This paper focuses on some of the macroeconomic risks that lie ahead for Latin America. The discussion is informed by my work on crises and capital flows and their macroeconomic consequences. The trends and initial conditions that allowed the region to weather the global economic storm of...

In this note, we attempt to place the question of how we got to the global financial crisis that began as the US Subprime debacle in the summer of 2007 in the context of an international and historical comparative setting. It is of some poignancy that the “we” here refers to the wealthiest...

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...

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,...

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...

This paper adds to the series of writings on Islamic home financing presented and published by the author since February 2010. It spells out certain norms Islamic banks must observe in home financing and demonstrates that the conventional model based on an Excel formula does not meet the stated...

Control charts are extensively used in many real world applications. Since process parameters are rarely known common practice is to estimate them. Then, the control limits are modified and become actually random variables. In this paper, we deal with the univariate control charts for dispersion...

The stuttering generalized Waring distribution is introduced and shown to arise through two urn genesis schemes. Its probability generating function and moments are derived and some potential applications are discussed

The standard pattern: capital flows into the new “hot” nation, but then stop or reverses forcing painful adjustment. This column presents research based on such episodes from 181 nations during 1980-2007 and for a subset of 66 nations for the 1960-2007 period. If the pattern of the past few...