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This case serves as a useful backdrop for discussing a few important conceptual frameworks in the field of finance. The dilemmas are still evolving for Sharīʿah-compliant asset management company (AMC); i.e. Al Meezan, and may seem complex to the students – particularly in the Pakistan’s financial structure – but framing the discussion from a market perspective ought to help the students of finance.

This case study focuses on Al Meezan Investment Management Limited (Al Meezan) journey since inception. Al Meezan is a full-fledged Sharīʿah-compliant AMC and one of the major players in the mutual funds industry of Pakistan. Al Meezan offers a comprehensive range of Sharīʿah-compliant investment solutions especially designed to meet the financial goals of their existing and potential clients. The case study covers all the key events before the inception of Al Meezan, from late 1990s till March 2020. The case is based on interview with chief executive officer (CEO) (the protagonist) of Al Meezan. The case also covers various challenges faced by Mohammad Shoaib, CEO and his senior team, to make Al Meezan a vibrant institution offering Islamic financial services.

This case is aimed at undergraduate students in their final year (i.e. taking electives in the field of Finance/Islamic Finance) or graduate students majoring in Finance/Islamic Finance.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS1: Accounting and Finance.

This study aims to highlight the issues encountered by Islamic Banking Institutions (IBIs) while financing the agriculture sector and explore the feasibility of Muzara’ah (crop sharing contract on partnership basis) model based on the concept of revolving credit as an alternative to current models.

To validate the proposed model and gauge the feasibility of Muzara’ah contract, a qualitative research method is applied based on 10 in-depth interviews with qualified industry experts and practitioners. These interviewees are selected following the purposive sampling method, and they belong to Sharīʿah board members of banking institutions, banking industry professionals engaged in agriculture lending, financial regulators (i.e. central bank personnel) and the farming community. Thematic analysis was applied to analyze the data.

The findings of this study document that Muzara’ah can be a useful alternative/solution for the growth of agriculture sector portfolio of financial institutions. Muzara’ah is cost-effective than other Islamic products, including Salam (a kind of sale in which payment is made on the spot while the delivery of the goods is deferred), and carries the features of revolving credit as offered by conventional banks/counterparts.

The main limitation of the study is that only 10 in-depth interviews are conducted.

The application of the Sharīʿah compliant Muzara’ah model based on the concept of revolving credit could help increase agricultural productivity and revenues and reduce poverty and food insecurity. The research will help IBIs to develop products on the concept of Muzara’ah for farmers and other sectors of the agriculture industry.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, Muzara’ah contract is not offered by formal banking institutions in Pakistan. Hence, the findings contribute to the existing literature and facilitate the policymakers and practitioners in implementing this financial product for the growth of the agriculture sector.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the announcement and implementation of short sales and margin trading regulation affects Chinese stock returns and trading volume. On 31 March 2010, the Chinese regulators launched a pilot programme, allowing short sales and margin trading for 50 Shanghai Stock Exchange and 40 Shenzhen Stock Exchange stocks.

This paper uses an event study approach to compare market model abnormal returns (ARs) of the pilot firms with two distinct matched firm samples. A volume event study is also conducted to examine abnormal trading activity surrounding the key events in the pilot stocks.

Negative ARs follow both the announcement and implementation of short selling and margin trading. This suggests the negative impact of short sales dominates the positive impact of margin trading on an average. Volume also declines, which is consistent with uninformed investors’ seeking to avoid trading against informed traders.

The paper appears to be the first to address the impact of both the announcement and implementation of short selling and margin trading rule changes on returns and liquidity using individual stock data.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the market reaction to the decision made by the management of the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) to impose a price floor that resulted in trading curbs in 2008. The paper analyzes if regulatory intervention helped in restoring investor confidence.

The paper examines the effect of enforcement of a price floor and trading curbs by splitting the time period studied into two periods: pre-floor and post-floor period. The parametric t-statistics and non-parametric Mann-Whitney test are used to compare the abnormal returns (ARs), abnormal trading volume, bid-ask spread, Amihud illiquidity ratio, and price volatility between the two periods. Event study was conducted to observe the behavior of market returns surrounding market-wide price floor. Finally, multivariate regression analysis was also applied by controlling for factors that might influence valuation, liquidity, and volatility. The standard errors have been corrected for cross-sectional clustering due to market-wide restrictions.

The study found an adverse impact of price freeze and trading curb in the KSE, following the relaxation of floor (resumption of active trading). First, the price of securities (or ARs) significantly declined following the relaxation of the price freeze. Second, the market liquidity deteriorated following the relaxation of the price floor. Third, the price volatility increased in the post-floor period. It seems that the decision made by the KSE’s board to implement lower cap on prices for an extended period was ineffective.

Market intervention by regulators to bring calm in the financial markets have negative consequences across the globe. The results presented in this paper suggest that implementing price floor brought inefficiency in the market and prevented firms from raising capital to finance their future investments. The author believe this study will add to the knowledge base of regulatory intervention and its impact on the performance of financial markets.

There is no empirical evidence on the impact of price limits on volatility in emerging markets. The author selected Pakistan as a case study, where we particularly focus upon impact of the enforcement of a price floor around the peak of Global Financial Crisis (or market intervention) in Pakistan. This study also documents the effect of trading curb on liquidity and volatility in an emerging market, given that a majority of research on trading halt/price limits is based on developed markets.

This study aims to examine the relationship between financial development (FD), financial risk, green finance and innovation related to carbon emissions in the G7 economies.

This quantitative study examines the roles that financial development [FD: Domestic credit to private sector by banks as percentage of gross domestic product (GDP)], economic growth (GDP: Constant US$ 2015), financial risk index (FRI), green finance (GFIN: Renewable energy public research development and demonstration (RD&D) budget as percentage of total RD&D budget), development of environment-related technologies (DERTI: percentage of all technologies) and human capital (HCI: index) have on the environmental quality of developed economies. Based on panel data, the study uses a novel approach method of moments quantile regression as a main method to tackle the issue of cross-sectional dependency, slope heterogeneity and nonnormality of the data.

The study confirms that increasing economic development increases emissions and negatively impacts the environment. However, efficient resource allocation, improved financial systems, and green innovation are likely to contribute to emission mitigation and the overall development of a sustainable viable economy. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of risk management in financial systems for future emissions prevention.

The study uses a reliable estimation procedure, which extends the discussion on climate policy from a COP-27 perspective and offers practical implications for policymakers in developing more effective emission mitigation strategies.

The study offers policy suggestions for a sustainable economy, focusing on both COP-27 and the G7 countries. Recommendations include implementing carbon pricing, developing carbon capture and storage technologies, investing in renewables and energy efficiency and introducing financial instruments for emission mitigation. From a COP-27 standpoint, the G7 should prioritize transitioning to low-carbon economies and supporting developing nations in their sustainability efforts to address the pressing challenges of climate change and global warming.

In comparison to the literature, this study examines the importance of financial risk for G7 economies in promoting a sustainable environment. More specifically, in the context of FD and national income with carbon emissions, previous researchers have disregarded the importance of green innovation and human capital, so the current study fills the gap in the literature related to G7 economies by exploring the link between the identified variables related to carbon emissions.

While science has researched the impact of air pollution on human health, the economic dimension of it has been less researched so far. Renewable energy consumption is an important factor in determining the level of life expectancy and reducing health expenditure. Thus, this study aims to investigate the impact of renewable energy, carbon emissions, health expenditure and urbanization on life expectancy in G-7 countries over the period of 2000–2019.

This study has adopted a novel Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR). Furthermore, as a robustness check for MMQR, the fully modified ordinary least square, dynamic ordinary least squares and fixed effect ordinary least square estimators have been used.

The results indicated that renewable energy consumption, health expenditure and urbanization lead to an increase in life expectancy across all quantiles (5th to 95th), whereas higher carbon dioxide emissions reduce life expectancy at birth across all the quantiles (5th to 95th).

The empirical findings conclude that governments should recognize their potential in renewable energy sources and devise policies such as tax-related regulations, or relevant incentives to encourage further investments in this field.

This paper in comparison to the other research studies used MMQR to investigate the impact of factors affecting life expectancy. Also, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, so far no study has investigated the impact of renewable energy on life expectancy in G-7 countries.

Protecting the planet from unprecedented environmental crises in the presence of economic expansion has become a critical global concern. Hence, the current study aims to analyze the impact of nations’ green behaviors that they adopt to protect the planet while promoting economic expansion. Additionally, the study explores the moderating role of ES in the nexus of GI and green growth.

Data were collected over a period of 1990–2019. Analysis was conducted by employing panel data analysis techniques and various robustness tests, including multicollinearity, serial correlation and spatial correlation, for a sample of 33 nations by categorizing in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) economies as well as in the pre- and post-financial crisis period.

Analysis of the composite sample reveals a significant positive impact of green investments and green innovations on green growth. Further analysis reveals a significant moderating role of environmental policy stringency in OECD economies, especially in the pre-financial crisis period. The interaction slope shows that the contribution of green innovations to green growth is positive at high and medium levels of ES. However, in the case of BRICS economies, this moderating role is insignificant.

Study findings signify the importance of stakeholder environment and urge governments to prioritize funds for sectors practicing environmentally friendly behaviors to foster green growth and stresses for more effective infrastructure of policy implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

The relationship of green investments, innovations and green growth has been established largely in existing literature; however, there is a dearth of studies to analyze the moderating role of ES. Hence the current study investigates this moderating role in the nexus of nations’ green behavior and green growth in different stakeholder environments and contexts.

The primary purpose is to investigate the dynamic relationships among urbanization, energy use and environmental pollution in the context of India from 1971 to 2018. The paper also examines the validity of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the present Indian context.

The study uses a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag cointegration test (Shin et al., 2014) to investigate the dynamic relationship among the mentioned variables. The Wald test is also used to statistically check the presence of asymmetry. Additionally, the VECM test is applied to examine the causality among the variables.

This study documents that urbanization in India is good for environment in the long run, whereas energy consumption is bad for the environment. It also finds that positive and negative shocks of energy and urbanization exert asymmetric impacts on ecological footprint. Furthermore, the results could not validate the EKC hypothesis for India.

The outcome of the study suggests designing an environmental policy which considers the nonlinearity of the investigated relationships and bearing in mind the use of comprehensive indicator like ecological footprint is equally important to address the wide-ranging problem of the environment. Policy reorientation towards the production and consumption of green energy, investment in research and development, and use of efficient technology is very crucial to achieve sustainable outcomes in the long run.

In this study, the researchers use the ‘ecological footprint’ variable to obtain a more accurate and comprehensive assessment of environmental deterioration. The mentioned dynamic relationships are investigated using an improved methodology of the NARDL model, which assumes the asymmetric impact of the explanatory variables on the response variable. The novelty of this study lies in examining the non-linear impact of urbanization and energy on ecological footprint which is inadequately addressed in the context of Indian economy.

This study examines the relationship between green entrepreneurship and environmental quality in selected Asian economies. The impact of green entrepreneurship dimensions, i.e. renewable energy utilization, innovation orientation, green funding and resource efficiency is empirically assessed on environmental quality. The research assists in opening the “black box” mechanism of how green entrepreneurship affects the environmental pillar of sustainability.

An analysis of 11 Asian countries is conducted over the period from 2000 to 2019, using panel regression techniques to examine the link between green entrepreneurship dimensions and environmental quality indicators.

The findings reveal that all four dimensions of green entrepreneurship have an inverse relationship with carbon emissions and ecological footprint while showing a positive relationship with the load capacity factor. This implies that green entrepreneurship contributes positively to environmental sustainability by enhancing the ecosystem’s resilience and capacity to support life.

We advocate for policymakers to prioritize green entrepreneurship to stimulate innovation for energy transition and environmental sustainability. Furthermore, creating a conducive atmosphere for green entrepreneurs can spur job creation, economic growth and societal well-being, thus fostering a more resilient and sustainable future for all.

In this study, we adopted a multidimensional approach for measuring green entrepreneurship, which represents an advancement over existing literature that predominantly relied on renewable energy consumption to gauge the green entrepreneurship phenomenon at the macro level.