Islamic banks' operations are guided by the principles and values laid down in Islam (i.e., the Shari'ah). To ensure Shari'ah compliance on the operations of the bank and to inspire the confidence of shareholders and stakeholders, each Islamic bank is required to establish a Shari'ah board. This study empirically investigates the Shari'ah boards operating in the Malaysian Islamic banking industry and specifically examines the influence of the dual-layer Shari'ah governance system on Malaysian Islamic banking practices where, besides the regulated Shari'ah board, Shari'ah supervision at the highest level is undertaken by the Shari'ah Advisory Council (SAC) of the Central Bank of Malaysia. Two separate questionnaire surveys were distributed to banks offering Islamic banking in Malaysia. One was sent to the Shari'ah department of the Islamic banks and the second to the branch managers to assess the current practice and the expectations regarding how the issues investigated are being practised by the Shari'ah board. Furthermore, a series of in-depth interviews were undertaken with important stakeholders within the Malaysian Shari'ah governance framework. Essentially, this study indicates that Shari'ah boards do in the main undertake a valuable Shari'ah advisory role and reveals the existence of an established structure for Shari'ah reviews. However, the Shari'ah reviews were found not to be effectively implemented by the Shari'ah boards thus raising concern regarding the quality of the Shari'ah reports issued by the boards highlighting both the importance and need for an external Shari'ah audit. In addition, the composition of the Shari'ah board members is revealed to have influence over the quality of Shari'ah decisions issued by the board. Moreover, the integrity of the Shari'ah board members, such as their ethical value, reputation and scholarly background, was found to be important in influencing its accountability and independence. Interestingly, Shari'ah boards were also perceived by branch managers of not providing the required level of involvement. The study also emphasises that branch managers felt the Shari'ah Advisory Council (SAC) to be the most important party within the Malaysian Shari'ah governance framework, and that the dual-layer Shari'ah governance system was viewed as having contributed to the standardisation of Islamic banking. Also, it appears that the role played by the Shari'ah Advisory Council (SAC) is not limiting creativity in developing Islamic banking products.

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has had a long and varied history since its beginnings in the 1930s with the seminal work of Berle and Means. Many occidental studies regarding CSR have concentrated on natural environmental management and the influence of social and culture differences on such management. However, such research has not as yet been undertaken to any significant extent in the Malaysian context. To fill this gap, the present study therefore investigated environmental management in Malaysia’s banking sector, and the methods deployed by bank managers in evaluating and accommodating environmental risk in the credit assessment process. Malaysia was chosen as the study location because it is a multi racial country and has a dual banking system (conventional and Islamic banking). These characteristics enabled the study to investigate the influence of cultural and institutional differences on credit evaluation orientations, stakeholders’ group activism and perceptions, and general CSR orientations. To achieve the study aims, a questionnaire survey was designed to collect data from managers and executives in corporate banking departments whose main task is to evaluate loan applications, especially in project financing. The findings obtained from analyses of the data collected suggested that Malaysia’s banking sector has, in general, good environmental management practice. However, local banks’ environmental management practice falls short of that of international banks. It was also found that Islamic banks have better environmental management practice than conventional banks. As regards the credit evaluation process, the study findings suggested that environmental criteria are of secondary importance compared to financial and economic criteria. The study also found that cultural and institutional differences influenced the attitude of bank managers towards environmental management practice. Thus, to improve such practice in the future, these factors should be taken account of in the environmental policy development process if future rules and regulations, including environmental laws, are to gain widespread acceptance across racial and religious boundaries.

This thesis offers a detailed analysis of the politics of neoliberalism and financialization in the context of the UK mortgage market. The analysis addresses an often implied but conceptually and empirically neglected feature in the otherwise booming social sciences literature on financial markets and the global financial crisis: how political struggles shape economic space. It does this against the background of the construction of the UK mortgage market which, as opposed to its American counterpart, is still underresearched. The thesis addresses these shortcomings by engaging the theory of Ernesto Laclau and the associated logics approach of the Essex School of Political Discourse Theory. It provides a detailed genealogical analysis of the transformations in the mortgage market during the three decades leading up to the financial crisis emphasising the significance of hegemonic struggles and ideology in its constitution. Empirically, the thesis investigates the transformation of the mortgage market from a ‘sheltered circuit’ dominated by a building society price cartel in the 1970s to a sphere that is increasingly driven by global financial markets. It is argued that at the heart of these transformations was the neo-liberalist deregulation in the name of the signifier ‘freedom’ which, in the neoliberalist age, became almost exclusively equated with ‘free markets’. The demutualisations of the 1990s are presented as an outcome of neoliberalist deregulation leading to a fundamental shift of power in the market. In return for improved access to capital markets and powered by ideological discourses, the demutualisation of 10 societies resulted in a massive transfer of mortgage assets to the stock market and contributed significantly to the financialization of mortgages. The struggles and resistance surrounding these events illustrate their contingent nature. However, the proposed re-mutualisation of Northern Rock had been squandered amidst a re-affirmation of neoliberalist ideology centring on the market as the best provider of mortgages.

Malaysia is an ever-growing business hub in Asia. Due to the fact that Malaysia has diverging socio-economic, cultural, ethnic groups, and ethical systems, this study seeks to find out multicultural impacts on corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues and practices in the country. This study encompasses top and executive managers in financial services sector in Malaysia. A total of 1000 questionnaires were given out to the respondents in different segments of financial institutions in Malaysia namely commercial banks, investment banks, brokerage firms, fund management companies, insurance companies, unit trust companies, and large public fund organisations. The questionnaire used in this study was modified from Aupperle, Carroll and Hatfield (1995), Maignan and Ferrell (2000), and Maignan (2001). The questionnaire was used to measure perceptions about CSR elements as proposed by Carroll (1991): economic, legal,ethical and philanthropic responsibilities. The results indicated that top and executive managers ranked ethical responsibilities as the most important CSR duties for corporations. The results from the factor analysis revealed four drivers that were able to motivate corporations to practice CSR namely local and global forces, corporate image,economic performance, and cultural awareness. A depth observation across ethnicity of the respondents revealed that there are no homogenous results, especially with regards to Carroll’s CSR elements. The finding clearly demonstrated a separation of opinions between Malaysian bumiputera and Malaysian non-bumiputera respondents. This is potentially a significant finding since culture gives a significant impact on people attitude, behaviour and perception. The findings from this study suggest a unique CSR model for Malaysia and it is hoped to be the guide for local and international companies that is operating and that will be operating in this country.

This thesis makes four different contributions to the literature on international finance and corporate governance. Firstly, it examines the forward exchange rate bias and the forward premium puzzle, using weekly and daily data from thirty-one developed and emerging economies during 1999-2010. The forward-spot relationship is analysed through both a time series and a panel construction. Secondly, it investigatges empirically the relationship between the e3xchange rate and the term structure of interest rates, as proposed by Lim and Ogaki (eg Fama 1984: Lim and |Okaki 2004) using data from sixteen emerging economies during 1993-2001. Thirdly, it examines the impact of the term structure of the interest rates on bond risk in G7 countries and it tests the stability of this relation during pre- and post-financial crisis periods. Fourthly, this disseration exploes the link between a director's pay and corporate performance using a panel data set of FTSE 350 companies during 2004-2009. The empirical results deomonstrate a robust cointegrating forward-spot relationship and support the forward rate unbiasedness with high frequency data: however, the forward premium puzzle remains in most sample economies. The term structure of interest rates plays an important role in exchange rate determination and the cointegrating relationship is stable despite the presence of a number of exchange rate regime changes for the emerging economies. In this study the short rate is considered as a proxy for economic uncertainty and the yield spread is considered as a proxy for business condition. The findings show statistically significant effects of the short rate and yield spread on the bond risk for G7 economies, implying that interest rate policy may be important in reducing market volatility. Lastly, a positive and significant relationship is identified between corporate performance and a director's pay in both levels and first difference regression specifications, and through both directions. However, this link has broken down since recent financial crisis

This thesis contributes to the econometric literature on structural breaks analysis and outliers detection in parametric linear models. The focus is on the development of new econometric tools as well as on the analysis of novel but largely unexplored approaches. The econometric methods under analysis are illustrated using macroeconomic and financial relationships. The thesis is organised in three main chapters. In Chapter 2, we consider two novel methods to detect multiple structural breaks affecting the deterministic component of a linear system. The first is an extension of the dummy saturation method whereas the second method deals with a sequential bootstrapping procedure based on the sup-F statistic. Through an extensive Monte Carlo exercise, we explore the ability of the two approaches to detect the correct number and the correct location of the breaks. Additionally, we illustrate how to apply empirically the two procedures by investigating the stability of the Fisher relationship in the United States. In Chapter 3, we consider testing for multiple structural breaks in the vector error correction framework. First, we study the role of weak exogeneity when testing for structural breaks in the cointegrating matrix. Second, we extend the existing likelihood ratio test of Hansen (2003) to the case of unknown break dates through the specification of a minimum p-value statistic with critical values approximated by bootstrapping. Monte Carlo simulations show that the proposed statistic has good finite sample properties whilst three small empirical applications illustrate how the minimum p-value statistic can be used in practice. In Chapter 4, we tackle the purchasing power parity puzzle developing a robust estimator for the half-life of the real exchange rate. Specifically, we propose to identify outlying observations by means of a dummy saturation type algorithm designed for ARMA processes which enables to detect additional and innovative outliers as well as level shifts. An empirical application involving US dollar real exchange rates shows that the estimated half-lives are considerably shorter when outlying observations are correctly modelled, therefore shedding some light on the purchasing power parity puzzle.

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This thesis investigates three issues related to foreign exchange market. The fist issue is whether commodity prices can beat random walk benchmark by generating more accurate out-of-sample forecasts. The empirical results show that contemporaneous prices outperform the random walk at the daily frequency, however, this predictive ability disappears for monthly data. Using lagged commodity prices, we show that integrating the whole set of commodities into one large model or equally combining forecasts generated by each commodity individually improves the accuracy of the forecasts, implying outperforming the driftless random walk benchmark. The second issue is the profitability of technical trading rules in foreign exchange market and whether it is consistent with the efficient market hypothesis. The results support profitability of trading rules for different currencies. However, to determine whether one could consistently speculate in the market, we perform a persistence analysis. We construct a portfolio of outperforming rules for each currency at the end of each month and use the selected rules in the following month. These results indicate that profitability of technical trading rules are purely due to luck. The final issue is the performance of technical analysis and fundamental analysis in forecasting exchange rates. Due to parameter instability, the focus is on local forecasting performance of technical and economic models. We select models with the best performance based on three different criteria on a monthly basis and use them to generate forecasts for the next period. Our results show that if forecasts generated by selected technical and economic models are combined with equal weight, the random walk is beaten by all three criteria. These results underline the importance of considering both fundamental and technical factors in forecasting exchange rates.

This thesis investigates the long-run development of credit markets around the world and the legal frameworks governing them. Chapter 1 begins by discussing open questions about financial sector development and financial crises, in particular the role of financial regulation and bankruptcy frameworks. One striking pattern that emerges is the relative paucity of comparable cross-country data on the structure of debt markets. Chapter 2 thus introduces a new resource for macro-finance research: a long-run database on the outstanding amount and sectoral allocation of credit in 120 countries all over the globe from 1910. I discuss in detail how I constructed comparable data on the sectoral level from over 600 archival sources and present a range of new stylized facts. Perhaps most strikingly, corporate credit (relative to GDP) stopped expanding all over the world around 1980, while household credit has skyrocketed. Importantly, the rise of household credit is not only driven by mortgages but also consumer credit - particularly in emerging economies. I then test empirically which theories can explain these trends in credit allocation. A potential policy implication some may want to draw from the stylized facts in Chapter 2 is that regulators should target particular sectors to influence the allocation of credit. To this end, many central banks around the world regularly use macroprudential tools, which are supposed to prevent a build-up of systemic risk. In chapter 3, I show that such targeted policies historically exhibit a large, robust electoral cycle around the world. More precisely, prudential tools are considerably less likely to be tightened, and more likely to be loosened, in pre-election quarters - particularly when upcoming elections are expected to be close. Central bank independence, which is thought to ease political economy constraints, does not appear to be an important moderating factor for the election cycle in prudential regulation; it does, however, eliminate electoral cycles in monetary policy. Taken at face value, these findings suggest that the more immediate effect of prudential policies on the median voter might make them more difficult to implement than previously imagined. In Chapter 4, I turn to another legal determinant of credit market outcomes: the efficiency of bankruptcy courts. While it is well known that legal frameworks matter for the development of debt markets, much less is known about the implementation of law into practice, i.e. debt enforcement. I study this question using quasi-random exposure of firm borrowers to the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) in the United States. BAPCPA fundamentally reformed consumer bankruptcies, which resulted in the largest drop of bankruptcy filings recorded in US history, particularly in districts with a historically higher share of consumer cases. Because BAPCPA left bankruptcy rules for firms largely unchanged, I can identify the causal effect of reduced court congestion on financing terms. I find that the drop in caseload per judge was associated with an improvement in interest rate spreads and loan maturities. A back-of-the-envelope calculation implies that the social costs of busy courts are large. Chapter 5 provides implications of my thesis for policy makers and future research. I also discuss some preliminary results from ongoing research into how credit is allocated during credit booms and their association with subsequent banking crises.

This thesis aims to describe and analyse at once the sociotechnical logics that give essence to the mechanics of value-creation in a start-up in Paris’s ‘Silicon Sentier’. It is for this reason composed of two texts of deliberately disparate styles and statuses. The first essay pursues a threefold objective. The first is to provide detailed ethnographical data, produced by direct, participant observation, on a social world which is largely unknown, even more so as the received ideas which start-ups are subject to are widespread. On this basis, I then draw some of the governing principles of this entrepreneurial activity as it is carried out nowadays in the French start-up ecosystem, through this antagonistic relationship which links the start-up to the ‘large firm’. Finally I sketch an analysis of value creation in which the organisation is at once the space, the instrument, and the target. The second essay revisits the ‘performativity of economics’ through the specific case of PriceMatch. I point out, firstly, how neoliberal policies of deregulation and the advent of information technology, made it possible the rise of an industry of revenue management technologies, of which PriceMatch is one of the most recent manifestations. Then, I indicate how the scientific literature on revenue management constitutes a reservoir of techniques and arguments in which the engineers of the start-up can draw on. Finally, I show how certain economic representations can emerge in a practical context, but how these can only be imposed through some ruses and artifices used by the start-up members.