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This paper makes a novel attempt to estimate the potential impact of credit risk on foreign direct investment (FDI hereafter), thereby focusing on a completely unexplored area in the existing empirical literature.

To provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between credit risk and FDI inflows, the study incorporates all the eight-member economies of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC hereafter) and analyzes a panel data set, over the period 2011 to 2019, extracted from the World Development Indicators, using the suitable econometric techniques for the efficient estimations of the specified models.

The results indicate a negative and statistically significant relationship between the credit risk of the banking sectors and FDI inflows. Similarly, market size and inflation rate appear to be the two other main factors behind the increasing FDI inflows in the SAARC member economies. Interestingly, the size of the market became irrelevant in attracting FDI inflows when the Indian economy is excluded from the sample due to its higher economic weight. On the other hand, FDI inflows are not dependent on the level of trade openness, with most of the specifications showing either an insignificant or negative coefficient of the variable.

The obtained results are unique and robust to alternative methodologies, and hence, the SAARC economies could consider them as the critical inputs in formulating the appropriate policies on FDI inflows.

The findings are unique and original. The authors have established a relationship between credit risk and FDI for the first time in the SAARC context.

This paper empirically examines the impact of terrorism on the insurance–growth relationship in the context of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, thereby attempting to address the unexplored area in the relevant literature.

The study considered MENA as it has been one of the terribly affected zones in the world during the study period. Panel data for the period (2002–2017) are sourced from reliable sources for 14 member economies of the MENA region.

After employing the suitable econometric procedures on the panel data, the results indicate that terrorism appears to have detrimental impact on the observed positive relationship between insurance and economic growth. In addition, trade openness seems to be the main driving force behind economic growth of the selected MENA countries. Surprisingly, the study suggests a negative association between the growth of physical capital and economic growth. Human capital has played a positive but insignificant role in improving economic growth as it is insignificant in majority of the specifications. The growth of labor force has although positively but insignificantly influenced economic growth. Finally, the results demonstrate that government expenditures and high inflation are harmful for growth.

The study investigated the impact of terrorism on the insurance–growth relationship for the first time, and hence policymakers of the MENA region are expected to be benefited enormously from the findings of the study.

Previous studies described the professional zakat had been limited. Generally, the past authors conducted a quantitative method with general results and did not focus on the behaviour of people who pay the professional zakat. As a result, the purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive understanding of how the general public can pay their zakat using Bloom’s theory.

This research uses primary data with in-depth interviews from five informants, including civil servants (PNS) and private employees. Spiral analysis was used to analyse the data, arrange it, read it frequently, take brief notes, find categories, interpret and summarise it.

The results show Bloom’s theory can accommodate muzakki’s behaviour by paying professional zakat. It can be seen from the following conclusions: firstly, in the cognitive domain, muzakki’s behaviour of paying the professional zakat was motivated by their memories (experiences), the ability to interpret, the ability to understand the principles of zakat, the ability to understand the relations and the ability to understand the role of zakat from its norms. Secondly, in the affective domain, muzakki’s behaviour in paying the professional zakat was motivated by their ability to receive, give positive value, call others and dare to take risks. Thirdly, in the psychomotor domain, guided practice, mechanised practice and adoption drive muzakki’s behaviour of paying zakat.

This study has limitations regarding the number of samples (informants). In addition, the results of the research are designed to be very subjective so that they cannot be generalised to phenomena that exist in other places and countries that also require zakat in the profession. In the future, the results of this study can be used as a variable development with quantitative methods so that it can involve more samples to get maximum and a broader result.

This research has a valuable managerial impact on the zakat management institutions, particularly in Langsa, Aceh, Indonesia and all zakat institutions worldwide. Therefore, the central government can evaluate the zakat gap through various socialisation activities by promoting the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains. Socialisation should improve people’s behaviour to pay zakat so that the amount of zakat collected will be higher and will reduce the gap between the potency of zakat and the zakat in reality which has been unequal so far.

This research will contribute to the significant development of zakat in terms of studying the behaviour of muzakki paying the professional zakat. Although the theory of planned behaviour was dominated by previous research, this research reveals other aspects of muzakki behaviour using Bloom’s model by elaborating on cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains.

This paper aims to establish a relationship between trade openness and economic growth in the context of the developing countries. This study has proposed a new measure of trade openness to the literature, as the available measures are flawed.

Empirical analyses are carried out with the help of panel econometric techniques.

The main finding of the paper is that the relationship between trade openness and economic growth is positive and statistically significant for developing countries. Besides trade openness, other determinants of economic growth such as investment and labour force are also significantly related with economic growth and carry expected coefficients. Further, it is found that frequent fluctuations in prices are detrimental to long-run economic growth.

Therefore, the developing countries are suggested to speed up the process of trade liberalization and also pay favourable attention to other determinants of economic growth to achieve high economic growth.

The authors have used a new measure of trade openness apart from the conventional trade volume measure of trade openness.