JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC ECONOMIC STUDIES
Year:2013 | Volume:5 | Issue:1 (9) |Papers Count:6

Rawls' ' «A Theory of Justice» has been one of most influential works in the subject in 20th century, to the extent that whoever writes on the subject nowadays, should address his views in a way, whether to refer to his theory or put forth critiques to present his own theory. Regarding this prominence, critical study of this theory would have a vital role in advancement of justice studies in our country. According to our views, in studying any theory of justice three issues or elements should be put under scrutiny: First, what is the basis or the criterion of justice in that theory? The answer to this question will determine the methodology of the scholar in explaining his own concept of justice as well. Second, what is the domain in which justice is defined in that theory? Finally, what definition of justice is suggested by the theory? Reconstructing Rawls' ' theory in addition to the critiques of his responses to the above questions indicates that, in spite of Rawls' ' attempt and to suggest an alternative to the classical utilitarian theory of justice, his theory could have no distinct consequences.

The debt markets are an integral part of financial sector, Nevertheless, with regard to the provisions of this matter, claim and interest payments are considered forbidden for Muslims. In countries where Muslims constitute the major portion of the population, they are unable to respond to their financial needs by using the conventional debt markets (based on interest). Hence, in these countries there is significant demand for the development of an alternative debt markets, and compatible with Islamic precepts. As a result, during the last few years, Islamic bonds that comply with Islamic principles and are known as Sukuk, have grown substantially and have been designed by companies and governments. Despite the implementation of Islamic banking and effective attempts in the stock market, still Sukuk issuance is neglected. This paper has designed an appropriate model for Sukuk and potential emissions of it are calculated. For this purpose, we use two scenarios (total Sukuk issued in the world and issued in Islamic countries) to predict the capacity of Sukuk. Sukuk statistics are extracted and the potential capacity for investment in Sukuk has been estimated for the Periods 1990-2010 and 1353-1387 respectively.

In this paper the intergenerational justice is discussed through the subject «discounting» and explained that if discounting is just in social decisions or not and if so, is there any Islamic criterion for this important economic parameter. Hence, the library research method and logical analysis of Islamic documents has been used to show that intergenerational justice is satisfied if by utilizing a specific amount of natural resources the same amount of resources be generated from other forms of capitals. Finally, it is concluded that the discounting is not unjust if the above condition is satisfied. Otherwise, any positive and zero rate of discounting is unjust and it should be used a rate between zero and minus one if it is necessary to use the exhaustible natural resources.

A quick glance at the Islamic economic sources shows that reducing poverty and improving income distribution are among the most important economic goals of Islam and Subsequently, Islamic economics. On the other hand, the evaluation of the effects of income inequality on economic growth has been a point of focus for conventional economics scholars and also the Islamic economics researchers and hence, there are quite a few researches in this regards. Considering this, it seems important to shed some lights on the relation of the income inequality and economic growth in Iran as an Islamic developing country. Actually this question should be answered that has the income inequality of Iran decreased or increased the trend of economic growth in Iran? For answering this question, this paper evaluates the effects of the economic inequality on growth rate of Iran, after going over the topic in the framework of Islamic economics. For this sake, an endogenous growth model is specified, that includes human capital and technological progress. The generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) technique is used to estimate regression parameters. The results show that rising income ineq uality, which is measured by the Gini index and the ratio of income of the household at the 9th percentile to the household at the 1th percentile, would hinder economic growth in Iran. However, there is a positive relation between economic growth and the growth in employment, investment spending, technological progress, and human capital.

Full Text [PDF 278KB] Naming the fourth decade of the Islamic revolution: «progress and justice» by the supreme leader and regional programming as one of important strategies in the development plans, highlights the necessity of design geographical justice criteria in the geography of the country. Considering all this, the current research tries to answer two questions in the area of justice and development: 1. How should the criteria of local-sectoral development plans be defined. Considering the geographical justice criteria, what are the main approaches in local-sectoral development? 2. Based approach to geographical justice, what is the advantage of producing province of the country? what is the commensurate of these advantages with the conventional approach. According to the geographical justice, it seems that the main approach in Islamic economics in geographical advantage is natural advantage. The natural advantage requires that only natural criteria be considered and the regional advantage will be a multi-dimensional problem based on natural criteria. After determining these criteria, the policies related to developing the artificial criteria related to the advantaged sectors will be provided. The application of Article and based on theoretical principles presented, the geographical advantage in areas of Iran with the conventional approach and natural advantage were presented. Finally, a comparative analysis of these two approaches was made. This comparison shows the results of local-sectoral development plans in the pass has the 50% deviation from the requisite.

Economic theories consider asymmetric information as a major factor of market failure. Usually the producer has more information about the production quality than the consumer, very much like laborers’ more information in regard to their skill and efficiency as compared to their employers. Thus, in the conventional economic literature especially in neoclassical economic thought, measures have been taken to prevent market failure. This is discussed in the fields of «Economics of Information» and «Contract Theory». In the Islamic School of Economics, therefore, various jurisprudential issues related to contracts are included, which prove the important role of the principle of symmetric information in that area, with its pertinent strategies formulated to provide accurate information for the market. Consequently, the contractors should be in touch with the necessary amount of information about the transaction to guarantee a sound and safe one. One of the main components of information is «time». This paper shows the pivotal status of time that can result in Muslims’ market efficiency so much so that its absence can cause the cancelation of the contract and market failure. In fact one could assert that «time» as an effective factor in symmetric information, indicates the high status of Islamic economics view which is highly neglected in other economic schools. Muslims’ market efficiency is therefore achieved within ethical norms and avoids any kind of efficiency loss or market failure.