Although there is literature about off-balance sheet (OBS) activities in the banking system, this is the first paper that investigates the off-balance sheet activities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) banking industry. It aims to test the tax regulatory hypothesis and the market...

This paper examines economic performance of the OIC member countries and analyzes the prospect of Islamic common market by analyzing trade data within a gravity model framework. There is scope of trade creation for OIC member countries if all impediments to trade and business can be eliminated....

Currencies of the GCC countries have long been effectively pegged to the US dollar. Since 2003 the GCC countries have formally started pegging their currencies to the US dollar as a first step towards the proposed monetary union in 2010. The prevailing dollar peg and the absence of any...

This paper revisits Mehanna’s (2004) assessment of the viability of the future project of the Gulf Monetary Union (a goal set for 2010) while examining member countries over three time periods: (1) 1990-1999; (2) 2000-2006; and (3) average period 1990-2006. It follows the theory of Optimum Currency...

Despite recent extreme fluctuations of Middle East and North African (MENA) stock markets, we do not find strong evidence of rational speculative bubbles from the perspective of both domestic and U.S-based investors. Fractional integration tests built on ARFIMA models do not support the...

Turkey experienced a severe financial crisis in 1994 that resulted in a record level economic contraction and a large number of failures among industrial and financial firms. Employing a nonparametric approach, we measured the efficiency and productivity of the Turkish banking sector between...

The regional economic blocks among OIC countries play an important role in economic improvement for these countries. The paper provides recommendations and policy options for establishing an Islamic common market. These recommendations will be derived from assessing the success and failure of...

This paper finds that dividend signaling hypothesis is able to explain the phenomenon of assets concentration in short and medium investments in Islamic Interest-Free banking (IIFBs). In this paper a dividend signaling model framework has been introduced, where in the process of maintaining a...

This paper examines the empirical relationship between financial structure, creditworthiness and stock market development in a cross-section of countries. This paper fills a necessary gap by testing the extent to which stock market development might affect creditworthiness on the one hand. On...