Doing God\u27s work?

This is an instructional-aid designed to highlight the basic differences between cash and accrual basis of accounting. It alerts the readers of financial statements to the murky areas of accrual accounting required by both the US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). It is presented for a wider audience with little or no accounting background. © Ehsan H. Feroz, 2014

The artistry of international accounting case pedagogy

Although international accounting case pedagogy has frequently been associated with the Harvard Business School, one can trace the origins of case based reasoning to the earliest revealed scriptures.2 This chapter provides details about the case method in a graduate international accounting course designed for relatively mature students. Although the case approach can be used in almost any course, it works best in a stylized setting where students have some work experience so that they can make the most out of the cases. Case pedagogy also demands that the instructor be flexible in terms of the format of the class so that, depending on the case and the participants in the class, the direction of the discussions can vary. Since most well written Harvard cases do not lead to one correct answer only, there is an ambiguity built into most cases by design that provides a basis for rich interaction among the case participants. © 2010 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Wrongs to Rights: The Global Financial Crisis Offers an Opportunity to Lay the Foundation for an Equitable and Sustainable Economic and Social Order

Although economists have documented many anomalies in the behavior of both national and global markets, no attempt has been made so far to fundamentally restructure the global financial system so that it would be equitable and just to both the producers and consumers. This paper follows upon the recent call of the Vatican to explore the Shariah based financial system as an alternative to the current riba (usury) based system that has dominated the world ever since goldsmiths discovered the \u27fractional reserve banking\u27 as an excellent way of making money. It highlights the fundamental weaknesses and the contradictions of the current riba (usury) based system as compared to the Shariah based system. It offers a tentative road map out of the current financial crisis

Grameen La Riba Model: A Strategy for Global Poverty Alleviation

Micro-finance can be a powerful tool for a poverty alleviation strategy. But the experiences of the micro-finance institutions (MFI) in 40 years since Dr. Mohammad Yunus started lending small amounts in Chittagong, Bangladesh have demonstrated that micro-finance is not a panacea to poverty and should be implemented alongside complementary development programs. A holistic approach to development that emphasizes the provision of education, healthcare, basic infrastructure, ownership empowerment, and participatory governance can enhance the effectiveness of micro-finance. The conventional micro-finance industry has created access to the financial system for millions of clients who were previously excluded, often because they were poor and/or they did not have the collateral to guarantee the loan. Micro-finance provides finance to these people, many of whom used used micro-finance to increase their income and consumption. This success is not without criticism, however, particularly the use of debt and riba based financing. Creating debt among people with very few assets beyond their unskilled or low skilled human capital (labor) and shouldering them with high interest payments (up to 100% annually as with Compartemos) may not be sustainable if borrowers do not earn enough to repay the principal plus interest and still have enough of income to provide for their families. This problem with conventional micro-finance, as well as limited evidence for clients graduating from micro-finance, leads to a search for better methods of providing business financing which can be filled using products developed by the Islamic financial industry to comply with the prohibitions of riba and the concerns for fairness and justice between parties in business as enumerated in the Quran and the Sunnah. The use of Murabaha provides a way to train clients on record-keeping, screen out clients who do not repay financing, and find those best able to succeed with musharaka financing while incorporating micro-finance best practices. Musharaka financing, which we believe is the essence of Shari\u27ah based financing, provides a way for an MFI to equitably share its profit and loss with it\u27s clients. Profit-sharing does not have an upper limit on it\u27s profitability like riba-based financing. It also provides poor clients insulation from some of the costs of business failure and will shift some of the risks from poor clients to an MFI which is better able to diversify it\u27s risks. The future of Islamic micro-financing is promising if it can successfully integrate the conventional micro-finance best practices. The poor will support the Shari\u27ah based micro-finance but, like Islamic macro-finance, this support will depend on whether the products are at least as cost-effective and competitive as the conventional alternative. We posit that the fundamentals of classical Shari\u27ah concerning (i) equitable risk and return sharing between the lender (MFI) and the borrower (client) and (ii) helping the poor, especially the \u27poorest of the poor,\u27 to be self-sustaining, provide the necessary foundation for an Islamic micro-finance model, Grameen La Riba model, that is better suited to help the poor increase their sustainable income and eventually escape poverty

Financial Accounting Measures and Mayoral Elections

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between electoral outcomes and accounting measures at the city level. We use a larger sample, more recent time horizon, and different methodology to provide additional support for the relevance of accounting and financial measures for explaining mayoral election outcomes. Our evidence suggests that Ingram and Copeland (1981) results for mayor-council cities are generalizable to a different time period and different sample of cities, including those with a council-manager form of government. Our results, contrary to our expectations based on previous studies such as Baber (1993), also indicate that financial accounting measures are more relevant for cities characterized by low political competition than for those with high political competition