1,720,957 research outputs found

    Impact of Ethical Screening on Risk and Returns: the Case of Constructed Moroccan Islamic Stock Indexes

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    Despite the increasing attention given to Islamic investment, there is still existing few empirical papers that examined the performance and volatility of Islamic Funds and indices in comparison to their conventional unscreened counterparts. These studies provide mixed evidence with regards to risk and returns of Islamic funds and indices. This paper aims to expand the literature on this subject by studying the Moroccan case considering the recent introduction of Islamic finance in the country towards the end of 2015. Since there is still no Shariah compliant indices in Morocco, we first applied four Shariah screening methodologies of some of the world leading equity index providers (i.e. Dow Jones, FTSE, S&P and MSCI) to screen the public listed companies in Casablanca Stock Exchange for Shariah compliance. Next, we constructed four Islamic float-weighted indexes for which we modeled the dynamic volatility using an extension of the AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity models, namely EGARCH(1,1). The findings show that the screening process resulted in a well diversified universe of Shariah compliant stocks (25.6%) to invest in. Furthermore, it is found that constructed Islamic indices outperformed the broad-based Moroccan All Shares Index (MASI) during the considered period of analysis (January 2013 to December 2014) and their long run volatility is higher. This indicates that investors in Shariah-compliant stocks do not sacrifice financial performance for their risky investment. The estimates of the model show that volatility for the MASI is more persistent and takes longer time to die, and the leverage effect is positive for all indices meaning that volatility of indexes' returns is influenced more by good news than bad news, a result that is in contrast to other studies for developed countries

    Bank-based investing RoSCA for Islamic finance: a new alternative to drain households savings and reduce financial exclusion

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    On the arrival of the new banking law in Morocco, in august 2015, conventional banks and their foreign rivals will finally have the possibility to create their subsidiaries dedicated to microcredit, participative finance and payment, and hence, supply the market with new Islamic financial solutions for money saving and financing. In order to drain the substantial households savings escaping to classic banks, and consequently, gain ground among these latter, we think that those new Islamic finance operators should target, in almost equal proportions, people with no access to formal financing and those with religious convictions about interest rate prohibition in Islam. For this purpose, we conceptualized an innovative bank based model of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations that allows its members to invest their savings by means of the bank, and raise freeinterest rate loans with no application and management fees. In fact, The conception of this model relied on the results of a survey questionnaire we administered among 725 subjects from different social categories in Morocco to comprehend the inherent features of this informal practice (RoSCA) locally called "Daret". The first part of the answers gave us a basic data we used, by means of the two-way ANOVA (Analysis of the variance), to determine which social characteristics interact together to motivate a person to join a RoSCA. As for the second part of the answers, it gave us insights into the functioning of traditional RoSCAs in Morocco and their members preferences and perceptions on different scales. After all, we based on these findings to conceptualize the model taking into account both equity between members and sustainability of the operation. Additionally, unlike the traditional types of RoSCAs that rely on confidence and social links between members, this bank-based investing RoSCA allows people with no prior cognition to be gathered. This by introducing the bank as a guarantor and withdrawing, temporarily, a deposit for default risk to estimate by means of a risk-rating matrix we proposed. The model is, also, found to be more attractive regarding its real economy promotion through investment, risk sharing process, and integration of financially excluded households

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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