The goal of this paper is to assess how financial sector competition plays out in the development of knowledge economy (KE). It contributes at the same time to the macroeconomic literature on measuring financial development and response to the growing field of KE by means of informal sector...

Purpose – The issue of which financial initial conditions are necessary to materialize the benefits of financial globalization remains open to debate in the literature. In this paper, we try to put some empirical structure on the concept of financial threshold conditions in order to give...

Purpose – Poverty and inequality undoubtedly remain substantial challenges to economic and human developments amid growing emphasis on IPRs (with recent advances in ICTs) and good governance. In the first empirical study on the incidence of piracy on inequality in Africa, we examine how a...

Purpose – This paper assesses the incidence of political institutions on stock market performance dynamics in Africa. Design/methodology/approach – The estimation technique used is a Two-Stage-Least Squares Instrumental Variable methodology. Channels of democracy, polity and autocracy are...

This paper responds to the criticism of the Zubair Diminishing Balance model for Islamic home financing that Ahmad Kameel Meera published in the ISRA Journal. The response argues that most of the comments of Meera are frivolous and misplaced. It reiterates that the ZDBM is much different from...

This paper assesses the relevance of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in the knowledge economy (KE)-finance nexus using the four variables identified under the World Bank’s knowledge economy index (KEI) and seven financial intermediary dynamics of depth, efficiency, activity and size. Three...

The worldwide colossal failures of financial institutions in the wake of the 2007–2010 financial turmoil the yesteryear advocates of liberalization and privatization converted almost overnight into vocal supporters of raising the safety walls around the interests of various stakeholders,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of policy options in financial dynamics (of money, credit, efficiency and size) on consumer prices. Soaring food prices have marked the geopolitical landscape of African countries in the past decade. Design/methodology/approach –...

This paper deals with familiar facts in monetary economics from an unfamiliar angle. It argues that it is not factual to regard the legal tender money and bank credit as of different genus: they work in tandem to the same ends in an economy, conventional or Islamic. Also, it does not matter what...

In my latest article on Islamic home financing models in the ISRA Journal June 2013, I had shown that the Zubair Diminishing Balance Model (ZDBM) is free of return compounding and the transfer of ownership to the customer perfectly matches the payments’ rate; the two norms Islamic models must...