The modern literature on city formation and development, for example the New Economic Geography literature, has studied the agglomeration of agents in size or mass. We investigate agglomeration in sorting or by type of worker, that implies agglomeration in size when worker populations differ by...

This brief paper updates the factual information provided in an earlier paper of the author “Fifty years of Malaysian economic development: policies and achievements” of 2007 and modifies its argument at several places.

Abstract This paper examines the debate on the meaning of sustainable development and the policy implications of different approaches from an Islamic perspective. It integrates mainstream and Islamic positions on the subject and argues that to whatever definition of sustainable development one...

Today widespread poverty is one of the major problems of mankind and its alleviation one of her major agendas. In recent years microfinance has emerged as an important instrument to relieve poverty in the developing countries. Today there are more than 7000 micro lending institutions providing...

This rejoinder refutes the comments of Mohamed Ariff and Faiz Mohammad on the author’s article: The 1997-98 Financial Crisis in Malaysia: Causes, Response, and Results”, published in the Islamic Economic Studies, Vol. 9 No. 2, 2002. My basic difference with the reviewers is this: they...

This paper shows that the recent euphoria in Malaysia to introduce Gold Dinar as money in Muslim countries is devoid of reason. Despite the destabilizing potential of the current monetary arrangements in the world, the return to gold is neither desired nor practicable. The Denarists, as some...

This paper provides an appraisal of some of the researches conducted in recent years for evaluating the efficiency of Islamic banks. It is restricted to studies using parametric (SFA) and non-parametric (DEA) models. It finds that they leave much to be desired and the conclusions they arrive at...

This paper examines the reasons for a widening gap between the conventional theory and current practice of Islamic banks. It finds fault at both the ends. ’No risk, no gain’ is inadequate as a general principle for organizing Islamic finance. It is also not always valid to say that Islam is...

This paper presents a difference in the comparative statics of general equilibrium models with land when there are finitely many agents, and when there is a continuum of agents. Restricting attention to quasi-linear and Cobb-Douglas utility, it is shown that with finitely many agents, an...

How is long run economic growth related to the diversity of knowledge? We formulate and study a microeconomic model of knowledge creation, through the interactions among a group of heterogeneous R & D workers, embedded in a growth model to address this question. Income to these workers accrues...