Awareness of Islamic banking products among Muslims: The case of Australia

The purpose of this study is to examine the awareness of Muslim Australians of Islamic banking, particularly profit-and-loss sharing agreements. A sample of 300 Australian Muslims were surveyed utilising a short questionnaire containing specific questions relating to the willingness of respondents to purchase profit-and-loss sharing Islamic banking products. The results indicate that the majority of the respondents are interested in purchasing these products, but are not properly informed about how they function. It was common to find respondents who were keen to purchase Islamic banking products, but only if credit facilities were available. This is contrary to Islamic Shari'ah law, and suggests a lack of understanding of the principles of Islamic finance.     

Child Labour Use and Economic Growth: An Econometric Analysis

We present a simple dynamic theory of child labour, human capital formation, and economic growth that is consistent with some of the main features of child labour and economic development. The model supports a number of testable hypotheses, which we investigate econometrically in a systems approach. Using panel data from 64 countries in the period 1960–1980, the econometric results match the theory well. The incidence of child labour is negatively related to parental human capital and education quality, but is positively correlated with education cost. Further, countries with higher amounts of child labour tend to have lower stocks of human capital in the future. There is also a convergence phenomenon between the level and growth of human capital. The lower the current stock of human capital, the higher is current child‐labour use and the faster is the growth rate of human capital.     

Food for Thought on the ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide

This paper discusses issues relating to the use of the Association of Business Schools' (ABS) Academic Journal Quality Guide within UK business schools. It also looks at several specific issues raised by the Chair of the British Accounting Association/British Accounting and Finance Association regarding the ratings for top international journals, and for accounting education and accounting history journals. The increasing use of this guide by business school deans/heads as a tool for staffing and research resource allocation has significant implications both for individuals and specialist areas of research.     

Innovation and corporate sustainability: An investigation into the process of change in the pharmaceuticals industry

Although there has been considerable research effort directed at refining the content of corporate environmental performance, e.g. corporate environmental reporting and accounting, there has been relatively little empirical investigation to date on the process of corporate eco‐change. This research reports on the quantitative and qualitative results of a survey of German and UK pharmaceuticals firms, which evaluated the significance of the various incentives, both intra‐firm and external to the organization, that have stimulated eco‐change. We find that, although the industry is one that has been characterized by voluntary agreements and proactive behaviour in the past, regulation still remains the main driver for sustainability improvements. New technology is the second most important driver. Stakeholder dialogue and inter‐firm cooperation were both revealed to be relatively weak forces for eco‐change. The study also tested the validity of the conventional neo‐classical economic world‐view of innovation in firms versus a more radical co‐evolutionary one. The former assumes that firms respond only to profit signals and do so efficiently, whereas the latter assumes that change is path dependent; i.e., the firms’ norms and routines and past experiences are influential. We find that, although the neo‐classical perspective stands up to our empirical investigation of eco‐innovation to some degree, the co‐evolutionary approach better captures the complexity of the corporate eco‐change process. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment     

DISCRETE TIME HEDGING OF THE AMERICAN OPTION

In a complete financial market we consider the discrete time hedging of the American option with a convex payoff. It is well known that for the perfect hedging the writer of the option must trade continuously in time, which is impossible in practice. In reality, the writer hedges only at some discrete time instants. The perfect hedging requires the knowledge of the partial derivative of the value function of the American option in the underlying asset, the explicit form of which is unknown in most cases of practical importance. Several approximation methods have been developed for the calculation of the value function of the American option. We claim in this paper that having at hand any uniform approximation of the American option value function at equidistant discrete rebalancing times it is possible to construct a discrete time hedging portfolio, the value process of which uniformly approximates the value process of the continuous time perfect delta‐hedging portfolio. We are able to estimate the corresponding discrete time hedging error that leads to a complete justification of our hedging method for nonincreasing convex payoff functions including the important case of the American put. This method is essentially based on a new type square integral estimate for the derivative of an arbitrary convex function recently found by Shashiashvili.     

Landowner knowledge and willingness to supply woody biomass for wood-based bioenergy: Sample selection approach

Nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowners’ willingness to harvest woody biomass for wood-based bioenergy is important if sustainable feedstock supplies are to be realized in the U.S. However, a significant number of them do not know that unused logging residues could be used to produce wood-based bioenergy. Therefore, this study analyzed landowner willingness to harvest woody biomass in Mississippi contingent upon their knowledge of wood-based bioenergy. The requisite data were analyzed in accordance with the Heckman approach. Results indicated that elderly, male, and resident landowners, having larger tracts of pine plantations were more likely to be aware of wood-based bioenergy. The results further revealed the need for bioenergy related extension education focusing on female landowners and those having small tracts of forest land.     

Asymmetric Nonlinear Impact of Oil Prices and Inflation on Residential Property Prices: a Case of US,UK and Canada

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - This paper examines the nonlinear impact of oil prices and inflation on residential prices in the US, the UK and Canada using quarterly data from...