Search results

Improving the energy efficiency of the existing residential building stock has been identified as a key policy aim in many countries. The purpose of this paper is to review the extant literature on investment decisions in domestic energy efficiency and presents a model that is both grounded in microeconomic theory and empirically tractable.

This study develops a modified and extended version of an existing microeconomic model to embed the retrofit investment decision in a residential property market context, taking into account tenants’ willingness to pay and cost-reducing synergies. A simple empirical test of the link between energy efficiency measures and housing market dynamics is then conducted.

The empirical data analysis for England indicates that where house prices are low, energy efficiency measures tend to increase the value of a house more in relative terms compared to higher-priced regions. Second, where housing markets are tight, landlords and sellers will be successful even without investing in energy efficiency measures. Third, where wages and incomes are low, the potential gains from energy savings make up a larger proportion of those incomes compared to more affluent regions. This, in turn, acts as a further incentive for an energy retrofit. Finally, the UK government has been operating a subsidy scheme which allows all households below a certain income threshold to have certain energy efficiency measures carried out for free. In regions, where a larger proportion of households are eligible for these subsidies,the authors also expect a larger uptake.

While the financial metrics of retrofit measures are by now well understood, most of the existing studies tend to view these investments in isolation, not as part of a larger bundle of considerations by landlords and owners of how energy retrofits might influence a property’s rent, price and appreciation rate. In this paper, the authors argue that establishing this link is crucial for a better understanding of the retrofit investment decision.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of urbanization on energy consumption, including economic growth, globalization and “foreign direct investment (FDI)” inflow as control variables.

This study uses yearly panel data from 19071 to 2018 on five selected South Asian economies. It applies the “pooled mean group (PMG)” estimator and the “Dumitrescu-Hurlin (D-H)” panel causality test.

The PMG estimators reveal that urbanization causes energy consumption negatively in the long run because of an unusual and messy urbanization process. At the same time, it has no impact on the latter in the short run. Per capita income has both long- and short-run positive influences on energy use. Globalization causes energy consumption positively in the long run but does not affect it in the short run. FDI inflow has a strong positive impact on energy use in the long run and adverse effects in the short run. The Dumitrescu–Hurlin causality test reveals feedback relationships between “urbanization and energy consumption,” “globalization and energy consumption” and one-way causation from “per capita income to energy consumption.” It validates the findings of the PMG estimators.

The results of this study indicate that South Asia may focus on enhancing the availability of energy in the region and producing more renewable energy to add to its energy portfolio to meet growing energy demand, particularly among urban dwellers. Moreover, they should raise their real per capita incomes and augment the standard of living of low-income city dwellers to make urbanization more serviceable and comfortable.

This study is original. As far as the author is aware, this is a maiden attempt to investigate urbanization's effects on energy usage in South Asia in the preview of globalization and FDI.

With the increasing presence of Islamic banking to Nigeria’s banking space and its relative success in the predominantly Muslim Northern region, the question of its prospect in the predominantly non-Muslim southeastern Nigeria becomes legitimate and urgent. Thus, the purpose of this study is to predict the prospect of Islamic banking in Southeast Nigeria.

Three research questions were posed to address this objective. First, is there significant relationship between knowledge of Islamic banking concept and its prospects in Southeast Nigeria? Second, is there significant relationship between the relative advantage (principles) of Islamic banking concept and its prospects in Southeast Nigeria? Third, is there significant relationship between customers’ religion and prospects of Islamic banking concept in Southeast Nigeria? The study analyses using Pearson correlation, factor analysis with regression, t-test and ANOVA.

Knowledge of Islamic banking and prospects of Islamic banking show weak positive relationship and very low mean. In other words, Islamic banking is not well-known; therefore, the prospects of Islamic banking slightly depend on knowledge about Islamic banking. Furthermore, the relationship between Islamic principles and prospects of Islamic banking shows only 5 per cent impact, which means that factors other than Islamic principle will drive the prospects of Islamic banking in Southeast Nigeria. Two factors loading from factor analysis are “profit sharing” and “forbid of some business activities”. Finally, profit sharing influences the prospects of Islamic banking, while prospects of Islamic banking will be impeded by customers’ religion.

The study was conducted in Southeast Nigeria which contains a small size of sample; the research adopted convenient sampling technique and a limited number of measures in the model. Nevertheless, the study provides new information about an emerging Islamic market.

Most previous studies concentrated on product attributes of innovation adoption or patronage. But this current study inculcated the consumers' religion, as it affects the prospects of Islamic banking in Southeast Nigeria. .

The purpose of this paper is to examine the adoption of Islamic finance products (murabaha, musharakah, mudarabah, salam, ijara, istisna and Qard Hassan) by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Cameroon, a non-Islamic Sub-Saharan African country.

It used primary data collected from a cross-section of 1,358 SMEs in eight regions of Cameroon using self-administered structured questionnaires. To facilitate the analyses and interpretation, these products are grouped into four groups based on certain characteristics. A multivariate probit model is estimated to take into account the interaction between these different Islamic finance products.

This study revealed that the desire to comply with Sharia law, awareness, attitude and intention were critical determinants of the decision to adopt Islamic finance products by Cameroonian SMEs. The least influential factors were perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, enterprise characteristics (size, age and location) and socio-demographic characteristics of the entrepreneur (gender, age and marital status). The extension of the multivariate approach permitted us to compute for predicted probabilities which revealed that there exists a synergy effect between the different Islamic finance products. That is, Cameroonian SMEs combine different Islamic finance products at the same time based on their needs. This is especially the case between the partnership-based products (musharakah and mudarabah) and manufacture/rent products (istisna and ijara).

Policymakers are encouraged to develop stakeholder-oriented strategies to promote effective consumer education in Islamic finance products which will boost awareness. Also, Islamic finance institutions should endeavor to develop innovative financial products that are Sharia-compliant and economically beneficial to the individual and business needs of SMEs. Moreover, policymakers and management of Islamic finance institutions should ensure the putting in place of effective governance structures to guide Islamic finance operations. Finally, policymakers should endeavor to take into account the possible synergy between the different Islamic finance products in their quest to develop this activity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that analyses the adoption of different Islamic finance products while taking into account the possible synergy that exists between these products.