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Even though Bitcoin has been often labelled as a safe haven asset class in the literature, the influence of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the diversifying opportunities offered by Bitcoin in relation to other assets needs to be investigated. This paper aims to investigate how the EPU affects diversification of commodity, conventional, Islamic and sustainable equity returns in relation to its impact on Bitcoin returns.

The authors use advanced time-series econometrics, namely, multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic-dynamic conditional correlation and continuous wavelet transformation, for the analysis of the daily returns for the aforementioned assets between 01 August 2011 and 01 September 2019.

First, the authors found a strong evidence of Bitcoin’s mean reverting trend in the long run while its volatility has decreased significantly since 2013. After separating the EPU into two regimes (high and low), diversification opportunities with Bitcoin seems to disappear in a high EPU period, while the hedging opportunity tends to prevail in a low EPU period for all classes of assets. Importantly, the findings indicate that Bitcoin offers short-term diversification for sustainable and Islamic equity as well as energy stocks during a low uncertainty period. Consequently, in relation to the policy uncertainty, Bitcoin provides similar hedging opportunities than commodities like Gold and Silver. Overall, the study shows that EPU is remarkably important in explaining the average portfolio returns of Bitcoin, suggesting that this indicator can be perceived as a decent explanatory factor for portfolio diversification.

The study significantly extends the empirical literature of Bitcoin’s portfolio diversification by taking EPU into consideration. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is one of the few studies to investigate the asymmetric effects of US EPU on Bitcoin’s hedging capabilities by taking into account major conventional equity, sustainable equity, Islamic equity, gold, silver and oil.

This paper aims to study institutions, human capital and economic growth in developing countries.

The study applies dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and simultaneous quantile regression on a panel of 120 developing countries for the period of 1996-2014.

The findings show that human development and institutions do have a significant positive effect on economic growth. Interestingly, institutions and human development have a significant negative interactive effect on the economic growth of developing countries. This paper argues that incremental investment in human development would impact economic growth negatively in the presence of weak and dysfunctional institutions because additional stock tends to be employed in rent-seeking and socially unproductive activities.

The policy makers should bear in mind the critical role played by the institutions and the initial stage of growth of a country in making their education and health policies more effective.

The most important novelty is the study of various transmission channels: political, economic and financial institutions through which human development affect economic growth in developing countries. This paper also studies the Islamic economic development concept and empirically investigates whether Muslim countries are different from their counterparts. Moreover, this study extends the existing empirical growth literature by simultaneously applying dynamic system GMM and quantile regression techniques.

On the backdrop of growing importance of Shariah compliant equity markets, the purpose of this paper is to study cross-country portfolio diversification benefits for investors with major trading partners of Saudi Arabia, namely, USA, China, Japan, Germany and India, who have already invested or tend to invest in Saudi Arabian stock market.

The authors have investigated time invariant, dynamic correlations at different investments horizons of the investors among Islamic asset classes by applying relevant econometric techniques like multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic –DCC and continuous wavelet transforms. For robustness, this study also applied maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform.

The findings tend to indicate that the Saudi Arabian investors have portfolio diversification benefits with all major trading partners in the short-term investment horizon. Interestingly, Saudi Arabian market has the least portfolio diversification benefits with the Chinese market. However, in the long run, all markets are correlated, yielding minimum portfolio diversification benefits and most importantly Saudi Arabian investors have portfolio diversification benefits with the Indian Islamic equity market in almost all investment horizons. The findings are highly consistent across different econometric technique estimations.

The authors are only considering five major trading partners of Saudi Arabia. Also, the authors are using S&P and FTSE shari’ah index. Moreover, the time period of the study is constrained by the availability of shari’ah indices. Econometric limitations are also well documented in the literature.

The results could be beneficial for the investors, portfolio managers, hedge fund managers and institutional investors and also could be useful for the policy makers in their policy-making decisions.

Only very few studies have looked into the benefits of international portfolio diversification from the perspective of local investors as well as the portfolio diversification benefits with the major trading partners of Saudi Arabia. One of the novelties of the method is to make the stock investors, practitioners and policy makers aware of the portfolio diversification benefits available at different time scales such as 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 256 trading days as investment holding periods to unveil the true dynamics of co-movement between those different assets.

This paper aims to compare and contrast the concept of conventional futures contract from the Islamic law of contract perspectives. The underlying theory and practice of Islamic finance is based on the principles of Islamic law of contract. Although the necessity of derivative instruments such as the case with futures contract is essential for developments in Islamic finance, the permissibility of using these instruments still remains a debatable issue.

The paper discusses arguments for and against using derivative instruments as in futures, for example, in light with the Qur’an and Sunnah (the Prophet’s traditions), as well as the views of classical scholars, jurists and contemporary researchers. Arguments for and against are analysed systematically to derive a logical conclusion.

The study finds that majority scholars consider futures contracts as non-compliant with the Islamic law due to the fact that selling something that does not exist, deferment in the both counter values, gharar or ambiguity and excessive risk taking, pure speculation and sale of one debt for another.

The study focuses narrowly on conventional futures contract. Analysing other financial derivative contracts could be a future research endeavour.

The study has so far found the verdict of impermissibility of conventional futures contract in its current form as has been argued by majority scholars in the premise that they do not comply with the Islamic law. Policymakers and industry practitioners need to take this opinion of majority scholars while developing new Islamic financial derivatives.

To the best of the author's knowledge, the present research is the first attempt so far that explained the validity of conventional futures by analysing arguments of classical and contemporary jurists, scholars and researchers.

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) calculates the efficiency of a business unit if all the inputs are creating outputs within a “black box.” Under traditional DEA, the detailed process of that business unit is ignored. However, a network DEA can explain the black box structure and provide efficiency results for sub-sections within any business process. This study aims to propose a network DEA model that explains a bank's total operation.

Earlier studies have focused only on bank efficiency ignoring this breakdown. This study departs from them by using a slack-based two-stage network DEA under a novel banking business perspective.

The results reveal that network DEA provides better benchmarking insights than the traditional DEA. As such, better benchmarking can guide both the banking industry managers and policy makers in Bangladesh.

The major contribution of this study includes dividing a bank's total operation efficiency into two sub-operations: “core operations – collecting deposits and giving loans” and “additional operations – fees, commissions and other services.”

Consumer ethnocentrism (CE) is a matter of interest for marketers over the decades. However, buying intentions toward domestically produced household electronic products in developing and underdeveloped countries have not been examined sufficiently. Hence, this study investigated the consumers' ethnocentrism and attitude toward domestically-produced household electronic goods. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of consumer demographic attributes on ethnocentrism and its moderating effect on choosing domestically produced household electronic goods in the context of Bangladesh.

Primary data have been collected from a sample of 172 respondents using a mall-intercept survey. Consumers' ethnocentrism level has been measured using CETSCALE on a five-point Likert scale. ANOVA and t-test were performed to compare different demographic groups regarding ethnocentrism levels. This study also applied the qualitative method by applying a manual approach.

The result shows that consumers' ethnocentrism levels do not vary with gender and income level. However, other demographic attributes, like occupation, age and education level, play a considerable role in CE tendency.

The study is one of the few that examines the consumers' ethnocentrism and attitudes toward electronic products produced in a developing country. The researchers expect that the outcome of the study would contribute to the domestic manufacturer focusing more rigorously on producing electronic products that would be accepted locally as well as globally.

Research based on Bangladesh–US trade data examines the Heckscher–Ohlin model and the Rybczynski hypothesis in this study.

Ordinary least square (OLS) techniques are used in this study, which relies on data from the NBER International Trade and Geography Data and the UN Comtrade Database for the years 2018 and 2008.

The research shows that trade between the United States and Bangladesh follows Heckscher–Ohlin and Rybcyzinski's trade predictions. According to the study, since labor is in plentiful supply in Bangladesh, Bangladesh's labor-based sectors have a higher US labor-to-capital import shares than US capital-based industries. As Bangladesh has not changed significantly from a labor-based country since 2008, it retains the same pattern even though the share of US unskilled labor-based sectors imported from Bangladesh decreased in 2018.

The findings of this study have a wide range of implications for both trade theory and policy debates between Bangladesh and the United States.

This research aims to determine to what degree registered and nonregistered Rohingyas differ in their difficulties and coping strategies.

Kutupalong registered and one nonregistered camp (Camp 2E) were selected as the study area, and a mixed-methods approach was followed to collect the data. Six in-depth interviews and two focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted first, and then the questionnaire survey was conducted on 315 Rohingyas, comprising 116 registered and 199 non-registered refugees.

The results indicate a substantial difference in the difficulties and coping techniques of registered and nonregistered refugees in food, residence, health and security. Except for the health and security issue, the registered Rohingyas (RRs) have a relatively better life than the nonregistered Rohingyas (NRRs). The main problem registered refugees undergo is economic, followed by health service, food, residence, social and security issue. For nonregistered refugees, economic and social issues receive maximum attention, while security is their last concern. The coping strategies show that all strategies against difficulties significantly differ between registered and nonregistered Rohingyas.

Based on their registration status, this research may assist humanitarian workers and policymakers in better understanding of Rohingya refugees' livelihood strategies and challenges in Bangladesh. The findings may also help practitioners and policymakers build new programs and services to assist complex and difficult refugee groups in improving their livelihoods and access to essential amenities.

Previous research shows little attention to the variations between registered and unregistered refugees. However, almost no studies have compared the challenges and coping methods of registered and unregistered Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and other regions. This research was meant to define and offer an in-depth analysis of the Rohingya refugees' livelihood strategies in the Kutupalong registered and nonregistered camp in Bangladesh to fill the knowledge gap.