Convergence of Corporate Governance and Islamic Financial Services Industry: Toward Islamic Financial Services Securities Market

This paper briefly discusses the significance of corporate governance for the Islamic financial services industry. Furthermore, it predicts that the Islamic financial services industry is likely to converge to modern governance practices. The paper also argues that the industry needs to have a homogenous and specialized regional securities market to realize its true potential

Space construction in media reporting: A study of the migrant space in the 'Jungles' of Calais

Media are intrinsically implicated in constructing and framing space as well as in the imagination of communities. This paper examines how media through the spatial construct of the ‘jungle’ premises the discourses of migration between the borders of UK and France. We argue that newspapers impose a cartography by invoking a social imaginary of a bounded community sustained through imagined boundaries. Metaphors such as the ‘jungle’ function as spatialisation techniques to not only renew the sacrosanct boundaries of a nation-state, but they also become instrumental tools in invoking fear, anxiety and the visceral in migrant discourses. Conceptually, the paper argues that media sustains ‘an imagined community’ by techniques of spatialisation which encode politics of space in migrant discourses. These discourses are central in sustaining and enacting a social imaginary, where space framing and construction become tools to imagine and locate communities and to exclude the ‘other’

The non-human interest story: De-personalising the migrant

We argue that newspapers deliberately employ techniques to dehumanise and depersonalise news stories in order to cultivate distance between the reader and human subject in newspaper accounts. We posit this as a dominant technique in discourses of immigration in newspaper discourses. In the process the migrant is narrated as the sub-human entrapped through socio-legal terminologies and deviance discourses that both silence and trivialise human suffering. We highlight the case study of the refugee settlement in Calais dubbed the ‘jungle’ to illuminate this phenomenon. We argue that the depersonalisation of immigration stories is a sustained technique in media to submerge the ethical and humanitarian paradigms presented by immigration

Sounds of the jungle: Re-humanizing the migrant

This article examines the cross-border tensions over migrant settlements dubbed ‘The Jungle’ in Calais. The Jungle, strongly associated with the unauthorized movement of migrants, became a physical entity enmeshed in discourses of illegality and violation of white suburbia. British mainstream media have either rendered the migrant voiceless or faceless, appropriating them into discourses of immigration policy and the violent transgression of borders. Through the case study, Calais Migrant Solidarity (CMS), we highlight how new media spaces can re-humanize the migrant, enabling them to tell their stories through narratives, images and vantage points not shown in the mainstream media. This reconstruction of the migrant is an important device in enabling proximity and reconstituting the migrant as real and human. This sharply contrasts with the distance framing techniques of mainstream media, which dehumanize and silence the migrant, locating the phenomenon of migration as a disruptive contaminant in civilized and ordered societies

Ergonomic Consideration of the Effect of Flour Dust on Peak Expiratory Flow Rate of Bakers in Abeokuta, Ogun State

Flour dusts are one of the most harmful chemicals in the bakery industries which could lead to serious heart and lung diseases. This study investigated the effect of flour dust on Peak Expiratory Flow Rate of male bakers in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria with the relationship to the anthropometrical parameters. A total of One hundred Eighty (180) male participants were investigated, where ninety (90) participants were bakers and ninety (90) individuals as control group. The Peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) and anthropometrical parameters of the participant were measured using mini-Wright peak flow meter (PFM 20, OMRON) and Detecto PD300MDHR (Cardinal Scale manufacturing company, USA) column scale with digital height rod was used to measure body mass [kg] and height (cm) respectively. The PEFR and anthropometrical parameters of the bakers and control groups were analysed using descriptive statistics and T-test with SPSS. The results showed that lower PEFR, 182.67 ± 16.34 L/min existed in bakers compared to 287.67 ± 17.02 L/min in the control study. The result also showed that a significant correlation exist between body mass, height and age (P < 0.01), PEFR, height (P < 0.05) and years of exposure (P < 0.01) of the bakers respectively. Furthermore, the results also showed that workers in the dusting and mixing of flour are at a risk of developing related pulmonary function impairment such as asthma. The study concluded that there is need to develop an effective intervention strategy, treatment seeking behaviour through awareness programs to prevent lung impairment diseases among the bakery workers

Inequality and the Dynamics of Poverty and Growth

This paper models the dynamic interactions between growth and distribution in the analysis of the behavior of poverty over time. The model permits formal analysis of the factors that led to the growth collapse as well as the rise in poverty in Africa and other developing regions, except Asia, during 1975-96 period. Using indicators of average country performance during this period-- in terms of the rate of acceleration of growth, changes in poverty and extent of inequality—the model suggests tentative strategies for dealing with poverty. The main policy recommendation of this analysis is that, for the majority of countries—36 out of 47—any serious strategy for poverty reduction must include both policies for accelerating growth as well as measures for effecting more equitable income distribution. Moreover, the latter must be sufficiently deep either to shake-off the "transitional", though lingering, "low equilibrium trap" that characterizes some economies; or to more others from the "bad" equilibrium of stationary, but high, poverty.

Riots, coups and civil war : revisiting the greed and grievance debate

The most influential recent work on the determinants of civil wars found the factors associated with the grievance motivation to be largely irrelevant. Our paper subjects the results of this empirical work to further scrutiny by embedding the study of civil war in a more general analysis of varieties of violent contestation of political power within the borders of the state. Such an approach, we argue, will have important implications for how we think theoretically about the occurrence of domestic war as well as how we specify our empirical tests. In the empirical model, the manifestation of domestic conflict range from low intensity violence and coups to civil war. Our multinomial specification of domestic conflict supports the hypothesis that diversity accentuates distributional conflict and thus increases the risk of civil war. We also find that democracies may be more efficient than autocracies in reducing the risk of civil war.Post Conflict Reconstruction,Population Policies,Social Conflict and Violence,Peace&Peacekeeping,Hazard Risk Management

Macroeconomic framework for an oil-based economy : the case of Bahrain

Bahrain's economy is characterized by producer and consumer subsidies and, possibly misaligned currency. These subsidies have resulted in lower savings rates than would be consistent with the country's endowment in oil and gas. In addition, the misaligned real exchange rate has encouraged imports, at the same time creating incentives biased against the non-oil tradable sectors. So, Bahrain's economy remains largely dependent on a rapidly depleting hydrocarbon resource base. The authors espouse a macroeconomic consistency framework to focus on the behavior of Bahrain's economy along two paths. Part one is based on the assumption that the government's present macroeconomic policy will continue. In that case, the solution exhibits bubbles - fiscal and current account imbalances that would be unsustainable over time. Meanwhile, real appreciation of the dinar would suppress non-oil exports. As a result, the need for foreign borrowing would be more pressing. In an attempt to restore the equilibrium, the government would need to contain aggregate demand by compressing imports and investment, thereby worsening the economic situation. Path two is based on a reform strategy that includes policies to raise the domestic savings rate, improve the fiscal situation (by rationalizing expenditures and introducing income taxes and cost recovery measures), and correct the misaligned exchange rate. The results show that the expenditure-switching effect of the exchange rate alignment would shift resources in favor of the tradable sectors. Non-oil GDP and exports would register high growth rates while economic diversification, in the context of a growing and more dynamic economy, would foster investment efficiency. This would help Bahrainis maintain a high standard of living as the oil income dries up, without too much loss of consumption for the present generation.Economic Stabilization,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Macroeconomic Management

Capital flows and long-term equilibrium real exchange rates in Chile

In the context of an empirical model, the authors examine the impact of capital flows, among other fundamentals, on long-term exchange rates in Chile. The real exchange rate and its fundamentals were found to be cointegrated during 1960-92. This cointegration allows a reinterpretation of uni-equatorial estimates of the equilibrium real exchange rate (ERER) to be consistent with long-run forward-looking behavioral models. It also permits the estimation of an error-correction model capable of disentangling short-run from long-run shocks in observed movements of the ERER. The nonstationary nature of the fundamentals allows one to decompose innovations into permanent and transitory components - to get an empirical measure of the sustainability of the fundamental with which the ERER is determined. In general, the estimate of the cointegration of the ERER and its corresponding dynamic error-correction specification corroborates the theoretical model and produces fairly consistent results. The derived ERER index and the corresponding real exchange rate misalignment (for given sustainable values of the fundamentals) successfully reproduce the salient episodes in Chile's recent macroeconomic history. Capital flows are disaggregated into four components: 1) short-term capital flows; 2) long-term capital flows; 3) portfolio investment; and 4) foreign direct investment. As expected from economic theory, short-term capital flows and portfolio investment were found to have no effect on the ERER (although they can affect the real exchange rate in the short run). But long-term capital inflows and foreign direct investment have a significant appreciating effect on the ERER. To the extent that the recent inflow of capital to Chile is dominated by long-term capital flows that are judged to be sustainable, an important part of the ensuing appreciation of the real exchange rate is consistent with equilibrium behavior - reducing the need for counterbalancing exchange rate on macroeconomic policies.Economic Stabilization,Environmental Economics&Policies,Achieving Shared Growth,Economic Theory&Research,Macroeconomic Management