Ahmed Mohamed Rostom

The Role of Islamic Finance in Enhancing Financial Inclusion in Organization of Islamic Cooperation (Oic) Countries

The core principles of Islam lay great emphasis on social justice, inclusion, and sharing of resources between the haves and the have nots. Islamic finance addresses the issue of “financial inclusion” or “access to finance” from two directions — one through promoting risk-sharing contracts that provide a viable alternative to conventional debt-based financing, and the other through specific instruments of redistribution of the wealth among the society. Use of risk-sharing financing instruments can offer Shar ahcompliant microfinance, financing for small and medium enterprises, and micro-insurance to enhance access to finance. And redistributive instruments such as Zak h, adaqat, Waqf, and Qar -al- asan complement risk-sharing instruments to target the poor sector of society to offer a comprehensive approach to eradicating poverty and to build a healthy and vibrant economy. Instruments offered by Islam have strong historical roots and have been applied throughout history in various Muslim communities. The paper identifies gaps currently existing in Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries on each front, that is, Shar ah-compliant micro-finance and financing for small and medium enterprises and the state of traditional redistributive instruments. The paper concludes that Islam offers a rich set of instruments and unconventional approaches, which, if implemented in true spirit, can lead to reduced poverty and inequality in Muslim countries plagued by massive poverty. Therefore, policy makers in Muslim countries who are serious about enhancing access to finance or “financial inclusion” should exploit the potential of Islamic instruments to achieve this goal and focus on improving the regulatory and financial infrastructure to promote an enabling environment

SME contributions to employment, job creation, and growth in the Arab world

Recent economic and political developments have highlighted a challenge shared across the Arab region of generating employment, promoting inclusive growth, and improving competitiveness. In the short run, weakened macroeconomic fundamentals in the developing economies of the Middle East and North Africa are a key challenge. The regions main challenge is to achieve sustainable growth that delivers the quantity and quality of jobs needed. An inclusive and competitive private sector has proven to be one of the most effective and long-term solutions for this challenge. This paper provides an analytical framework to diagnose and identify key challenges to the growth of small and medium enterprises that is supported by a quantitative model based on the World Banks Enterprise Surveys database. The findings reconfirm that the route to a sustained role for small and medium enterprises in job creation requires improving the credibility of reforms, the effectiveness of policies, and equitable enforcement. Although one size fits all is infeasible for Arab countries, it is important to design policies across sectors to create productive employment and promote economic growth. Supporting innovation and enhancing access to finance are central to the development agenda for small and medium enterprises. And creating an enabling environment and setting up accountable institutions are key to ensure equal opportunity and inclusive growth.

European Economic and Monetary Union Sovereign Debt Markets

This paper focuses on developments in the European Economic and Monetary Union sovereign debt markets in the past decade. The ?rst part analyzes the integration and segmentation structure of the bond markets of the Economic and Monetary Union before and after the sovereign debt crisis, by introducing the novel concept of correlation-based stable networks. Accordingly, a fair integration is observed between the bond markets during the pre-crisis period. However, a strict segmentation emerges, separating the members struggling with debt problems and the ones with relatively strong ?scal performances during the sovereign debt turmoil. The segmentation structure is clearly visualized, revealing the potential paths for crisis and recovery transmission in the future. In the second part, the paper comments on the recent decreasing trend in Economic and Monetary Union member bond yields and their increasing degree of co-movement. Accordingly, the paper argues that these changes do not depend on the ?scal performances of the member countries, but depend on the illusion of quality that appeared with the Fed (U.S. Federal Reserve) tapering signals in early 2013.

Financial Reform - Literature Review on Theory and the Experiences of Developing Countries: The Case of Egypt

Keynes (1937), Tobin (1965) and their followers believe that financial repression reflects on higher savings, investment and economic growth through monetary expansion and by lowering interest rates. Financial liberalization theorists (such as McKinnon and Shaw 1973) contested this position, emphasising the need for a determined interest rate, in order to ensure better intermediation and a more effective allocation of financial resources, especially in developing countries. The experience of Egypt — which has followed a financial reform program as part of its economic reform since the 1990’s supports the view that financial development contributes to the momentum of economic growth.

Modeling Money (M2) Demand in Egypt - A Vector Equilibrium Correction Model

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between real money demand, real income, interest rates and real consumption. The paper provide a mixed strategy for estimating the money demand function that incorporates shifting from a system of equations vector auto regression (VAR) approach that maintains the information relating to the feedback between variables, followed by vector equilibrium correction model (VECM) in order to investigate the nature of short term and long term interaction and finaly an error correction model (ECM) and autoregressive distributed lag model (ADL). The paper concludes that real money demand in Egypt is stable and can be confidently considered by monetary authorities to adjust for long run growth in the real economy.

Capital Flow in Eurasia: An Emperical Investigation

The characteristics of international capital flow in Eurasia region in the last two decades are discussed. The determinants of (foreign) direct investment are investigated. Econometric analysis show that economic fundamentals such as domestic savings rate and the fiscal health of the countries explain the direct investment.

Forecasting Savings in Egypt

Egypt followed a central command economic policy during the 1970’s, implementing repressive financial policies and directing credit. The banking sector was fully state owned, enabling the government to set a ceiling for interest rates. The Egyptian government adopted an economic reform program in the 1990’s. The main pillar of which is to support financial development and achieve economic growth. This followed a full liberalization of determination interest rates, leaving it for markets to determine the opportunity cost of money holdings. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the forecasting models for savings in Egypt break down after 1991.

Factors Leading to the Malfunctioning of Credit Markets in Less-Developed Economies and the Role of Microfinance Institutions in Poverty Alleviation

This mimeo discusses the relative significance of Microfinance to the poor in developed Economies. We analyse different vehicles of microfinance to the poor in less developed Countries (LDCs hereafter). The analysis also covers a global overview for Microfinance activity, and the dominant factors leading to the malfunction of credit lending in the LDCs and its contribution to the persistence of poverty. It concludes with an emphasis on the role of microfinance institutions in availing credit and the importance of innovative perspectives in dealing with conventional hurdles.

Can We Make Unambiguous Inequality Comparisons When Lorenz Curves Intersect? An Essay

This essay outlines the exact definition of “Equality” and “Inequality” in economics. The discussion moves forward to review concepts of ranking of orderings and methodology of constructing Indices of Inequality with an emphasis on Lorenz Orderings. We also discuss the possibility of comparing between two distributions (i.e. two Lorenz Curves/Orderings), and extend the analysis to analyse the ambiguity of comparisons when the case when Lorenz curves intersect.

On the Importance of Non-Tradable Goods Prices in Explaining Real Exchange Rate Movements - Reconciling the Findings of Engel (1999) and Burstein Et Al (2006)

This mimeo discusses the importance of non-tradable goods prices in explaining real exchange rate movements. We try to reconcile the findings of Engel (1999) and Burstein et al (2006) that seem to provide very different conclusions regarding the decomposition of real exchange rate movements. The mimeo discusses in brief the concept of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and the Law of one price (LOP). The analysis explains the puzzle of Real Exchange Rate (RER) and provides a deep interpretation, in attempt to reconcile the conflicting arguments in literature.