IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/abd/kauiea/v28y2015i1no5p129-150.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why Economists (and Economies) Should Love Islamic Finance لماذا يجب على الاقتصاديين (والاقتصاديات) أن يحبوا التمويل الإسلامي

Author

Listed:
  • Willem H. Buiter

    (Global Chief Economist of Citigroup, University of Bristol)

  • Ebrahim Rahbari

    (Director in the European and Global Economics Teams of Citi Research in London)

Abstract

The world has too much debt and too little equity.( ) This circumstance cost it dearly; glaringly during the great financial crisis (GFC) between late 2007 and 2010 and the European sovereign debt and banking crises that started in 2010. The prevalence of debt financing and the decades over which debt, both public and private, increased in nominal terms, as well as in real terms and relative to some reasonable metric of ability to service debt, such as income (personal, corporate or national), owe much to the fact that debt can be perceived as safe to the owner, while offering leverage to the lender. The fact that this is a logical impossibility was ignored or willfully concealed by a wide variety of financial intermediaries, governments, regulators, supervisors, analysts as well as many borrowers and lenders. During periods of optimism, confidence and trust, like the Great Moderation from the early 1980s till 2008, rational appraisal of risk went out of the window for many ultimate savers and investors, and financial intermediation fed the fires of excessive risk-taking, through excessive leverage, through badly structured reward contracts and regulatory arbitrage. --

Suggested Citation

  • Willem H. Buiter & Ebrahim Rahbari, 2015. "Why Economists (and Economies) Should Love Islamic Finance لماذا يجب على الاقتصاديين (والاقتصاديات) أن يحبوا التمويل الإسلامي," Journal of King Abdulaziz University: Islamic Economics, King Abdulaziz University, Islamic Economics Institute., vol. 28(1), pages 129-150, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:abd:kauiea:v:28:y:2015:i:1:no:5:p:129-150
    DOI: 10.4197/Islec.28-1.5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://iei.kau.edu.sa/Files/121/Files/153874_28-1-05B-Buiter-6.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.4197/Islec.28-1.5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stiglitz, Joseph E & Weiss, Andrew, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 393-410, June.
    2. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    3. Douglas Gale & Martin Hellwig, 1985. "Incentive-Compatible Debt Contracts: The One-Period Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(4), pages 647-663.
    4. Stefan Krasa & Anne P. Villamil, 2000. "Optimal Contracts when Enforcement Is a Decision Variable," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(1), pages 119-134, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gerald R Steele, 2022. "Islamic and Western banking: A Chicago perspective," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 179-185, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Demirguc-Kunt, Asli, 1992. "Developing country capital structures and emerging stock markets," Policy Research Working Paper Series 933, The World Bank.
    2. Berger, Allen N. & Espinosa-Vega, Marco A. & Frame, W. Scott & Miller, Nathan H., 2011. "Why do borrowers pledge collateral? New empirical evidence on the role of asymmetric information," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 55-70, January.
    3. Mario Tirelli & Luca Spinesi, 2021. "R&D financing and growth," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 24-47, January.
    4. Poitevin, Michel, 1989. "Information et marchés financiers : une revue de littérature," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 65(4), pages 555-589, décembre.
    5. Viral V. Acharya, 2003. "Is the International Convergence of Capital Adequacy Regulation Desirable?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(6), pages 2745-2782, December.
    6. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    7. Anne Villamil & Stefan Krasa & Tridib Sharma, 2004. "Enforcement and Firm Finance," 2004 Meeting Papers 868, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2022. "Financial Intermediation and the Economy," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2022-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    9. Kjenstad, Einar C. & Su, Xunhua & Zhang, Li, 2015. "Credit rationing by loan size: A synthesized model," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 20-27.
    10. Boot, Arnoud & Thakor, Anjan V. & Udell, Gregory F., 1987. "Competition, risk neutrality and loan commitments," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 449-471, September.
    11. Mark Gertler, 1988. "Financial structure and aggregate economic activity: an overview," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 559-596.
    12. Stein, Jeremy C., 2003. "Agency, information and corporate investment," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 111-165, Elsevier.
    13. Kuersten, Wolfgang & Linde, Rainer, 2011. "Corporate hedging versus risk-shifting in financially constrained firms: The time-horizon matters!," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 502-525, June.
    14. Parker, Simon C, 2002. "Do Banks Ration Credit to New Enterprises? And Should Governments Intervene? President's Lecture Delivered at the Annual General Meeting of the Scottish Economic Society 4-5 September 2001," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 49(2), pages 162-195, May.
    15. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Oehmke, Martin, 2013. "Bubbles, Financial Crises, and Systemic Risk," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1221-1288, Elsevier.
    16. Attar, Andrea & Campioni, Eloisa, 2003. "Costly state verification and debt contracts: a critical resume," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(4), pages 315-343, December.
    17. Hellwig, Martin F., 2009. "A reconsideration of the Jensen-Meckling model of outside finance," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 495-525, October.
    18. Ibrahimo, M.V. & Barros, C.P., 2009. "Relevance or irrelevance of capital structure?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 473-479, March.
    19. Catherine Refait, 2005. "Soutien financier ou mise en faillite de l'entreprise? Comprendre la décision de la banque," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 8(1), pages 131-157, March.
    20. Jonathan Eaton & Mark Gersovitz & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1991. "The Pure Theory of Country Risk," NBER Chapters, in: International Volatility and Economic Growth: The First Ten Years of The International Seminar on Macroeconomics, pages 391-435, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:abd:kauiea:v:28:y:2015:i:1:no:5:p:129-150. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: King Abdulaziz University, Islamic Economics Institute. (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cikausa.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.