Islamic and conventional investment funds have the same purpose. However, unlike conventional funds, Islamic funds offer different investment contracts and have to invest in accordance with a set of selection rules. This dissertation focuses on developing theoretical and empirical analysis...

Growth in developing Asia will need to rely more on improvements in productivity growth and less on capital deepening. Although there is no single reform path to spur productivity growth, financial system deepening is central to a more efficient allocation of capital across sectors and can...

• This paper provides a specific proposal to limit the financial activities that are covered and thus subsidized by the government safety net in order to protect the financial system and the economy. The U.S. safety net, which consists of central bank loans to solvent but liquidity strained...

We examine the interaction between the legal protection of investors, corporate governance within firms, institutional development between countries, and investable premia in emerging markets. In a multi country setting and using a novel dataset we find that better-governed firms experience...

The Kosovo’s Financial Sector is one of the newest financial sectors in Eastern Europe whose developments began in early 2000. Kosovo's banking sector consists of 8 privately owned commercial banks, the insurance companies which make up 5% of total financial sector assets by 10 insurance...

Using a newly-constructed data set on Israeli Initial Public Offering (IPO) firms in the 1990s, we study costs and benefits of universal banking. We find that a firm whose equity was underwritten by a bank-affiliated underwriter, when the same bank was also a large creditor of the firm in the...

This paper examines the investment behavior of Indian mutual fund industry. Since the majority of investors who invest in mutual funds are salaried individuals or individuals that own SMEs, the Indian Mutual Fund industry should have a long term investment horizon. However, the data from all...

The Venture capital (VC) industry in India is of recent origin. However, the average investment value of each deal in India have grown from $3.85 million in 2000 to $7.89 million in 2001.These developments together with the recent steps taken by government to promote venture capitalism in India...

Do rating models embody correctly the impact of macroeconomic variables on debtors’ solvency, determining a lag in downgrading? In pre-crisis periods, when interest rates increases are recorded as well as decreases in real growth rates, rating assessments fail to register risk increases in...

This paper assesses the sensitivity of the risk buffers, or capital requirements, of central counterparties clearing over-the-counter derivatives trades to a range of model inputs. It finds capital requirements to be highly sensitive to whether key model parameters are calibrated on a...