The institution of waqf proves to bring about social, economic and religious benefit to mankind. It is a vehicle for financing society as a whole (Hodgson, 1974). However, of late there has been a pervasive underdevelopment of waqf assets in the world (Kahf, 1998; Kuran, 2004). One of the reasons cited by Kuran for this underdevelopment is the issue of perpetuity and the inalienability inherent in the features of waqf ( 2004). The other reason, as cited by Kahf and Cizakca (2000; 1998) is the issue of mismanagement and the nationalisation of waqf . However a plethora of reasons can be advanced for the underdevelopment of waqf which includes the entire administration, management, financing and development of waqf. This research therefore aims at indentifying factors needed for the contemporary shari’ah compliant structuring of waqf assets in Singapore and how this can be achieved. The factors and gaps that have been identified include legal, financing, management structure, perception of stakeholders and the shari’ah issues in managing the waqf assets which form the largest group of assets managed by the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (Muis). The research utilised the semi-structured interview of the various stakeholders and expert opinion relating to waqf. In addition, secondary sources from the case study analysis of Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (Muis) provide an important and useful insight in understanding the management of waqf in Singapore. The study revealed some interesting findings such as the attitudes towards and the perception of non-shari’ah compliant activities carried out in waqf management, the possibilities of the various instruments that can be used to develop waqf assets and the polar shari’ah interpretation of investment and financing of the waqf assets. All issues are presented with real case study in this thesis. The research will then conclude by offering the possible new structuring of waqf assets using the instruments of Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) and the various policy changes required to move waqf to the next level of its management in order to realise its full potential.

The economic development needs of developing countries require capital accumulation, which is no longer an easy task, even for industrialised countries. Although borrowing remains an important alternative, it has proved to be an expensive method in the long run. Consequently, to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), developing countries have been liberalising their economies, which is expected to contribute to job creation and income generation. At the beginning of the 21st century Libya declared its intention to liberalise its economy and to integrate into the global economy in order to achieve comprehensive development. This study investigates and explores the conditions of the Libyan business environment in relation to foreign and joint companies, particularly in the non-oil sectors. A questionnaire survey method was utilised to assemble the primary data. This was conducted with the representatives of both foreign and joint companies in order to establish their perceptions and opinions towards the Libyan business environment across various dimensions. In addition, a structured interview method was used with the Libyan senior officials to investigate the difficulties and challenges facing the General People’s Committees and bodies in improving the business environment. The questionnaire data were analysed using SPSS through descriptive and analytical statistics by employing frequency, factor analysis, chi-square of goodness of fit test and cross-tabulation tools, while interviews were analysed by using coding technique through interpretative analysis. To substantiate the results, the Porter model was utilised supported by a SWOT analysis with the objective of gauging how competitive the Libyan business environment is for attracting foreign direct investment. The study reveals that despite the numerous obstacles and shortcomings associated with the Libyan business environment, the country’s experiment for attracting FDI in the non-oil sectors can be described as successful. It also shows that despite this success, many foreign and joint projects have been cancelled as a result of difficulties associated with the Libyan business environment. The study also revealed that there are many challenges facing Libyan policy environment in order to reform the business environment to make it more attractive for FDI.

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The aim of this study is to investigate representative views and perceptions of relevant elites regarding the state of GCC integration, the effect of the decision to move to a customs union, and the effects on Oman's economy and trade with the GCC. In particular, the views were explored on whether the Customs Union decisions could contribute to removing tariff and non-tariff impediments that prevent the free movement of goods between the participant countries. Also, how such steps in particular, will help the Sultanate of Oman to overcome its economic and trading challenges in its trading relations with the GCC countries. The questionnaire method for data collection was used in this study by conducting a survey with Omani businessmen to find out their attitudes to some of the GCC economic integration issues. In addition, a focus group interview method was used with some Omani senior officials to obtain their views about a number of GCC economic integration problems, and to explore to what extent the official view coincided with that of the private sector. The study revealed the positive perception of Omani businessmen towards GCC economic integration. It also showed that the majority of them believe that the founding of a customs union will help to eliminate all the obstacles hindering GCC intra-trade. The findings show that most Omani businessmen prefer to attribute the reasons for importing from a number of markets of GCC countries to more than one factor, such as the huge markets of the neighbouring countries, the lack of information about international markets, the ease of mutual understanding and payment facilities and the absence of customs land border controls inside these neighbouring countries.

The thesis, empirically investigates issues pertinent to the partial privatization of Chinese initial public offerings at home and abroad, especially on issues relating to Chinese enterprises‘ seeking overseas listings. Based on the asymmetric information hypotheses on initial public offerings (IPOs) and cross-border flotation literature, the proposed research includes both short-run and long-run methods, and covers the entire offering process of Chinese firms‘ going public in overseas markets. The investigation begins with an overview of Hong Kong‘s and China mainland‘s financial markets in Chapter II. The limitation of development in the domestic capital market, the desire of bringing Chinese SOEs into the international market, and the appropriate conditions in Hong Kong encourage Chinese companies to issue new shares in Hong Kong. Chapter III provides a comparative analysis on underpricing of Chinese and non-Chinese firms in Hong Kong, in order to discover the influence of asymmetric information on overseas listing and the correspondent offering strategies of Chinese companies and their underwriters. They are normally underwritten by highly reputable bankers, and the overwhelming majority of Chinese firms went public via bookbuilding when the market is on an optimal evaluation base. The average price range seems to be relatively conservative for promoting subscription demands. The potential loss can be partially mitigated by a positive price revision and carefully market timing. Chapter IV focuses on information disclosure and earnings forecasting accuracy in IPO prospectuses with their subsequent effects on aftermarket performance, since the accuracy of information becomes important in influencing IPOs offerings and after-market performance. The IPO profit forecasts errors represent a pessimistic bias on average, but it can be a crucial information resource for their investment decisions. The magnitude of forecasting errors is higher for China-related companies than local shares, indicating a higher asymmetric information level. The forecasts are not rational in the sense that managers correctly incorporate all available information, especially historical profits, in their forecasting. Also, the magnitude of forecasting errors can systematically affect the one-year trading performance. Due to the initial overvaluation, firms with higher initial returns actually underperform in the long run. And Chapter V, in order to discover the ultimate meanings and motives of such overseas listing, directly questions why and how the Chinese government takes so many many state-owned enterprises (SOEs) public in the international market. It concludes Chinese SOEs‘ overseas primary listing takes on the formidable tasks of macroeconomic partial privatization, home market protection, and domestic infantile market development. Large and ‗healthy‘ state-owned enterprises (SOEs) within the government‘s supporting industries are more likely to issue their shares on foreign, open, and well-developed stock exchanges when the target market is in good time of pricing and offering, in order to raise more capital, to operate under international standards, to send a positive signal of Chinese economic reform, and to indirectly protect the development of domestic financial market. Consequently, the partial privatization through an overseas primary listing approach is indeed a feasible way to facilitate domestic financial market growth, particularly for countries with a large economy but lack of a well-developed home capital market and a mature trading platform.

This study delves into the crucial question of how well posed the financial sector of Qatar is to contribute to the government’s policy of economic diversification. In order to answer this question, the study focuses on analysing the sub-units that make up the financial sector such as banking, non-banking services and the insurance industry. The objective of that is to reveal the development and the contribution of these sub-units to the economy, as well as to elucidate the changes and constraints that these units face.

This thesis critically evaluates the concept, theory and process of economic globalisation, which extends the widely held belief that capitalist firms now produce the vast majority of goods and services produced in the world (i.e. the commodification thesis), by asserting that this process of commodification is increasingly taking place within an open world economy in which firms operate in a deregulated and seamless global marketplace. In this economic globalisation thesis, therefore, it is a specific type of commodified global economy that is becoming hegemonic and stretching wider and deeper across the globe, namely unregulated or 'free market' capitalism composed of hyper-mobile and homeless capital operating in a borderless world. The intention here is to investigate this belief in economic globalisation by demonstrating the influence and pervasiveness of the informal sector in Gambian society. In doing so, this thesis contests the view that economic globalisation is the only feasible future for those in the 'developing' world particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa (The Gambia), and displays how the future is more open than suggested by its proponents. The empirical findings of this thesis are that- a) the informal sector in the Gambia forms a significant part in the day-to-day livelihood coping strategies of rural and urban households; b) the provisioning of goods and services in Gambian society is largely embedded in the informal sector rather than the commodified global market; c) and that the informal sector in the Gambia is not an opposition to the benefits and opportunities offered by economic globalisation through foreign direct investment and trade and that such benefits and opportunities can be utilised by the informal sector in creating a development pathway for the Gambia.

This thesis focuses on financial development, economic growth and market volatility in Nigeria and South Africa. For Nigeria, the thesis examines the long-run causality between financial development and economic growth. It uses three measures of financial development: financial development index measured using principal component analysis, bank credit to private sector, and liquid liabilities. For South Africa, the thesis evaluates the causal relationship between stock market development and economic growth. It uses both bank and stock market variables: bank credit to private sector, market capitalisation, turnover ratio, and value shares traded. The study applies Multivariate vector autoregressive (VAR) and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM). It further uses Generalised Impulse Response Function (GIRF) and Variance Decomposition (VDC). The results for Nigeria suggest the existence of unidirectional causality from economic growth to financial development using bank credit to private sector. While using liquid liabilities, it indicates bidirectional causality between financial development and economic growth. In the case of South Africa, the findings suggest the existence of bidirectional causality between financial development and economic growth using the banking system. However, when the stock market variables are used, the results indicate unidirectional causality from economic growth to stock market system. The thesis further examines the effect of financial liberalisation on the Nigerian and South African equity markets. It applies the Exponential Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) model and endogenous structural break tests. These are examined over pre- and post-liberalisation periods. The official liberalisation dummy is added to the augmented EGARCH model to capture the effect of financial liberalisation. The findings show that none of the estimated break dates coincides with the official liberalisation dates for the two countries. When structural breaks are taken into account, volatility tends to decline following financial liberalisation, and the effect of financial liberalisation on the stock markets is negative and statistically significant.

This thesis investigates the relationship between financial development and economic growth in Sub Saharan Africa for the period 1970-2005. The first chapter assesses three growth theories using panel data. The study lends empirical credence to the endogenous growth theory, but finds weak evidence for growth-impact of financial development in the region. The study suggests that financial development is important for economic growth in the presence of highly developed human capital and other institutional factors. The first essay finds growth-complementarity feature between financial development and human capital in the region. In the second empirical essay, the thesis investigates the determinants of financial development in the region. In particular, it analyses the impact of spatial externality on financial development in SSA for the period of 1970-2005 in a dynamic panel data framework that uses the Arellano and Bond GMM estimator. The findings of this chapter suggest that the financial system is geographically sensitive, and thus not immune to spatial externality. The findings suggest that spatial effects may include crowding-out of domestic credit market, enhancing competition among banks and promoting efficient resource allocation for overall economic growth. Finally, the third empirical essay investigates the relationship between finance and growth in a panel data framework. It suggests another channel by which this nexus can be analysed. The study uses a panel cointegration test to assess the long run relationship between finance and growth in the presence of spatial externality. The study finds empirical support for the demand-following hypothesis. It also indicates that there is a long run impact of spatial externality on financial development in particular and economic growth in general for the sample countries in the study. This chapter suggests a regional framework for the relationship between finance and growth.

This thesis basic aim is to have a better understanding of how labour markets work and to explore different transmission mechanisms that might be responsible for making these markets different from their counterparts in the developed world. I analyzed problems created by large public sector employment by using two different frameworks and I made an empirical study about the social factors related to gender issues. In the second chapter, the government's excess employment in the economy is placed under the efficiency wage framework. It is aimed to find out how the wage and effort differentials between public and private sectors actually affect the labour market or more specifically equilibrium levels of employment, wages and productivity. The chapter investigates how the total welfare responds to changes in these differentials in terms of two different models. The results show that an effort of raising employment by the government eventually leads to a reduction in the total welfare by curbing private employment. This chapter contributes to the existing literature by providing a different approach by defining an explicit outside option, namely the government sector, to the efficiency wage theory. Another aspect analyzed is the relation between public sector employment and output growth. In chapter three, I try to establish a link between the government employment and economic growth rate underlying several mechanisms; distortionary taxes, productive government expenditure and productivity link resulting from the interaction of government and private labour markets inspiring from the efficiency wage theory. I endogenize the growth rate by introducing a public sector capital term in government expenditures. The production function in the growth model is constructed such that productivity of private worker decreases when size of public employment increases. I concluded that the abundant government employment force private sector either to pay higher wages or to have lower productivity of labour as outside option for the workers are now plenty. While higher wage leads more unemployment, productivity decline causes output to reduce. Developing countries social dynamics have unforeseen consequences on the labour markets. Thus, in order to understand the social and traditional values explaining the employment decisions taken by the labour force in the developing countries, in the fourth chapter of this thesis an empirical study is carried out to investigate the existence of and the potential behavioral change in son preference in Turkey, by using different statistical techniques. The main contribution of this part is that, it provides a broad analysis of son preference behavior in Turkey by using the latest econometric techniques. In particular, it investigates whether the process of urbanization and modernization in Turkey had an effect on son preference behavior over time. The results imply that there is clear and strong son preference in Turkey and the difference between progression ratios of families with and without sons is larger in 1993 compared to 1998. It is also found that the regional effects are more dominant on childbearing decision and urbanization had a diminishing effect on son preference behavior in Turkey.