and “Household Finance.”

The findings complement the keywords that are generally used as references in the formation of theories regarding inclusive Islamic financial planning. After combining the “ris” file from the connected paper, the most used terms are financial knowledge, financial education, financial behavior, financial decision-making process, financial inclusion, risk sharing and financial discourse.

The proportion which planned to be applied in Indonesia will differentiate the inclusive Islamic financial planning framework from what has been done before. This study outlines the basis of the relevant literature review in the theme of Islamic financial literacy research, especially inclusive Islamic financial planning.

This chapter aims to how Marx's ideas and subsequent Marxist-inspired scholarship have contributed to the analysis of the various forms of work organization. It summarizes Marx's basic philosophy, theory of history, and critique of political economy; it distinguishes more critical and more optimistic variants of Marxist theory; and it then shows how these ideas have been used in the analysis of key organizational forms, contrasting Marxist versus non-Marxist approaches and critical versus optimistic versions of Marxism.