Search results

This study aims to explore and assess the key Sharīʿah governance factors that may have an influence on the internal Sharīʿah audit structure and its practices in Islamic financial Institutions in Yemen, particularly in the Islamic banking sector.

To do so, the study adopts a qualitative approach employing case study analysis, and both primary and secondary data are used to formulate the appropriate interview questions and achieve the objectives of the study.

The authors observed that the key factors that help in assessing the internal Sharīʿah audit structure and its practices are Sharīʿah auditor charter, audit plan and audit manual. In addition, the authors observed that, in general, internal Sharīʿah audit tends to be subjective in Yemeni banks because they depend on the internal Sharīʿah auditor’s qualifications and experience more than formal guidelines and regulations. This is because there are no detailed internal Sharīʿah audit plans or detailed audit manual. Moreover, the internal Sharīʿah auditor charter is not comprehensive in explaining the duties required of the internal Sharīʿah auditor, and it is mixed with the Sharīʿah Supervisory Board (SSB) duties. This means the internal Sharīʿah auditor lacks the critical tools that enable him to achieve the desired audit manual objectives where the effectiveness of internal Sharīʿah audit can be measured.

One of the important implications of this study is providing very important guidance about enhancing the areas where shortfalls are found within the Sharīʿah governance process in the Yemeni banking system. This enhancement process of the internal factors of Sharīʿah governance can be achieved by increasing the awareness of the enhancing internal Sharīʿah audit structure as it reflects ultimately on the internal Sharīʿah auditor’s role and his practices.

Understanding the effectiveness of internal Sharīʿah audit structure among internal auditors will improve the Sharīʿah audit framework standards, enhance the Sharīʿah knowledge among internal auditors and provide general guidelines to design audit programmes for Sharīʿah governance auditing process.

This paper aims to examine whether the crypto-currencies’ market returns are symmetric or asymmetric informative, through analysing the daily logarithmic returns of bitcoin currency over the period of 2011-2017.

In doing so, the symmetric informative analysis is estimated by applying the generalised auto-regressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) (1,1) model, whereas asymmetric informative or leverage effects analysis is estimated by exponential GARCH (1,1), asymmetric power ARCH (1,1) and threshold GARCH (1,1) models. In addition, the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity in mean (GARCH-M (1,1)) was applied to examine whether the risk-return trade-off phenomenon was persistent in crypto-currencies market.

The main findings indicate that bitcoin market return or volatility is symmetric informative and has a long memory to persist in the future. Furthermore, the sympatric volatility is found to be more sensitive to its past values (lagged) than to the new shock of the market values. However, asymmetric informative response of volatility to the negative and the positive shocks do not exist in the bitcoin market or, in other words, there is no leverage effect. This suggests that the bitcoin market is in harmony with the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) with respect to the asymmetric information and violated the EMH with regard to the symmetric information. Hence, the market price or return of bitcoin currency could not be predicted by simply exercising such past market information in the short-run investment. In addition, the estimated coefficient of conditional variance or risk premium (λ) in the mean equation of CHARCH–M (1,1) model is positive however, statistically insignificant. This indicates the absence of risk-return trade-off, in which case the higher market risk will not essentially lead to higher market returns. This paper has proposed that an investment in the crypto-currency market is more appropriate for risk-averse investors than risk takers.

The findings of the study will provide investors with necessary information about the bitcoin market price efficiency, hedging effectiveness and risk management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of economic freedom and six relevant subcomponents of it on the risk-taking behavior of banks in the Malaysian dual banking system. It also aims to make a comparative analysis between Islamic and conventional banks operating in this dual banking sector. Moreover, the study is an effort to enrich the existing literature by presenting empirical evidence on the argument that the risk-taking behavior of the two types of banks is indistinguishable given that they operate in the same regulatory environment.

Secondary data of all banks operating in the Malaysian banking sector are collected from FitchConnect database, in addition to the economic freedom index from Foundation Heritage for the period 2011–2017. Generalized least squares technique is employed to estimate the influence of economic freedom and the six relevant subcomponents of it on the risk-taking behavior of banks.

The level of economic freedom influenced risk-taking behavior within the banking sector as a whole, conventional and Islamic banking sectors negatively during the study period (2011–2017). Risk-taking behavior of conventional and Islamic banks is similar. However, conventional banks turn to be less influenced by economic freedom level as compared to Islamic banks.

The government and regulators may benefit from the results by rethinking and setting the best economic freedom index that better serves the stability of the banking system, and lessens banks’ risk-taking inclination.

To the present time, this paper is thought to be of a significant contribution. Given the argument that Islamic and conventional banks behave in the same way. This is one of the first attempts to address this issue in light of the influence of economic freedom and six subcomponents of it on the risk-taking behavior of banks operating in a dual banking system.

The academic achievement of Malaysian students being non‐English proficient have long been a major national education concern in Malaysian in the last decade. This among other factors culminated in the recent change in the Malaysian national education policy on English as a medium of instruction for mathematics and science with immediate implementation at primary school level. The global concern is also affecting accounting education. The Education Committee of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has been one of the few active internaional players on global accounting education. The assessment of professional competencies based on the whole range of knowledge, skills and professional values, is a determinant factor affecting accounting education. Communication, intellectual and interpersonal skills form part of the elements of accounting education and experience as per IFAC ED9. Proficiency in English, measured by students’s ability to effectively communicate to a certain extent, may have an influence on their ability to master the courses or programmes where English is the medium of instruction. The purpose of this preliminary study is to examine the academic performance of limited‐English‐proficient Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)’s Bachelor of Accountancy (Hons) students (being non native speakers of English Language). A sample from archives on grades obtained was analyzed, employing historical data analysis (data mining technique). The findings of this study suggested that the relationship between English proficiency and accounting students’ academic performance existed in the case of limited‐English‐proficient students.

In an attempt to enrich the literature of the efficiency of Islamic banks, this study aims to empirically investigate the efficiency of the fully fledged Islamic banks as well as Islamic windows in Malaysia.

This study measures the technical and cost‐efficiencies of these banks using the non‐parametric frontier method, data envelopment analysis (DEA).

The findings show that, on average, the efficiency of the overall Islamic banking industry has increased during the period of study. The study also revealed that, although the fully fledged Islamic banks were more efficient than the Islamic windows, they were still less efficient than the conventional banks. Finally, Islamic windows of the foreign banks were found to be more efficient than Islamic windows of the domestic banks.

The findings of this study will provide some empirical insights as to how these two modes of Islamic banks had fared in the competitive environment from 1997 to 2003.

The purpose of this study is to integrate and synthesize the Islamic marketing literature, understand the phenomenon and related concepts and provide suggestions for future research.

The study uses an integrative review method that emphasizes summarizing and synthesizing the previous literature related to a phenomenon.

The findings indicate the emergence of five major themes, namely, Islamic marketing and its perspectives, activities in Islamic marketing, opportunities, controversies and challenges in Islamic marketing, Islamic principles and determinants of consumers’ behavior and awareness toward Islamic products. Each of the major themes consists of sub-themes discussed in detail in the results and discussion sections.

Like other studies, this integrative literature review has some limitations. These include the methodology undertaken, the lack of explanation of inter-relationship among themes and lack of Islamic theory-based review. These limitations lead to future research directions.

Marketing managers need a thorough understanding of the Islamic standards and need to develop strategies. Further, there are inter-differences among Muslims, which need to be thoroughly understood by managers. Moreover, marketers can effectively use advertising in creating awareness and increasing demand of halal products.

This study provides an integrative review of the literature and synthesizes the Islamic marketing literature, which has not been done before.