The current financial crisis followed the “great moderation,” according to which the world’s central banks had gotten so good at countercyclical policy that the business cycle no longer existed. As more and more economists and media people became convinced that the risk of recessions had...

This paper explores the disconnect of Federal Reserve data from index number theory. A consequence could have been the decreased systemic-risk misperceptions that contributed to excess risk taking prior to the housing bust. We find that most recessions in the past 50 years were preceded by more...

This study is the first attempt to investigate the relationship between firm’s leverage and systematic risk for seven European countries in relation to Shari’ah (Islamic) stock screening. This paper also aims to examine the shock transmission through the systematic risk and whether less debt...

Our study measures co-movements in Islamic and conventional equity markets, to discover contagion and to measure integration level. We apply wavelet decomposition to unveil the multi-horizon nature of co-movement. We find that the subprime crisis generates fundamental-based contagion for both...

This paper is the basis for the Guest Columnist article in the Tuesday, November 11, 2008 issue of the Kansas City Star newspaper's Business Weekly. Because of space limitations, the published newspaper column had to be shortened from the original and unfortunately did not include either of the...