Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2007. / A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, College of Business, School of Law, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographies.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 59).

Why are the US and China regulating cryptocurrency? This paper first uses linear regression to model the relationship between the US dollar and Bitcoin, and separately, the Chinese Renminbi and Bitcoin. Next, legal text is analyzed to make the comparative case for the United States' and China's legal responses to new advances in cryptocurrency, and how it shows threats to the traditional definition and control of currency.

This research investigates how Islam is informing capitalism in Indonesia through an analysis of the Baitul Maal wat Tamwil (BMT) model of Islamic microfinance and how it operates as a local variant of the global phenomenon of microfinance. Using an ethnographic case study of BMT Solo, in Colomadu, Surakarta, Indonesia, this thesis examines the relationship value between Indonesia’s historical religious tensions and the influence of this form and practice of Islamic microfinance in Indonesia. This is a qualitative study for which original data was collected through field work conducted from August to November 2013. Qualitative methods and narratives were employed to ensure that the voices and stories of the participants, as they see the issues from their perspective, are heard. Field observations, event analysis and data from 14 semi-structured interviews reveal that: while global conventional microfinance aims to eradicate poverty by providing the poor with access to credit, BMT Solo does not issue loans to the poor but rather works to combat poverty through the baitul maal function. As the data demonstrate, the way in which BMT Solo administers their baitul maal function results in the exclusion of the poor non-Muslim community in Colomadu reinforcing already delicate religious tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in Indonesia. The data also elucidate the three main reasons for which founders, managers, staff and customers became involved with BMT Solo. One pattern that can be identified from the analysis, is that generally, with a few exceptions, founders and managers were motivated by reasons of faith while staff primarily by reasons of accessibility and customers by both reasons of accessibility and diplomacy. Diplomatic reasoning refers to community diplomacy and the elements of social pressure and conformity which are often associated with maintaining peaceful and harmonious relations. The reasons of diplomacy bring new insights into how the few non-Muslim BMT Solo customers are using Islamic microfinance to diplomatically co-exist in a majority Muslim community and to manage delicate religious tensions to mitigate potential difficulties. / Graduate / 0318 / mlholden@uvic.ca

The Financial Services Modernization Act, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), of 1999 has permitted U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs) to operate in non-banking activities that are financial in nature. This dissertation addresses the impact of this across-activity diversification within the U.S. financial services industry on the profitability and the risk-adjusted performance of bank holding companies. Using a variety of diversification measures, the study analyzes the relationship between corporate diversification and the financial performance of BHCs pre- and post-GLBA, from 1990 to 2011. The analysis of the profitability-diversification relationship provides evidence that the negative impact of revenue diversification on the profitability of banking firms that exists in the literature is mainly due to measurement and model specification issues. Failure to differentiate between interest-versus-noninterest and banking-versus-nonbanking types of revenue diversification has resulted in using measures of the first type of diversification to study the second, leading to inaccurate results. Moreover, introducing nonlinearity to the relationship between revenue diversification and profitability provides evidence that this relationship is negative only at relatively low levels of diversification but positive if the level of diversification is sufficiently high. Controlling for these measurement and model specification issues results in profitability premium, rather than discount, that is associated with higher levels of revenue diversification. The study also employs an event study methodology to measure how stock markets respond to mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in which BHCs acquire other banking and nonbanking financial targets. The cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) to acquirers and targets show that M&A that are either non-diversifying or diversifying within closely-related credit intermediation activities increase the value of merged firms. The effect of M&As that combine less-related financial activities on firm value is either negative or insignificant. This implies that market participants have better expectations of the future performance of less diversified firms in managing the risk-return trade-off. Comparing the average CARs of the pre- and post-GLBA eras supports this conclusion.

The non-interest and profit-loss sharing schemes of Islamic finance (IF) are attracting increasing global attention. Despite exposure to the similar opportunities as other Western countries that have adopted the financial business model there is little evidence of Islamic finance windows operating in the conventional institutions in Canada. This thesis takes a qualitative approach to bring the issue forward in Canadian social science literature by exploring the perceived challenges to, and the potential of, the development of IF offerings with a focus on factors affecting the supply and management decisions in the industry. The study used an inductive approach with archival data and critical survey of literature to arrive at the hypotheses surrounding the challenges. These were tested deductively by semi-structured interviews and panel discussions both in Canada and the US on a sample of senior officials involved in both IF and conventional financial institutions. Using a thematic analysis the study arrived at findings supporting the hypotheses related to awareness, regulation, management intent and internal resources. In the external environment, factors affecting strategic decision on offering IF services are mainly due to regulation, lack of awareness, even among Muslim communities, or misgivings about Sha’riah authenticity. Internally, highly customized IT infrastructures, lack of funds and foreign investment make it unfeasible. Management interest when proposed with the concept is high but not in a top-down manner and there is an overall uncertainty avoidance culture and little proactivity with market research. Access to specific Sha’riah knowledge is not considered a hurdle anymore. It is apparent that investments in Sha’riah compliant stocks would be easiest to set up. Mortgage structures can be affected by the capital market structure, even if not tax structures. Knowledge on this can have implications for banks seeking to expand their investment portfolios and aid government policies.

Tax evasion has been happening for decades, but after the highly publicized cases with two foreign banks, LGT and UBS, the United States (US) is cracking down on tax evaders. The latest addition to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)’s repertoire of enforcement tools is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, otherwise known as FATCA. The Act was enacted to incentivize tax information release by foreign financial institutions (FFIs) who would otherwise face a 30% withholding tax on any US source income. The question was whether or not the design of the Act and its implementation successfully met this goal. This paper explores the history leading up to FATCA’s creation, beginning from the basic data underlying tax evasion. With the US losing approximately $100 billion a year of tax revenue, the IRS is keen on reducing the money flow out of the US. It will dig deeper into the facts of the LGT and UBS cases which led to Congress’s realization that their other enforcement mechanisms were not sufficient and describe FATCA’s unintended impact. Through researching articles on the predicted impact of FATCA, surveys of FFIs, testimonials from US citizens, this paper will explain how FATCA has unfortunately detrimentally impacted FFIs and US citizens living abroad.

The non-interest and profit-loss sharing schemes of Islamic finance (IF) are attracting increasing global attention. Despite exposure to the similar opportunities as other Western countries that have adopted the financial business model there is little evidence of Islamic finance windows operating in the conventional institutions in Canada. This thesis takes a qualitative approach to bring the issue forward in Canadian social science literature by exploring the perceived challenges to, and the potential of, the development of IF offerings with a focus on factors affecting the supply and management decisions in the industry. The study used an inductive approach with archival data and critical survey of literature to arrive at the hypotheses surrounding the challenges. These were tested deductively by semi-structured interviews and panel discussions both in Canada and the US on a sample of senior officials involved in both IF and conventional financial institutions. Using a thematic analysis the study arrived at findings supporting the hypotheses related to awareness, regulation, management intent and internal resources. In the external environment, factors affecting strategic decision on offering IF services are mainly due to regulation, lack of awareness, even among Muslim communities, or misgivings about Sha’riah authenticity. Internally, highly customized IT infrastructures, lack of funds and foreign investment make it unfeasible. Management interest when proposed with the concept is high but not in a top-down manner and there is an overall uncertainty avoidance culture and little proactivity with market research. Access to specific Sha’riah knowledge is not considered a hurdle anymore. It is apparent that investments in Sha’riah compliant stocks would be easiest to set up. Mortgage structures can be affected by the capital market structure, even if not tax structures. Knowledge on this can have implications for banks seeking to expand their investment portfolios and aid government policies.

This dissertation assesses how Islamic finance fares as an example of 'civil compromise' in Islamic law. By focusing on the Islamic project finance sector, my research examines how the industry's main stakeholders (representing faith, capital, and power) cooperate and compete to bring about this compromise through the 'Game of Islamic Bank Bargains'. The Islamic finance industry is a work in progress, and while it has made some significant strides, it is still a niche in the global conventional financial order rather than an alternative to it. It has fallen short of fulfilling its originally-stated social justice aspirations, but has provided a previously unavailable form of banking and finance for Muslims to transact, at least formalistically, in accordance with widely-believed tenets of their faith. Thus, those who hold up Islamic finance as a universal panacea or dismiss it outright as a fraud have both got it wrong. It is neither. It is, rather, a complex myriad of incentives and aspirations of a multitude of stakeholders muddled together across numerous geographies and evolving incrementally and constantly. The state of the industry is the result of how the stakeholders (the shariah scholars, lawyers, bankers, government officials, and customers) have pursued their self-interest in the Game of Islamic Bank Bargains. My research examines who are the 'winners' and 'losers' of this game, and what religious, commercial, and political factors have influenced this outcome. I assess what may incentivise the incumbent 'winners' to guide the Islamic finance industry away from a formal and legalistic approach towards one that also incorporates principles from Islamic economics. I explore how the 'losers' - whose interests are not accounted for due to their lack of sufficient financial and political clout - can sway the outcome of the game in their favour.

This work examined the optimality of the inclusion of the exchange rate in the reaction function of the Central Bank in an inflation targeting framework. The study attempts to answer the question whether the exchange rate should have an independent role in an open economy Taylor-type rule. To this end, a Taylor-type rule is incorporating the exchange rate is estimated by the cointegration and vector error correction modeling (VECM) using quarterly data for the period of 1995 to 2009. The empirical studies point out the importance of the exchange rates in explaining and forecasting the behaviour of the South African Reserve Bank monetary policy control variable.