Search results

The financial crisis at the end of the past decade resulted in downturns in stock markets and the collapse of many large banks around the world. It encouraged economists worldwide to consider alternative financial solutions. Attention has been focused on Islamic finance as an alternative model. This study examines the performance of Islamic banks in 10 Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries over the period of 2005–2010.

It is an intertemporal analysis where it compares the profitability, liquidity, risk and solvency, and efficiency of 43 Islamic banks before and after the financial crisis.

The results show that the financial crisis negatively affected the performance of Islamic banks. The profitability and liquidity of Islamic banks in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries decreased drastically after the crisis. Islamic banks in non-GCC countries were efficient and more profitable compared to GCC countries. However, they took excessive risk during and after the financial crisis. The chapter concludes that Islamic financial institutions are not immune from the effects of the global recession.

The financial crisis has led to a greater recognition of the importance of liquidity risks. Reinforcing regulations and setting up a strong liquidity management framework are needed to improve the Islamic financial industry.

This chapter studies the properties and characteristics of the Middle East and North African (MENA) stock markets, and the prospects and implications of enhanced financial liberalization in the region. It also explores whether these markets can offer international investors unique risk and returns characteristics to diversify international and regional portfolios. Johansen co-integration tests reveal that the Gulf Cooperation Council equity markets still offer international investors the portfolio diversification potentials mainly through mutual funds, while other emerging MENA stock markets like those of Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, and to a lesser extent Jordan have matured, and are now integrated with the world financial markets.

An inherent challenge within the United Arab Emirates (UAE) higher education sector is the absence of both comprehensive system of data collection and consistency in the use of indictors among a variety of collection projects. At the root of this distributed system is a federal arrangement with two levels of government potentially involved in licensing and supervision combined with a series of academic “free zones” that can have unique or limited regulatory controls. As a result, there is a very limited systematic collection of institutional data in the country’s dynamic higher education sector, which hampers the alignment of planning activities and reduces the ability of institutions to benchmark performance with peers. To address this issue, an ambitious attempt to consolidate higher education data collection in the UAE is being developed by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research through the creation of Centre for Higher Education Data and Statistics (CHEDS). Combining the best international practices and an inclusive stakeholder-focused approach, CHEDS designed a system to collect raw data from institutions and then convert this data into a set of indicators with the potential for distribution to the public. The critical element for developing a truly comprehensive system is the degree to which international branch campuses of foreign institutions voluntarily participate, for these institutions tend to be located in the free zones and are therefore outside the jurisdiction of the central government ministry overseeing the CHEDS. If successful in recruiting these institutions, CHEDS has the potential to create a truly cooperative system of data collection that should be regionally replicated or even expanded to encompass other countries within the Gulf Cooperation Council.

This chapter offers a contemporary overview of philanthropy in education as an emerging research field. Although the education sector has traditionally been a popular recipient of philanthropic investment, the scale and scope of funding and policy involvement on the part of philanthropy are growing. In addition, and potentially amplified by COVID-19, big- and in particular tech-philanthropies are emerging as increasingly influential players in national, regional, and global educational contexts. This chapter describes how most existing education research on philanthropy is mainly US- and higher education-focused which has resulted in a narrow geographic and thematic scope whereby contemporary developments remain either overlooked or under-researched. It discusses venture philanthropy inside and outside of the United States, a greater diversity of geographic perspectives, and an increasing dependence of academia on philanthropic funding as emerging research areas that bear great potential to being explored further.

Halal food despite its undeniable importance for Muslims is largely absent in the tourism development and planning literature. Given the fact that today Muslims represent more than 20% of world population and the number of Muslim tourists has grown significantly over recent years, there is a dire need to investigate the halal food's potential for both the tourism industry and world trade. Furthermore, it is important to investigate at both Muslim and non-Muslim tourism sites how availability of halal food has influenced the selection of a particular destination for vacation by Muslims.