Search results

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the determinants of Islamic banks’ profitability using longitudinal data from 1992 to 2008 of almost all Islamic banks in the world.

An unbalanced panel data fixed-effects regression model was used.

The results of the study indicate that capital ratio, other operating income, GDP per capita, bank size, concentration and oil prices affected Islamic banks positively. Insurance schemes, foreign ownership and real GDP growth affected Islamic banks negatively.

This study did not include data beyond 2008 (the financial crisis), which can be considered a limitation to this study. However, evidence suggests that including data beyond 2008 would not have changed the outcome of the study[1].

The paper adds to the literature on the determinants of Islamic banks’ profitability for the reasons mentioned above. In addition, this study used a purified sample of Islamic banks (see the Data section for details). Furthermore, to the author’s knowledge, this is the first time deposit insurance has been included in a study related to Islamic banks’ profitability.

This article examines the potential of increasing commitment of medical knowledge-workers (medical-KWs) in hospitals, particularly in handling deadly pandemics like COVID-19, through servant leadership behaviour. The authors hold that medical-KWs like doctors and nurses form the core team of knowledge-workers (KWs) at the forefront of fighting COVID-19 through seeking possible vaccines, treating patients and promoting behaviours that curtail its spread. Thus research directed towards enhancing their continued commitment is both timely and valuable.

The study uses an explanatory cross-sectional survey design.

Results reveal that servant leadership behaviour significantly explains changes in commitment of medical-KWs. Results further establish that perceived fairness – a key psychological factor – significantly explains how servant leadership enhances the commitment of medical-KWs.

Data used were sourced from medical-KWs in selected public hospitals only. Thus results may differ among medical-KWs in private hospitals, yet they have also championed the fight against COVID-19. Never the less these results provide a direction of thought to guide practice and other related studies on a wider-scale.

In their quest to eradicate COVID-19 and its negative effects on social-economic development, nations have to actively promote servant leadership behaviour in the hospitals (by establishing quality relationships, credibility and efficient processes for delivering the shared goal) as mechanisms for sustaining the continued commitment of medical-KWs towards fighting the pandemic.

Results portray events from an economy that has registered successes in combating pandemics like Ebola and currently COVID-19 and thus offer a plausible benchmark for practice.

This paper aims to investigate the differences in mean cost, revenue and profit efficiency scores of conventional versus Islamic banks. It also aims to examine the effect of size and age on cost, revenue and profit efficiency of the sampled banks.

This study evaluates a cross‐country level data compiled from the financial statements of 40 banks in 11 Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) countries over the period 1990‐2005. The data were collected for each year available from the BankScope database. The DEA nonparametric efficiency approach originally developed by Farrell was applied to analyse the data.

The findings suggest no significant differences between the overall efficiency of conventional and Islamic banks. However, it was noted that, on average, banks are more efficient in using their resources compared to their ability to generate revenues and profits. The average bank lost an opportunity to receive 27.9 percent more revenue, given the same amount of resources. Similarly, the average bank lost the opportunity to make 20.9 percent more profits utilising the same level of inputs. Clearly there is substantial room for improvement in cost minimisation and revenue and profit maximisation in both banking systems. The size and age factor did not significantly influence the efficiency scores in both banking streams.

This research is substantially different from the prior work in this area in three main ways. First, it investigates cost, revenue, and profit efficiency, whereas previous studies focus on cost, profit, or cost and profit efficiency. Also, no previous studies have compared conventional and Islamic banks. Second, this study distinguishes differences among big versus small, and old versus new banks, which allows more detailed insights on the efficiency issue. Third, the age issue in Islamic banks has been addressed, so far undocumented.

The purpose of this study was to explore how transport companies in Uganda execute strategies in a turbulent business environment.

The study adopted an exploratory qualitative methodology using the data collected through an open-ended instrument. Utilizing the qualitative data analysis software QSR NVivo9, the data were analyzed following the Gioia's methodology. Verbatim texts were used to explain the emergent themes.

The study's findings show that to successfully execute strategies, companies in Uganda communicate, coordinate and put control systems in their operations. The activities undertaken include customer care, timely settlement of complaints, comfortable seats, playing local music, partnerships with reliable fuel stations, setting up strategic offices, cost management, use of experienced drivers, sub-renting vehicles and inspections.

The study produces a pioneering result of how transport companies execute strategies in a turbulent business environment, an aspect that has not been adequately highlighted in previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to study and describe several biases in investment decision-making through the review of research articles in the area of behavioral finance. It also includes some of the analytical and foundational work and how this has progressed over the years to make behavioral finance an established and specific area of study. The study includes behavioral patterns of individual investors, institutional investors and financial advisors.

The research papers are analyzed on the basis of searching the keywords related to behavioral finance on various published journals, conference proceedings, working papers and some other published books. These papers are collected over a period of year’s right from the time when the most introductory paper was published (1979) that contributed this area a basic foundation till the most recent papers (2016). These articles are segregated into biases wise, year-wise, country-wise and author wise. All research tools that have been used by authors related to primary and secondary data have also been included into our table.

A new era of understanding of human emotions, behavior and sentiments has been started which was earlier dominated by the study of financial markets. Moreover, this area is not only attracting the, attention of academicians but also of the various corporates, financial intermediaries and entrepreneurs thus adding to its importance. The study is more inclined toward the study of individual and institutional investors and financial advisors’ investors but the behavior of intermediaries through which some of them invest should be focused upon, narrowing down population into various variables, targeting the expanding economies to reap some unexplained theories. This study has identified 17 different types of biases and also summarized in the form of tables.

The study is based on some of the most recent findings to have a quick overview of the latest work carried out in this area. So far very few extensive review papers have been published to highlight the research work in the area of behavioral finance. This study will be helpful for new researches in this field and to identify the areas where possible work can be done.

Practical implication of the research is that companies, policymakers and issuers of securities can watch out of investors’ interest before issuing securities into the market.

Under the Social Implication, investors can recognize several behavioral biases, take sound investment decisions and can also minimize their risk.

The essence of this paper is the identification of 17 types of biases and the literature related to them. The study is based on both, the literature on investment decisions and the biases in investment decision-making. Such study is less prevalent in the developing country like India. This paper does not only focus on the basic principles of behavioral finance but also explain some emerging concepts and theories of behavioral finance. Thus, the paper generates interest in the readers to find the solutions to minimize the effect of biases in decision-making.

This paper aims to critically evaluate theoretical and empirical research into capital structure practices in Islamic banks (IBs) from four perspectives, namely, theoretical aspect and its nature, determinants of capital structure in IBs, links between capital structure and risk management and nexus between capital structure and performance of IBs.

The authors will review and examine past studies on IBs’ capital structure from both theoretical and empirical research.

The paper concludes that most of the literature on IB capital structure is largely theoretical than empirical. The existing studies on IB capital structure have various limitations, which suggest a need for detailed empirical work. Detailed empirical research in the field of capital structure will support bank managers and policymakers in making decisions about improving capital structure.

This research will make several noteworthy contributions to address literature gaps for IB capital structure. Furthermore, this paper will identify areas for future research into capital structure practices and IB financing decisions. Lastly, this paper will equip regulators with guidelines for establishing sound capital requirements for IB.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether Islamic bank profitability is driven by same forces as those driving conventional banking in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Distinguished by its principles in conformity with sharia, Islamic banking is different from conventional banking, which is likely to affect profitability.

The paper builds on a dynamic panel data model to identify the banks’ specific determinants and the macroeconomic factors influencing the profitability of a large sample of 51 Islamic banks operating in the MENA region from 1994 to 2012. The system-generalized method of moment estimators are applied.

The findings reveal that profitability is positively affected by banks’ cost-effectiveness, asset quality and level of capitalization. The results also indicate that non-financing activities allow Islamic banks to earn higher profits. Islamic banks perform better in environments where the gross domestic product and investment are high. There is evidence of several elements of similarities between determinants of the profitability for Islamic and conventional banks. The inflation rate, however, is negatively associated with Islamic bank profitability.

The authors conclude that profitability determinants did not differ significantly between Islamic and conventional banks. Many factors are deemed the same in explaining the profitability of conventional as well as Islamic banks. The findings reported in the current paper might be of interest for policy makers. It is recommended to better implement non-financing activities to improve Islamic bank profitability.

Unlike the previous empirical research, this empirical investigation assesses the issue whether Islamic banks profitability is influenced by same factors as conventional model. It enriches the literature in this regard by considering the specificities of Islamic banking to identify the determinants of profitability. Moreover, this study considers a large sample (51 Islamic banks) through a different selection of countries/banks than previous studies. In addition, the period of study considers the subprime crisis insofar it ranges from 1994 to 2012. Hence, this broader study allows the authors to draw more consistent conclusions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of Islamic banks in developing countries from 2007 to 2010 which includes the period of the financial crisis by empirically examining the way in which the macroeconomy affected Islamic banking performance (IBP) in developing countries. The empirical examination involves two approaches of measuring performance: Sharia-based and conventional-based performance measurement.

For this paper, the authors have utilized a Data Stream/Bank Scope database and data from the Bank Negara Malaysia (Malaysian Central Bank) to collect a panel set of annual financial information for Islamic banking from the year 2007-2010. The initial sample covers 34 Islamic banks from developing countries that are listed on the International Islamic Service Board. Furthermore, the authors adopted only those listed Islamic banks to tackle the data availability issue. The authors’ final sample comprised 136 observations with complete data as the numbers of Islamic banks in developing countries are low in comparison to their conventional peers. The financial crisis dummy follows America’s commonly used National Bureau of Economic Research timeline for the financial crisis. The authors also used the method of a generalized least square (GLS) method of pooled panel data analysis regression model. The rationale for employing the GLS technique was made on the basis of the ability of GLS to give less weight to the error term that is closely clustered around the mean, to improve the goodness of fit and to remove autocorrelation compared with normal, random, and fixed effect models.

The authors of this paper found that the macroeconomic factors reflected in gross domestic product, gross domestic product growth, and inflation rate have a significant positive relationship with the return on assets. In addition, a significant negative relationship was found between the financial dummy and IBP in developing countries. On the other hand, it failed to find evidence of a relationship between the macroeconomic factors and performance including the legal system and the financial crisis dummy, when the performance is reflected by the Zakat ratio. The result embedded that the financial crisis had an impact on the performance of Islamic banks in developing countries when viewed from the conventional banking perspective. The financial crisis played a role in reducing the profitability of Islamic banks which is consistent with a previous study by Hasan and Dridi (2011). However, in the view of Sharia, the financial crisis did not have any effect on IBP; even the macro factors did not have any effect on the level of performance.

There are possible explanations for these contradictory coefficient signs. First, the contradictory signs of the coefficient for the same independent variable that was regressed with different dependent variables show that researchers would need to take caution in using the right indicators when measuring IBP. Conventional indicators bring different results in comparison to Islamic indicators (Badreldin, 2009; Mudiarasan. Kuppusamy, 2010; Zahra and Pearce, 1989). Second, Richard et al. (2009), having reviewed performance measurement-related publications in five of the leading management journals (722 articles between 2005 and 2007), suggested that the past studies reveal a multidimensional conceptualization of organizational performance with limited effectiveness of commonly accepted measurement practices. Accordingly, these studies call for more theoretically grounded research and debate for establishing which measures are appropriate in a given research context. Today, there is a general consensus that the old financial measures are still valid and relevant (Yip et al., 2009). However, these need to be balanced with more contemporary, intangible, and externally oriented measures. It has been argued that various researchers working in their own disciplines using functional performance measures (such as market share in marketing, schedule adherence in operations and so on) ought to link their discipline to focused performance measures of overall organizational performance.

Islamic banking has unique characteristics in comparison to conventional banking and this paper examines the differences between the two and also investigates the resilience of Islamic banks during a period of economic turbulence. Furthermore, due to these unique characteristics, a comparison cannot be made by using the conventional performance measures alone. In addition, amid the in-depth studies examining the resilience of Islamic banks during periods of economic crises, there are instances of theoretical disagreement in the extant empirical literature examining finance and economics. In that regard, the majority of the existing literature is either based on advanced markets or countries where the majority of the population practices the faith of Islam, and little is known about the performance of Islamic banking from the pooled emerging markets; particularly in developing countries.

Introducing Zakat as a performance measurement in Islamic banking context relating it to macroeconomic factors enhances the thinking of new research in Islamic theory about bank performance.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the differences in bank characteristics of Islamic and conventional banks in Malaysia, especially when it comes to their profitability, capital adequacy, liquidity, operational efficiency and asset quality are also considered. Corporate governance issues and economic conditions are also included in the analysis.

A total of 14 banks (nine conventional and five Islamic) were considered over the period of 2005‐2009. Three stages of analysis were performed. First, descriptive statistics were computed to understand the differences in characteristics of the two types of banks. Next, to determine whether these differences were significant, independent t‐tests were carried out on each variable. Finally, regression analysis was carried out to analyze the effect of the variables on bank profitability.

It is found that the return on average assets, bank size and board size values of conventional banks was higher compared to Islamic banks. The other variables – operational efficiency, asset quality, liquidity, capital adequacy and board independence – were higher for Islamic banks. Significant differences between the two bank types were found for all the variables, except for profitability and board independence. All variables except for liquidity, board characteristics and type of bank, were found to be highly significant in affecting profitability.

This paper looks at the differences between Islamic and conventional banking systems in Malaysia. Contrasting results were found for the independent t‐tests and regression analysis, which makes it an interesting study that should be pursued further.

The paper examines the impact of entry of foreign banks on the performance of the Malaysian Islamic banking sector during the period 2001‐2007.

To maintain homogeneity, the empirical analysis is confined to two fully fledged domestic Islamic banks, three fully fledged foreign Islamic banks, 11 domestic window Islamic banks, and four foreign window Islamic banks during the period of 2001‐2007. The paper applies the ordinary least square method, where the standard errors are calculated by using White's transformation to control for cross section heteroscedasticity.

The empirical findings suggest that overhead cost is negatively related to Malaysian Islamic banks' profitability. On the other hand, Islamic banks which are better capitalized and have a higher level of liquidity tend to be more profitable. It is found that the De Novo commercial banks are relatively less profitable than their incumbent bank peers, which could be attributed to the different levels of knowledge of the market between the incumbent and the De Novo Islamic banks.

Future research could include more variables such as taxation and regulation indicators, exchange rates as well as indicators of the quality of the offered services. Another possible extension could be the examination of differences in the determinants of profitability between small and large or high and low profitability banks. In terms of methodology, a statistical cost accounting and/or frontier optimization technique, such as the non‐parametric data envelopment analysis, the stochastic frontier analysis, and/or the Malmquist productivity index approach, may be adopted to examine changes in efficiency and productivity of the Malaysian Islamic banking sector.

While extensive literature exists to examine the performance of conventional banking sectors over recent years, empirical works on the Islamic banking sector are still in its infancy. Furthermore, studies on Islamic bank performance have focused on theoretical issues and the empirical works have relied mainly on the analysis of descriptive statistics rather than rigorous statistical estimation. The paper therefore attempts to fill the gap in the literature by providing new empirical evidence on the performance of the Islamic banking sector.