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The purpose of this paper is to identify the main factors influencing the adoption of Islamic banking services in Tunisia.

The paper presents primary data collected by self-administered questionnaires involving a sample of 239 respondents located in Tunis city. Respondents were conventional banks’ customers who were actually non-users of Islamic banking. A descriptive statistical analysis was conducted to determine consumers’ awareness of Islamic banking.

The results revealed that Islamic bank reputation, relative advantage of Islamic banking and its compatibility with consumer religious beliefs, values, lifestyle and banking habits influence positively the intention to use it. However, it seems that perceived complexity and risk impact negatively the consumer intention to adopt this new financing system. The major finding of this study is that there is a general lack of consumer awareness about Islamic banking in Tunisia.

By identifying the drivers and inhibitors of Islamic banking acceptance among potential adopters, this research aim to help banks’ managers to target their actions and strategies more effectively.

This study is one of the earliest to be conducted on customers’ perception and willingness to adopt Islamic banking services in Tunisia. It makes a contribution to the Islamic banking adoption literature by extending and testing the diffusion innovation theory (Rogers, 2003) in the context of Tunisia.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of discretionary loan loss provisions (DLLPs) and non-performing loans (NPLs) on the liquidity risk of both Islamic banks (IBs) and conventional banks (CBs) before and after the global crisis that hit nations belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

This empirical study uses balanced panel data on 16 IBs and 58 CBs operating in the six Gulf Cooperation states covering 2000–2014. The data were obtained from the Bankscope database and the banks’ annual reports.

The results indicate that NPLs affect liquidity risk differently across the banks – specifically, there is a significant difference in the funding and managing of liquidity between the two bank types. The authors find that the influence of DLLPs does not vary across the banks in the overall analysis and before the crisis. This finding provides insights into the unique nature of banking risks in dual banking systems. The authors also find that after the crisis, the discretionary LLPs affected liquidity risk differently across the banks.

This study has several practical implications. First, the findings suggest that the Islamic Financial Services Board and other IBs regulators should reassess several regulations, principles and products in order to reduce their credit and liquidity risks. Second, the study emphasizes the need for banks to perform a careful assessment of the effects of their LLP policies. Finally, the findings are also relevant to bankers, as they provide empirical evidence on the effect of loan growth on bank liquidity, suggesting that bankers should improve their loan management.

First, this is the first study to examine discretionary LLPs, NPLs and liquidity risk in IBs; it is also the first comparative study between Islamic and CBs. Second, the study provides evidence on how the global crisis impacted the banking sector and identifies some of the main determinants of liquidity risk for both Islamic and CBs operating in GCC countries.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors influencing customer adoption toward takaful products in Pakistan.

The study used five attributes of diffusion innovation theory (DOI), namely, relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, observability and complexity. Furthermore, the authors introduced two additional constructs, namely, consumer awareness and religiosity to analyze the adoption behavior of customers. A total of 365 questionnaires were distributed among the participants of the study. The survey was conducted in the Karachi city where the respondents were the existing and potential users of takaful products. The theoretical model of DOI theory was tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings report that complexity has a negative impact on the adoption of takaful, whereas relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, observability, religiosity and consumer awareness shows a positive and significant influence.

It is a noteworthy point that past literature is quite limited to investigate the determinants of consumer intentions to adopt takaful products. Based on this argument, the authors build the study to provide a scope and coverage in the field of Islamic insurance. The authors also expect that the research will encourage and provide a venue for forthcoming studies to help policy makers and academicians in this emerging business.

This paper aims to examine whether the Sharīʿah indices outperform the conventional indices as evident from Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE). To achieve the objective, the study, first, assesses the risk adjusted returns of the Sharīʿah and conventional indices and compares the same between the two indices. Second, it examines the short-run and long-run associations between the two indices.

The DSEX Sharīʿah index and DSE broad index of the DSE are used as representatives of the Sharīʿah and conventional indices, respectively. The study uses monthly data for the period 2014–2018 and applies a number of techniques such as risk adjusted returns, Johansen’s cointegration test, vector error correction model, Granger causality test, forecast error variance decomposition and impulse response functions techniques.

The study reveals that albeit there is no significant difference in simple mean between the two indices, the Sharīʿah index outperforms its conventional counterpart based on the risk adjusted returns. The two indices are associated only in the long-run, while no causal relationship is spotted between them. The overall results show that the Sharīʿah index has dominance over the conventional index in Bangladesh.

The study could use more pairs of indices, including additional variables such as financial crisis and macroeconomic variables.

The study has important implications to investors, especially the religious Muslims and ethical ones, who are suggested to invest their funds in the Sharīʿah index without sacrificing returns, rather be monetarily more benefited. Moreover, the other investors can generate diversification benefits by adding both Sharīʿah and conventional indices in their portfolios in the short-run.

Unlike previous studies, this study endeavors to use a comprehensive methodology to conduct its analysis. Moreover, this is supposedly the first ever effort to conduct such a study in the context of Bangladesh.

Islamic finance is an alternative approach of financial intermediation based on risk-sharing and asset-backed operations, which evolved substantially in recent years in academic research raising the need for quantitative studies to address the intellectual development and scientific performance of this field. This study aims to provide quantitative statistics and comprehensive review of the key influential and intellectual structure of Islamic finance literature.

The authors apply the trending and cutting-edge quali-quantitative approach of bibliometric citation analysis. This study reviews 1,940 English studies and review papers published in scientific journals indexed by the Scopus database from 1983 to 2019. RStudio, VOSviewer and Excel’s software are used to analyze the collected data and apply the bibliometric tests.

The results identify the leading academic authors, journals, institutions and countries with relation to Islamic finance. The authors also propose six main research themes in this field, which are as follows: Islamic finance – fundamentals, growth and legitimacy; customer’s attitude and perception toward Islamic finance; accounting and social reporting of Islamic finance; performance and risk management of Islamic finance; Islamic financial markets; and efficiency of Islamic financial institutions. Lastly, the authors identify research gaps in the existing Islamic finance literature and present 24 future research directions.

The data in this study is confined only to the Scopus database of English papers and reviews. It also considers papers directly related to the field of Islamic finance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to address the literature of Islamic finance from a bibliometric aspect. The results of this study along with future research questions will help researchers and practitioners to further explore and stand on firm quantitative bases regarding the scientific development of Islamic finance.

This paper aims to investigate the behavior of volatility of Islamic equity indices toward fundamental risk factors. It focuses on the degree and structure of sensitivity to commodity price changes, global risk perception and term premium and whether crises and fragility periods have shaped the degree and structure of this sensitivity.

Quantile regression incorporating structural changes and GARCH-class model are used to establish how sensitivities are varying across volatility distribution depending on global events. The data are daily series of return indices, over the period spanning from January 1, 2001 until January 22, 2018.

The results show significant sensitivity to fundamental factors. The sensitivity is identified for different regional indices and intensified across quantiles. Speculation has shaped the structure of sensitivity at normal time, but correction holds at time of crisis. The results reveal that even if they share common features, commodities cannot be considered as homogeneous asset class. Indeed, the exact relationship cannot be observed at normal time in presence of speculation and information delay. However, at time of financial fragility and periods of crisis, the sensitivity is assigned with the plausible sign.

The obtained results present several policy implications as well for academics, portfolio managers and policy-makers. It opens new research paths for academic research, it helps in investment decisions, provides lessons for portfolio diversification, both for price discovery and hedging. The results serve as well to implement effective macroeconomic stabilization policies and even fiscal policies to counteract any inflationary impact of fundamental price changes on investors and Islamic banks.

This paper contributes to empirical literature by dealing with the sensitivity of Islamic equity indices to commodity prices and term premium along with the effect of investor sentiment. It pays attention to the financial stability of Islamic stock markets by investigating the sensitivity at normal time, during fragility periods and periods of crisis. It considers the financialization process of commodity markets and includes the term premium to control for rational expectations on term structure of interest rates and the VIX (Volatility index) as global risk perception to control for safety and risk aversion.

The emergence of new digital technologies in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution presents a turning point that could change the fate of the traditional ways of designing, build and manage asset data. Disruptive technologies such as Blockchain and theInternet of things (IoT) are one of the main pillars that are driving this revolution. The integration of decentralised networks and automated workflows has the potential to become a pivotal factor in construction projects, especially in supply chain ecosystems within the off-site manufacturing field. Obstacles related to fragmented information, interoperability, transparency and “big data” management are the main drivers for change that the industry needs to address. Whilst organisations and users can automate workflows and processes by utilising IoT technology to transfer data without human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction, the interaction, storage and management of the data generated are not safe or reliable.

The approach outlined in this paper addresses the challenges that IoT and centralised networks present. Blockchain, a peer-to-peer distributed database, offers the possibility to support and maintain the asset information without interruptions in all the stages of the life cycle. The synergy between these technologies, along with other techniques, methods and platforms (such as building information modeling (BIM)), based on a single environment, will support information traceability from the strategic definition to end of life.

The framework of this study presents an excellent opportunity to apply new workflows and processes with the application of new technologies and protocols. It benefits from a well-established platform such as BIM to enable the coordination and management of digital assets as well as giving illustration and collaboration to the supply chain members. IoT and Blockchain are the other layers that work together with the third layer (BIM). This framework proposed the use of these platforms to ensure the information traceability of physical and digital assets, data automation and information management, in a dynamic supply chain ecosystem, bringing efficiency and transparency to stakeholders and users.

This study provides an exploratory framework to be used by the supply chain members in offsite manufacturing, and the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry in general, to track asset information throughout their entire life cycle securely and transparently.

This paper contributes to the knowledge of IoT, Blockchain technology and BIM use in offsite manufacturing under the AEC industry. It provides a basis for future research by professionals, experts and academics regarding these technologies and their workflows.

This paper aims to identify various macroeconomic variables that affect the stock market performance of developed and emerging economies. It also investigates the effect of these factors on the stock markets of both economies. The impact of these variables on broad market indices and sectoral indices is investigated and compared too.

The publications for the study were retrieved from databases such as Emerald Insight, EBSCO, ScienceDirect and JSTOR using the keywords “Macroeconomic variables” and “Stock market” or “Stock market performance.” The result demonstrated a growing corpus of scholarly work in the domain of stock market. The study was carried out separately for each macroeconomic indicator. Given a large number of articles under consideration, the authors began by reading the titles and abstracts of all publications to identify those that were relevant. The papers are evaluated in Excel and the articles for review range from 1972 to 2021.

The authors found that gross domestic product (GDP), FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) and FII (Foreign Institutional Investment) have a positive effect on both emerging and developed economies’ stock market while gold price has a negative effect. Interest rates had a negative impact on both economies except for a few developing countries. The relationship with oil prices was positive for oil exporting countries while negative for oil importing countries. Inflation, money supply and GDP are the macroeconomic variables that have the same effect on sectoral indices as they do on broad market indices. The impact was sector-specific for the remaining variables.

This paper gives an overview of relation and effect covering variety of macroeconomic variables and stock market indices. Still, there is a scope for further research to analyze the effect on thematic, strategy and sectoral indices. A longer time horizon with new variables, such as bank deposit growth rate, nonperforming assets of banks, consumer confidence index and investor sentiment, can be studied using high-frequency data. This research may help stakeholders adopt and manage their policies during a crisis or economic slump.

This study will assist investors, researchers and educators in the fields of economics and finance in understanding how macroeconomic factors affect the stock market. Furthermore, this study can guide in portfolio diversification strategy across multiple sectors by examining the impact of macroeconomic factors specific to sectoral indices. This paper provides insight into society and researchers since it integrates a number of macroeconomic variables and their interaction with the stock market. It may also help pension funds and mutual fund firms to hedge their funds and allocate equity portfolios.

With respect to India, this study looked at new macroeconomic variables and sectors. It contrasted the impact of these variables in developed and developing economies. The effect of broad and sectoral stock indexes was also investigated and compared. The authors examined how these variables responded during crisis and economic downturns by using articles from a longer time frame. This research also looked into how changing the frequency of data for the variables altered stock performance. This paper emphasized the need for more research into thematic, strategy and broad market indices, such as small-cap and mid-cap indices.

The Global recession of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in the postworld war economic history that brought in severe disruptions in global investments and capital flows. Not surprisingly, research interest in the field of market integration has considerably increased over the last decade. This paper analyses the dynamics of price integration among Asian financial markets during the postfinancial crisis period.

We employ an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration and a Granger Causality/Block Exogeniety test from a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) on monthly stock index data of five leading Asian economies from April 2009 to March 2020.

The cointegration results could not produce any conclusive evidence of long-run relations between stock markets. There exists weak price convergence among markets, and financial integration is partial and in an imperfect form.

Stock price performance in China is closely “coupled” with that in India, but both markets appear to be the short-run predictors of Asian stock returns. The research uses only the benchmark stock indices of the selected economies. Consideration of mid-cap and small-cap segments where foreign investments are significant today can validate the findings further.

The asymmetric pattern of price behavior of Asian markets has important implications for the pricing efficiency of national markets and offers arbitrage potentials for global investors to optimize returns through market diversifications on a long-term perspective. The finding definitely will be a great help to investors who are potentially interested in a trading strategy that offers greater returns with limited exposure to market risks.

Compared with previous studies, the research uses the most recent data of leading Asian markets and applies the robust method of ARDL Bounds testing approach that allows us to understand better if the economic recoveries and advancement have had an effect on market coupling and stock price transmissions.

In this study, the authors evaluate seven calendar anomalies’–the day of the week, weekend, the month of the year, January, the turn of the month (TOM), Ramadan and Eid festivals–effects in both the conventional and Islamic stock indices of Bangladesh. Also, the authors examine whether these anomalies differ between the two indices.

The authors select the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) Broad Index (DSEX) and the DSEX Shariah Index (DSES) of the DSE as representatives of the conventional and Islamic stock indices respectively. To carry out the investigation, the authors employ the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) typed models from January 25, 2011, to March 25, 2020.

The study’s results indicate the presence of all these calendar anomalies in either conventional or Islamic indices or both, except for the Ramadan effect. Some significant differences in the anomalies between the two indices (excluding the Ramadan effect) are detected in both return and volatility, with the differences being somewhat more pronounced in volatility. The existence of these calendar anomalies argues against the efficient market hypothesis of the stock markets of Bangladesh.

The study’s results can benefit investors and portfolio managers to comprehend different market anomalies and make investment strategies to beat the market for abnormal gains. Foreign investors can also be benefited from cross-border diversifications with DSE.

To the authors’ knowledge, first the calendar anomalies in the context of both conventional and Islamic stock indices for comparison purposes are evaluated, which is the novel contribution of this study. Unlike previous studies, the authors have explored seven calendar anomalies in the Bangladesh stock market's context with different indices and data sets. Importantly, no study in Bangladesh has analyzed calendar anomalies as comprehensively as the authors’.