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The primary objective of this study aims to intensively explore the environment of Indonesian regulations and laws related to the Islamic banking system and micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) and unveil the restrictive laws and regulatory flaws that potentially hinder the Islamic banking institution and MSME industry in achieving financial inclusion and promoting sustainable growth.

This paper implements a qualitative method by implementing a multi-case study research strategy, both from the Islamic banking institutions and the MSME industries. The data were gathered primarily through an interview approach by adopting purposive uncontrolled quota sampling.

The findings of this paper reveal two essential issues: First, the regulatory imbalances and restrictions could demotivate and hinder the efforts of Islamic banks in providing access to finance for the MSME segment, hence, encumbering the achievement of the financial inclusion agenda from the Islamic banking industry. Second, the flaws in MSME registration and taxation might discourage the formal MSMEs from extending their business license and prevent the informal MSME units from registering their business. This issue would potentially lower their chance of accessing external financing from the formal financial institutions and participating in supportive government programmes due to the absence of proper legality.

Since this paper only observed six Islamic banks and 22 MSME units in urban and rural locations in Indonesia using a case study approach, the empirical findings and case discussions were limited to those respective Islamic banks and MSME participants.

By referring to the recommendations as presented in this paper, two critical policy implications could be expected from adopting the proposed recommendations, among others: By addressing the issues of the regulatory imbalance associated with the Islamic banking industry and introduce the deregulatory policies on profit and loss sharing (PLS) scheme implementation, this approach will motivate the Islamic banking industry in serving the MSME sector better and provide greater access to financial services, particularly in using the PLS financing schemes. By resolving the problems on MSME registration and taxation, this strategy will enhance the sustainability of the formal MSMEs’ operation and encourage the informal ones to register, hence, improving their inclusion into the formal financing services and government assistance programmes.

The present study attempts to address the literature shortcomings and helps to fill the gaps – both theoretical and empirical – by incorporating the multi-case study among Indonesian Islamic banks and MSMEs to extensively explore the Indonesia regulatory environment pertaining to the Islamic banking system (supply-side) and MSMEs (demand-side), and thoroughly investigates and reveals the restrictive laws and regulatory flaws that could potentially hinder the Islamic banking institutions and MSME industries in attaining financial inclusion and contributing to sustainable development.

This paper aims to provide a critical review of the literature on the rate of return risk faced by Islamic banks.

Through a thorough review of the literature, this paper presents the discussion among scholars regarding the rate of return risk in Islamic banks.

One of the major issues highlighted is the sensitivity of Islamic banks to the changes in the conventional interest rate due to the fact that many Islamic banking products are benchmarked against the conventional interest rate. Moreover, the limited techniques and instruments available to mitigate the rate of return risk also need serious attention by the regulators.

The study relies solely on the literature and highlights important issues in the area but does not provide any empirical evidence of the importance of rate of return risk to Islamic banks as it is beyond the scope of the paper.

There are several issues that should be taken into consideration. First, the dearth of empirical research on the identification of the rate of return risk in Islamic banking highlights the need to develop appropriate methodology to enrich the study on the rate of return risk. Second, more focus is needed to determine the impact of rate of return risk on the financial stability and the performance of Islamic banks.

This paper highlights several important issues relating to the rate of return risk in Islamic banks that are not widely discussed among researchers. In particular, this paper emphasizes the need to identify, handle and mitigate such risks to ensure the stability of Islamic banks. Therefore, this paper identifies a gap that needs further exploration so as to contribute towards enriching the existing literature in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to explore empirically the effects of the current financial crisis on the integration and co‐movements of selected stock markets of the emerging economies, namely Indonesia and Malaysia.

The paper employs the standard time series technique and vector autoregressive framework.

The results of this paper support the general view that stock markets tend to show greater degree of integration or increased co‐movements during the crisis period, resulting in lesser benefit of diversification that can be gained by investors participating in these markets.

This paper only focuses on emerging equity markets of Malaysia and Indonesia.

This paper reveals that unlike during the pre‐crisis period, the long‐run diversification benefits that can be earned by investors across the emerging equity markets of Indonesia and Malaysia during the crisis period tend to diminish.

By dividing the study periods into the pre‐crisis period and during the crisis period, it enables us to explore whether the cross‐market linkages between these markets change due to the crisis.