The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 414 pages, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012.I LOVE THESE GUYS''(Joseph Stiglitz) is an insanely great economist,'' so writes Paul R. Krugman, who should know. These two like to write books for the populace at large on the topic of macroeconomics. Krugman also likes to spout offon Sunday news shows like ''Meet the Press,'' and on all the cable news programs. You can see Krugman arguing with Bill O'Reilly on Meet the Press. From YouTube: ''Don't call me a liar, pal, that's what you do all the time,'' says O'Reilly; ''This is not your show, so you can't cut offmy mic,'' says Krugman. Judging by their expressions, I was glad Tim Russert (6- 3-) was there in the studio at the time to protect Krugman (5- 7-) (O'Reilly stands 6- 4-). Conservative pundits dislike both economists, but pretty much leave Stiglitz alone.Krugman makes it a point to stay out of government affairs. Stiglitz does just the opposite, and he sometimes gets burned. Stiglitz was part of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and was Chief Economist for the World Bank. After much criticism of the way the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducted lending to developing countries, he was pretty much fired from the World Bank. Comparing the two, you would have to say that Stiglitz is more the bleeding heart, while Krugman says that what he dislikes most is the dishonesty he sees in political-economic discourse. Both are champions of the common man.Since Stiglitz can make the very valid claim for being ''an insanely great economist,'' most everything he says in his books should be taken seriously. There are some real gems in this book. I especially like the perspective he lends to some of the more peculiar things that happened before, during, and after the financial crisis. People hear about these things in the news from some announcer who makes them sound like just more news-bites, but they are, after all, unprecedented (and largely absurd). Take ''robo-signing'' for instance (page 198).WHAT GOES FOR NEWSRobo-signing was part of what happened during the foreclosure process after the massive numbers of defaults of subprime mortgages. Big banks intentionally did not follow mandated law. Apart from ignoring debtors' rights, an ensuing mess followed. Robo-signing was nothing less than a blatant attempt at rewriting property law, and resulted in lying to the courts about the state of each property's title, literally hundreds of times. No bank officer was charged with a crime. By contrast, the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s led to 829 individual convictions and 650 prison sentences. Nowadays the big banks just pay fines as part of settlements where they admit no guilt, and it's just part of doing business.Take algorithmic or ''flash'' trading in the stock exchanges (page 164). These are buys and sales made in nanoseconds on the basis of extracting information from the patterns of prices and trades. Nothing like real information gathered through market research on an industry, or on a firm in a certain industry, backs up these trades. But traders swear that ''price discovery'' is happening this way, and that all this backs up the efficient markets model. So on May 6, 2010 stock prices plummeted to a point where the Dow Jones temporarily lost 10% of its value. There are reasons to believe that these trades ''make markets not just more volatile but also less 'informative' '' (page 166). Still, the talk on the street is all about efficient markets (echoing Alan Greenspan's failures at the Federal Reserve).Take failed privatizations. When electric power in California was liberalized and Enron manipulated prices and public power to its advantage, this was a story about the company's accounting practices, not about privatizing something that had no business being privatized. …

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future

This paper aims to critically analyse the application of present value (PV) practised in the concept of time value of money (TVM) from the perspective of maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah (objective of Islamic law) explained by Ibn ‘Ashur. The analysis is important as this concept has been adopted in the practice of Islamic accounting measurement.,This paper uses qualitative research approach. The authors first review literature related to TVM in Islamic perspective to understand the extent to which the scholarly articles have been discussing this topic. Furthermore, the authors conduct face-to-face interviews with the experts to comprehend the means of TVM application in the recent Islamic accounting practices. The tawhid (monotheistic) paradigm is further used with special reference to the concept of maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah of Ibn ‘Ashur to critically analyse the practice of TVM in Islamic accounting measurement.,This study identifies the opposing views among the experts on the topic of TVM from the Islamic perspective. That is, the experts’ opinion on this issue can be classified into two. Firstly, a view that rejects TVM and proposes the concept of economic value of time. Secondly, an opinion that recognises TVM with the basis of bay’ al-mu’ajjal (deferred sale). This paper further critically analyses these two opposing opinions. The discussion is established based on the theory of maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah as explained by Ibn ‘Ashur and the excerpts from interviewing the experts. This work draws a conclusion that such PV-based measurement of TVM does not meet the Islamic principles explained in the theory of Ibn ‘Ashur’s maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah. Thus, the practice of PV measurement in Islamic accounting is debatable.,This study does not establish a positivism discussion. It is thus the generalisation of this work is not applicable to the Islamic perspective in general. Rather, it is limited to Ibn ‘Ashur’s maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah.,An analysis of PV measurement adoption in Islamic accounting from maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah perspective is practically important to raise the awareness that such practice is debatable in Islamic principles. That is, such debate opens new arena for academics, industry professionals and other related stakeholders to further discuss an ideal practice of Islamic accounting.,This paper is among the pioneers that analyses the concept of TVM, in particular relation to PV measurement in Islamic accounting practice from the perspective of Ibn ‘Ashur’s maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah.

Time value of money in Islamic accounting practice: a critical analysis from maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah

Islamic banks (IBs) have been criticized as not being genuinely Islamic, and the methods in measuring their performances have been debatable. While the literature on IBs performance has been emerging, such studies precisely assess its recent development remains absent. Therefore, we aim to evaluate the development of scholarly articles that measure IBs’ performances. We employ bibliometric analysis and sample related articles from the Scopus database. We find that the development of IBs performance literature may be understood by 111 peer-reviewed journal articles, 4 conference papers, 1 book, and 1 book series. We analyze these materials based on publication sources, country and institution affiliation, keywords association, and cluster dendrogram. Our model that quantifies the keywords association and cluster dendrogram provides a novelty in assessing IBs performance literature development. Future studies may replicate our model to cluster and identify the keyword associations from the unstructured data sources.

/pdf/islamic-banking-performance-a-bibliometric-review-4wulb73lt2.pdf

Islamic Banking Performance: A Bibliometric Review

This paper aims to propose two benchmarks “Shari’ah-compliant” benchmark and “Shari’ah-based” “raf’ al-haraj” (the removal of hardship) benchmark. The former benchmark can be applied to ensure that a transaction brings “profits on sales” and not “profits on loan”, and the latter benchmark should be addressed to ensure that a transaction does not exploit the customers of Islamic banks.,The authors draw upon the theory of institutional economics, in particular, instrumental and procedural rationality, to argue that the believers can pay their best effort as an exercise of ijtihad to understand and incarnate the logic and rationales implicit in the Qur’anic text.,Currently, there is no benchmark that determines the profit ceiling on murabaha. The authors suggest two types of “gray-zones” – the “Shari’ah-compliant but less contributing to the removal of hardship” and the “controversial on compliance but contributing to the removal of hardship in borrowers” to use as a benchmark in endorsing less shariah-compliant Islamic products.,There is no benchmark or a clear-cut demarcation that can be used to endorse less Shari’ah-compliant Islamic finance. Thus, Shari’ah-compliant’ benchmark and “Shari’ah-based” “raf’ al- haraj” benchmarks can be used to guide whether a financial transaction is acceptable or not. This guideline can be of huge practical relevance for Islamic finance.,There is no sensible study that offers such guidelines that can be used to demarcate whether a particular financial transaction, which has no clear-cut fatwa, is acceptable or not. Hence, the current research is novel and contributes to the existing literature of Islamic finance.

Shari’ah-compliant benchmark and Shari’ah-based “raf’ al-haraj” benchmark on prohibition of riba

Scholars of exegesis (interpretation) are unanimous on the method of interpreting al-Quran and Sunnah. However, Fazlur Rahman proposed a modern method of interpretation by applying hermeneutics. He held that this method is to obtain the universal moral values. His assumption is based on the need for al-Quran to be interpreted in a socio-historical context in order to obtain the reasons and purpose of the revealed text and its moral objectives . Fazlur Rahman’s method of interpretation and analysis has its influence on the Sisters-in-Islam (SIS) group.  The objective of this article is to evaluate Fazlur Rahman’s method of interpretation and analyse the influences of Fazlur Rahman’s method determine on women’s issues by the SIS group. This is a qualitative research which uses content analysis approach. Research results demonstrated that SIS have adopted Fazlur Rahman’s hermeneutics in expressing their ideas.

/pdf/ratio-legal-fazlur-rahman-s-hermeneutics-and-its-influence-4ili2ra6gm.pdf

Ratio-Legal Fazlur Rahman's Hermeneutics and Its Influence on Sisters-In-Islam

Purpose




The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of rent-seeking behaviour and rentier state in the context of zulm (injustice and exploitation), which is one of the key concerns in Islam in general and Islamic economics and finance in particular.




Design/methodology/approach




As a conceptual paper, it draws on the literature of rent-seeking as part of public choice theory and examines the potential vulnerabilities as well as existence of rent-seeking in Muslim-majority countries, where Islamic finance industry primarily operates.




Findings




The paper identifies several areas where both actual and potential rent-seeking exists.




Research limitations/implications




The paper is conceptual. Based on the analysis presented here further studies can be undertaken to determine the scope of rent-seeking and their impact in Muslim-majority societies.




Practical implications




Incorporating rent-seeking in the theoretical and conceptual framework of Islamic economics and finance can enhance understanding about zulm and its ubiquitous presence, as Islam has a firm stance to aspire to have a zulm-free society.




Social implications




Understanding rent-seeking behaviour can help appreciate why corruption, inequality and poverty are so entrenched, and why limiting the discourse to riba or interest ignores the broader scope of injustice and exploitation.




Originality/value




This might be the first focused paper that conceptually deals with rent-seeking behaviour, connecting the discourse about riba-interest equation.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/236941/1/1671046811.pdf

Rent-seeking behaviour and ẓulm (injustice/exploitation) beyond ribā-interest equation

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Mohammad Omar Farooq

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Rent-seeking behaviour and ẓulm (injustice/exploitation) beyond ribā-interest equation