The present paper measured the efficiency of Islamic banks during economic troubles of 2006-2009 to address the question if Islamic banks were efficient and stable. This paper addresses this question by measuring efficiency through employing the on-parametric technique, Data Envelopment Analysis...

This article is divided into four sections. In the first one, we describe the origin and history of investment banking, with particular focus on the economic conditions that led to its birth in the United States. The second part considers those products offered by investments banks which are...

This paper applies a four-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach proposed by Fried et al. (1999) to measure the operational environment-adjusted efficiency of sixty mutual funds in Taiwan from 2006 to 2010. We adopt the approach for adjusting negative output as suggested by Lovell and...

This paper applies a four-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach proposed by Fried et al. (1999) to measure the operational environment-adjusted efficiency of sixty mutual funds in Taiwan from 2006 to 2010. We adopt the approach for adjusting negative output as suggested by Lovell and...

The paper aims to identify the roots and causes of the failure of existing regional economic integration efforts in the Western Balkans and the poor prospects for similar attempts in the future. Existing classical political and economic approaches are enriched by identifying a framework of...

This paper offers a specific analysis of speculation bubbles in the economic history of the world, and then tries to identify the causes and effects of the speculation bubble on the real estate market in the USA, which was the main cause of the subprime crisis. The first part of the paper aims...

The recent crisis of 2008 has revealed several challenges for the economic science, sparking a considerable amount of debate regarding the profession of economists and the role of macroeconomics and monetary policies. The first question that arose was why there was a lack of anticipation of the...

The ongoing globalisation process has not put an end to international financial crises. On the contrary, it seems to have contributed to their appearance and to accentuating their degrees of unpredictability. In this context, the main objective of the present study is to establish whether the...

The goal of this paper is to present an original and simple analysis aimed to understand why investing in capital markets can be very dangerous for "naive investors". Stock markets display often exploding volatility. They are characterized by instability and subject to external shocks. If...

That the United States and the world experienced a major financial crisis and is still struggling to recover comes as no surprise to most. Less well known is the fact that over 400 commercial banks and thrifts have failed in the U.S. since 2008. This paper attempts to understand why so many...