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This paper aims to investigate the impact of market structure and market share on the performance of the Islamic banks operating in the Iranian banking system based on the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm.

The Iranian Islamic banking system’s market structure is evaluated by using the econometrics method to test the validity of the traditional SCP paradigm. For this purpose, the authors estimate a simple regression model that is consisted of several independent variables, such as the market share, bank size, real gross domestic product, liquidity and Herfindahl-Hirschman index as a proxy variable for concentration and one dependent variable, namely, the profit as a proxy for performance. The panel data includes a data sample of 22 Islamic banks operating from 2006 to 2019. Data are extracted from the balance sheet of Islamic banks and the time-series database of the Central Bank of Iran and World Bank.

The study’s findings indicate that both concentration and market share have a positive impact on the performance of banks in the Iranian Islamic banking system. This result is contradicted with both traditional SCP and efficient structure hypotheses; however, it confirms the existence of oligopoly or cartel in the Iranian Islamic banking system that few banks try to gain the highest share of profit and maintain their market share by colluding with each other. This result is in contradiction with other research studies about the market structure in the Iranian banking system that claimed that banks in Iran operate under monopolistic competition. In addition, it shows that the privatization of some banks in Iran does not improve and help competition in the Iranian banking system.

This paper is a pioneer empirical study analyzing the market structure, concentration and collusion based on the SCP paradigm in Iranian Islamic banking. The results of the study support the existence of collusive behavior among the Islamic bank in Iran that is not aligned with Sharia. This study clearly shows the difference between ideal Islamic banking and Islamic banking in practice in Islamic countries. This clearly indicates that only prohibiting some operations like receiving interest, gambling and bearing excessive risk is not enough. In fact, the Islamic banking system should be based on the Sharia rule in all aspects and much more modification and study have to be done to achieve an appropriate Islamic banking system. These possible modifications to overcome the issues of cartel-like market structure and collusive behavior in the Iranian Islamic banking system include making the Iranian banking system more transparent, letting foreign banks enter the Iranian banking system and minimizing the government intervention in the Iranian banking system.

This study aims to identify and compare the measurement models of earnings management (EM) appropriate to the Iranian Islamic banking system. The importance of reported profit figures has motivated business executives, who also perform financial reporting, to manipulate these figures. These measures are referred to as “earnings management,” which negatively influence the quality of reported earnings and financial statements' reliability.

In this study, four methods, namely, Jones (1991), modified Jones (Dechow et al., 1995), Kasznik (1999) and Kothari et al. (2005), were used to measure the EM index in 25 Iranian Islamic banks (IBs) registered with the Tehran Stock Exchange and/or the Central Bank of Iran. The study covered the period 2005–2020. Following the aforementioned methods, this research implemented templates that were repeatedly tested in subsequent studies using accruals to discover EM.

The results show that the Kasznik (1999) model is the preferred and compatible model with the Iranian Islamic banking system's accrual behaviour due to the consistency of the measurement coefficients with theoretical and previous research findings. Therefore, total accruals, including discretionary accruals and non-discretionary accruals, have the most correspondence with (1) property, machinery and equipment; (2) the change in cash flow from operating activities; and (3) the difference of change in revenue (ΔREV) and change in net receivable accounts (ΔREC).

This is the first investigation in the Iranian Islamic banking system. The research contributes to the Iranian Islamic banking system literature on the implements of EM, which could be appealed to in the context of developing countries like Iran. Finally, this study highlights the different EM capabilities in Islamic banking systems similar to the Iranian banking arrangement.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the influence of online behavior of internet users on the adoption of internet banking in Iran.

The samples used in this empirical study include 560 persons who were among Iranian internet users and completed the interactive questionnaires. The statistical analysis which has been used in regard to the dichotomous decision of adopting internet banking services was logistic regression.

The results reveal that the use of the internet for work or teamwork, selling or buying, finance activities or banking operations, and reading news, has significant relevance to the internet banking adoption, but using the internet with the purpose of having fun and entertainment and seeking commercial information does not have a significant effect on internet banking acceptance. Also, it was found that using the internet for reading news and hedonic goals has a negative effect on accepting internet banking. Other purposes of using the internet which were examined in this study had a positive effect on internet banking adoption in Iran.

The findings of this research provide several ideas for the marketing of internet banking and for developing internet banking web sites. Useful insights are provided for internet banking adoption and costs reduction.

The analysis is based on a random sample of internet users in Iran which has rarely been discussed in previous literature. Also this is the first study to investigate the influence of internet users' behavior on internet banking adoption in Iran.

Iran, with its young and highly literate population, constitutes one of the main higher education markets in the Middle East region. Having now developed a highly comprehensive higher education sector, a result of the efforts to advance the higher education system following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, it is of no surprise that more than four million Iranians are currently enrolled in higher education institutions in Iran. Regardless of these developments, however, meeting the increasing demand for tertiary education has been a challenge leading to a large number of Iranians pursuing tertiary education opportunities overseas. This has created a vast and promising market for student importing countries, which has proved to be too difficult for international student recruiters to penetrate due to international sanctions imposed on Iran and local economic problems coupled with certain restrictions imposed internally by the ruling authorities. Despite the challenges of not being politically recognised as legitimate except by Turkey, North Cyprus has been one of the most popular destinations for Iranian students particularly in the last decade. Relative to its size, North Cyprus has proved to be one of the most internationalised higher education system in the world with more than 30,000 international students from more than 100 different countries and more significantly, Iranian students constitute one of the largest cohort. This chapter explores the student recruitment process from Iran with a specific focus on the external and internal challenges faced by the students as well as by the recruiters. North Cyprus is particularly evaluated as a case study to present how some challenges may have been overcome and student flow can be achieved even to a country that has been struggling against the externalities of international political non-recognition.

The purpose of this paper is to explore barriers; the mediating role of usability; and the moderating effects of subjective norms, personal innovativeness, self-efficacy and perceived image on users’ attitudes toward loyalty to Internet banking (IB) in Iran.

Based on the consumer data collected from a survey, structural equations modeling and path analysis were used to test the research model.

The results revealed that “low perceived usefulness” and “low perceived ease of use” both had negative effects on users’ attitudes. “Low awareness” and “low system compatibility” were found to be the main factors impeding users’ attitudes toward loyalty to IB. “Perceived usefulness” showed no mediating role in the relationship between ease of use and users’ attitudes. At last, all concerned moderators moderated the relationships between ease of use/usefulness and users’ attitudes.

The sample was only composed of IB users of one Iranian bank, and non-users were not studied.

Past studies have seldom examined the role of individual drivers such as personal innovativeness and self-efficacy and social drivers such as subjective norms and perceived image as moderating variables in the context of developing countries.

The main objective of this paper is to highlight the unprecedented growth of Islamic banking and finance in the contemporary finance world. It captures the advancements of Islamic banking and finance industry across the tools, systems, sectors, markets and over 75 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

The paper deals with the paradigm of Islamic banking and finance. It constitutes a general review that bears special features, facts and figures over the recent developments of Islamic banking and finance across the globe. It takes stock of the growing institutional and infrastructure support for the Islamic banking and finance system in Muslim countries and Western financial markets.

The findings of the paper hold that Islamic banking and finance industry has been making breakthrough improvements to become a truly viable and competitive alternative to conventional systems at the global level. Islamic banking and finance institutions have acquired booming grounds in the Middle East, South East and South East Asia. These growing Islamic hubs have been acting as a launching pad to promote Islamic banking in Western business and financial markets. There are some core factors contributing to the recent success of Islamic banking and finance, such as spiraling oil prices worldwide, prolonged boom in the Middle Eastern economies, product innovation and sophistication, increasingly receptive attitude of conventional regulators and information technology advancements that have been acting as a catalyst for the Islamic banking and finance industry to go global. Given all growth patterns, Islamic banking may be able to win over the majority of customers from the Muslim world that constitutes almost 24 per cent of the world's population (over 1.3 billion), and other ethical groups across the globe in times ahead.

The paper takes stock of on‐going developments in Islamic banking and finance industry worldwide. It deals with latest information, facts and figures, which however do not amount to a substantive volume to allow statistical testing and analysis to figure out the main factors and their actual contributions in making Islamic banking and finance emerge as the fastest growing industry of the global finance. This paper mostly bears a subjective outlook.

The paper aims to attract the global attention towards the fastest growing industry of the contemporary world of finance. It presents the case of the Islamic banking and finance industry in the most powerful, comprehensive and logical fashions to remove all misgivings about it in some circles, and let it be seen as an industry adding more ethical, competitive, flexible and diversified tools and systems to global financial markets. The paper highlights the increasing moral and material support that Islamic banking has been enjoying from Muslim governments and the public, and Western market players and regulators. It draws attention towards the growing number of products, systems, infrastructures and supporting institutions of Islamic banking over the recent years. The current trends of Islamic banking industry worldwide captured in this paper can tell all about its strength and weakness, future prospects and ambitions to become a truly innovative, competitive and integrated part of contemporary global finance.

The purpose of this study is to document how a central bank can perform its primary and secondary functions in a Sharīʿah-compliant manner. It also seeks to investigate the outcomes of the experiments of Muslim-majority countries in this regard.

As a first step, a detailed review of existing literature is conducted, which discusses the views of scholars and practitioners on the central banking mechanism in a fully Sharīʿah-compliant financial system. Moving further, the case studies of Iran, Sudan and Pakistan are presented to highlight experiences of regulators from three Muslim-majority countries, which aimed to achieve full compliance with Sharīʿah (Islamic law) principles related to Islamic finance. To evaluate their models, an assessment of their practices is performed in the light of Sharīʿah rules and principles based on existing literature. Finally, the issues involved in establishing a Sharīʿah-compliant central bank (SCCB) are discussed and improvements are suggested.

It is found that Iran played an effective role in pursuing broader objectives of monetary policy by setting priorities for credit allocation and assisting the government in reducing expenses; however, with respect to instruments, its experience is limited to the rebranding of conventional products. Sudan has not only used monetary policy to effectively curb inflation but also it has introduced various indirect instruments to perform monetary operations. Pakistan succeeded in formulating a theoretical roadmap to establish a SCCB but the desired objectives could not be achieved because of multiple factors.

This study has important policy implications for regulators and policymakers from Muslim countries, who can use the findings in shaping effective Sharīʿah-compliant central banking practices in their respective countries.

This study discusses the salient features of an important Islamic financial institution, the central bank and evaluates the experiments of three Muslim-majority countries in implementing Sharīʿah-compliant central banking practices. To the best of the knowledge, this evaluation has not been performed in the existing literature and the present study fills in this gap.

The purpose of this study is to investigate important factors that help explain customer willingness to adopt mobile banking (M-banking). To this end, the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) was applied and to more accurately predict customer behavioral intentions, it was attempted to extend it.

The research data were collected from 396 customers of Iranian private banks who had the experience of using M-banking. The structural equation modeling technique was used to test the research hypotheses.

Findings suggest that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, habit, hedonic motivation, perceived value and trialability are endorsed as proponents of M-banking adoption intention. On the other hand, M-banking adoption intention has also had a significant positive effect on actual use behavior and word-of-mouth (WOM). WOM has also influenced actual use behavior and mediated the relationship between M-banking adoption intention and actual use behavior.

The present study focuses on private banks, therefore, although it is sufficient, it is limited to private cases. This study contributes to the literature on M-banking services and actual use behavior. By appropriately focusing on M-banking adoption intention and the service quality provided, banks can strengthen their relationships with customers, thereby stimulating actual customer behavior such as actual use behavior and WOM.

From theoretical and managerial aspects, this study has particular value for the literature on M-services’ intention in general and banking in particular. The present study provides a conceptual framework for M-banking adoption intention, which could be used in M-banking services. In addition, this study sought to extend UTAUT2 and to examine the mediating role of WOM in actual use behavior motivation as well.