The systematic risk of IPO's in the thinly traded Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) are estimated using Empirical Bayes Estimators (EBE). The sectors that the firms belong to, provide the priors. Comparisons are made with OLS estimators across different estimation and forecasting periods. Two...

Positivist philosophy provided the foundation for all social sciences as they were developed in the twentieth century. Now that positivism has been abandoned by philosophers, it is essential to replace methodology founded on positivist precepts. We show that the foundations of probability (both...

The hypothesis of structural stability that the regression coefficients do not change over time is central to all applications of linear regression models. It is rather surprising that existing theory as well as practice focuses on testing for structural change under homoskedasticity – that...

Monetary theory texts teach that governments create money and control monetary policy. Researchers at the Bank of England, IMF and many others show that fractional reserve banking allows the private sector to create money. Most money currently in existence is created by the private sector,...

To understand the functions of the financial institutions within a capitalist system, one must understand the spirit of capitalism. This paper argues that the spirit is the pursuit of wealth without any moral or social restraints. Financial institutions represent an embodiment of this spirit....

Logical Postivism is a disastrously wrong theory of knowledge. It rules out unobservables and uncertains from the domain of knowledge, and reduces knowledge to binaries of true or false. Most knowledge admits of grey shades, and multiple perspectives on the same issue bring substantial...

Stringency provides a global method for finite sample test comparison which is intuitive and provide sharp and clear cut answers. In contrast, typical methods yield inconclusive results because each test has some areas of weaknesses and strengths. This paper illustrates and explains the method...

According to the standard narrative, economics is an objective and scientific study of universal laws applicable to economic affairs of modern societies. After a brief introduction, the second section of the paper presents a counter-narrative which disputes this claim, and provides an...

According to the standard narrative, economics is an objective and scientific study of universal laws applicable to economic affairs of modern societies. After a brief introduction, the second section of the paper presents a counter-narrative which disputes this claim, and provides an...

According to western views, wealth is unambiguously good, and so human welfare is positive when wealth is in excess of needs, and negative if it is less. Islam has a substantially more sophisticated view of the relation between wealth and welfare. Excess wealth is a trial, which can bring great...