Call for Papers: Conference on Finance and Development in Muslim Economies

Conference on

FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT IN MUSLIM ECONOMIES
Date of Conference: September 15, 2014
Venue: Bangor University, North Wales, United Kingdom
Special Issue of Journal of Financial Services Research (JFSR)

A conference on Finance & Development in Islamic Economies will be held at Bangor Business School, Bangor University on September 15 2014, in collaboration with Islamic Research Training Institute (IRTI) of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB). Selected papers will be invited for submission for a possible special issue of the JFSR. Submission fees for these papers will be waived. Papers will go through the regular JFSR review process.

CONFERENCE SCOPE

Muslim countries lag far behind other nations in terms of economic development. The total GNP of the fifty-seven Muslim countries is only 8 percent of the world GNP, while their total population is more than 1.3 billion and constitutes about 21 percent of the world population. Identically poor results are revealed from an analysis of the Human Development Index (HDI), as defined in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Out of fifty-seven Muslim countries, twenty-one received low scores, thirty-one countries secured medium scores and only five Muslim countries attained high scores on the HDI.

Financial systems play a vital role in advancing intermediation by mitigating market frictions, facilitating efficient investment decisions, allocating scarce capital and transmitting financial transactions. This in turn stimulates capital accumulation decisions and technological innovation that are crucial in delineating a nation’s long term economic path.

The purpose of the conference will be to serve as a forum to exchange ideas on advancing financial development in the Muslim world. This is because financial innovations yield efficient organizational forms, allowing them to deliver products demanded by their customers at the lowest price by mitigating transaction costs. This result is derived from the well-known work of Nobel prize winner Merton H Miller, whose work connected organizational forms with underlying capital structure. We aim to encourage studies investigating the financial (or the Sharī'ah) perspective underlying the following broad areas:

I. Finance Theory and Development (involving critical investigations of religious injunctions). 

II. Financial Instruments and Markets in Emerging Economies (incorporating critical analysis of the efficiency, and employability, of classical Islamic financial contracts; and structuring financial facilities to cater for a range of applications from fragile-free fixed income securities to venture capital instruments).

III. Financial Management of Emerging Economies (including capital structure, dividend policy and asset pricing).

IV. Financial Institutions and Growth (encompassing governance and performance of financial intermediaries; regulation of financial intermediaries; empirical studies on risk, efficiency and performance of financial intermediaries; financial cooperative; micro-finance activities).

V. Financial Infrastructure of Emerging Islamic Financial Markets (covering topics including: pension fund structures; modernizing social safety nets; structuring shadow banks; and financial architecture).

CONFERENCE ORGANISERS AND CO-EDITORS OF JFSR SPECIAL ISSUE

M. Shahid Ebrahim (Bangor University)

Turkhan Ali Abdul Manap (Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Dev. Bank)
Phil Molyneux (Bangor University)
M. Azmi Omar (Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank)
Steven Ongena (University of Zurich)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Authors are requested to submit their paper(s) in a two-file format to m.s.ebrahim@bangor.ac.uk. These two files should be either in MS Word or PDF and should include: (i) a title page with names and affiliations of author(s) along with contact details of corresponding author; and (ii) an anonymous (blind) copy of the full paper with abstract, problem statement (objectives of the study), research methods, findings and significance/ contributions of the study. Paper submitted to the conference must be original that has not been published. All papers must be written in English. All submitted papers will be subjected to blind review.

All papers should be on A4-size paper with 1 inch margin on all sides. The papers should not exceed 40 double-spaced (or equivalent) pages in Times New Roman with a font size of 12.

Selected papers from those accepted will be invited for submission to a possible special issue of the JFSR. Papers will be selected based on the quality and on the condition that at least one of the authors is registered for the conference.

Important Deadlines

Paper Submission: May 31, 2014

Acceptance Notification: June 15, 2014

Registration Deadline: July 31, 2014.

CONTACT US

In case of questions regarding submission, registration, payment, sponsorship, and other matters, please feel free to contact us at the address given below:

Correspondence Address:

Professor M. Shahid Ebrahim

Bangor Business School
Bangor University
Hen Goleg, College Road
Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2NB.
United Kingdom

E-mail:  m.s.ebrahim@bangor.ac.uk

Telephone: +44 (0) 1248 38 8181
Fax: +44 (0) 1248 38 3228

Publication date: 22 January 2014