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This edition of Fanny Parkes' account of her travels in India provides valuable insight into middle-class British women's views on Indian life. It includes descriptions of the Zenana and Indian domestic life--subjects that are often omitted from male-authored travel texts.
The paper analyses existing country-level information on the relationship between the development of Islamic banking and financial inclusion. In Muslim countries—members of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC)—various indicators of financial inclusion tend to be lower, and the share of excluded individuals citing religious reasons for not using bank accounts is noticeably greater than in other countries; Islamic banking would therefore seem to be an effective avenue for financial inclusion. We found, however, that although physical access to financial services has grown more rapidly in the OIC countries, the use of these services has not increased as quickly. Moreover, regression analyis shows evidence of a positive link to credit to households and to firms for financing investment, but this empirical link remains tentative and relatively weak. The paper explores reasons that this might be the case and suggests several recommendations to enhance the ability of Islamic banking to promote financial inclusion.
Although theoretical models make distinct predictions about the relationship between financial sector development and income inequality, little empirical research has been conducted to compare their relative explanatory power. Clarke, Xu, and Zou examine the relation between financial intermediary development and income inequality in a panel data set of 91 countries for the period 1960-95. Their results provide evidence that inequality decreases as economies develop their financial intermediaries, consistent with the theoretical models in Galor and Zeira (1993) and Banerjee and Newman (1993). Moreover, consistent with the insight of Kuznets, the relation between the Gini coefficient and fina...
This new database of indicators of financial development and structure across countries and over time unites a range of indicators that measure the size, activity, and efficiency of financial intermediaries and markets.
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Development of emerging countries is often enabled through non-conventional finance. Indeed, the prohibition of interest and some other impediments require understanding conventional finance and Islamic finance, which both seek to be ethical and socially responsible. Thus, comparing and understanding the features of Islamic banking and conventional banking, in a globalized economy, is fundamental. This book explains the features of both conventional and Islamic banking within the current international context. It also provides a comparative view of banking governance, performance and risk-taking of both finance systems. It will be of particular use to practitioners and researchers, as well as to organizations and companies who are interested in conventional and Islamic banking.
Since the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are important for the economy, the Islamic banks and Islamic financial institutions must play a significant role in financing these businesses. Supporting SMEs are one of the objectives of religious institutions, thus the most important goal of Islamic banks and Islamic financial institutions is to contribute to the economic and social development of the society. This study aims to analyze the appropriateness of the Islamic financial system for SME finance.
The rapid growth of Islamic banking has attracted much attention lately in the economic literature. At the same time, a mature body of the literature has shown that financial development is broadly conducive to economic growth, which raises the question as to whether a similar conclusion holds for Islamic banking. Against this backdrop, this paper investigates the relationship between Islamic banking development and economic growth in a sample of low and middle income countries, using data over the period 1990-2010. The results show that, notwithstanding its relatively small size compared to the economy and the overall size of the financial system, Islamic banking is positively associated with economic growth even after controlling for various determinants, including the level of financial depth. The results are robust across across different specifications, sample composition and time periods.