This paper examines the feasibility and economic benefits of stock exchanges alliances among OIC countries. Despite common Islamic culture, OIC local capital market conditions are heterogeneous depending on legal jurisdictions, income level and the maturity of stock market development....

This paper examines the performance of seven indexes chosen from the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index (DJIM) vis-à-vis their non-Islamic counterparts using a variety of measures such as Sharpe, Treynor, Jensen and Fama’s selectivity, net selectivity and diversification. Second, we examine the...

This paper investigates the impact of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) on the insurance industries of developed countries. We find that the insurance industries of most of the developed countries in our sample have significant negative spillover effects from the GLBA. Further, we find that the...

This paper reexamines the determinants of credit default swaps (CDS) spreads in the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific markets with a new data set using linear regressions. These determinants are categorized into two groups: firm level and macroeconomic variables. We also include two non-traditional...

Existing literature has focused attention on the impact of Basel I and similar capital requirement regulations on developed countries where such regulations were found to be effective in increasing capital ratios and reducing portfolio credit risk of commercial banks. In the present study, we...

In this study, we analyze financial preparation for retirement. Specifically, probit analysis was conducted using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances to compare and contrast variables affecting retirement preparation between men and women aged thirty to thirty-nine. We specifically analyze...

This paper investigates the dynamic and the determinants of banking industry efficiency in Latin America. Allocative, technical, pure technical and scale efficiencies are calculated and analyzed in each country. We find that Latin American bank managers have been using resources efficiently, but...

Despite recent extreme fluctuations of the Middle East and North African (MENA) stock markets, we do not find strong evidence of rational speculative bubbles in the perspective of both domestic and U.S.-based investors. Fractional integration tests built on ARFIMA models do not support the...

Mutual fund managers face increasing competition and have incentives to quickly reallocate their portfolios in order to achieve the best risk-adjusted return. However, portfolio allocation is costly, as trading, administrative, and information costs all lower returns after management fees....

This study provides new evidence on the role of financial development in accounting for economic growth. To derive feasible policy implications, we estimate not only unbalanced panel regressions with period fixed effects, but also variance decompositions of annual GDP growth rates to examine...