How the Islamic finance approach to risk can serve as a model for global reform The recent U.S. financial debacle has affected the entire world and led to major reviews of risk management in financial institutions. Perhaps a simpler alternative is just to adopt the systems used for centuries in Islamic finance. Risk Sharing in Finance expounds upon this novel idea, suggesting that the Islamic financial system can be developed for use around the world by providing a helpful paradigm for crafting global financial reforms. Demonstrating how Islamic finance can successfully expand its array of risk sharing instruments, for example issuing government shares to finance development projects and placing limits on short sales and leveraging, the book makes a compelling case for thinking outside the box to redevelop a vibrant stock market. Provides analysis of the comparative historical, theoretical, and empirical investigation of risk management in both the conventional and the Islamic-type financial systems Explores the benefits and the implications of introducing Islamic finance around the world and explains how wider reliance on risk sharing can be implemented Establishes a connection between the flawed contemporary Western system of capitalist finance and the ancient, traditional forms of risk-sharing prevalent in Islamic finance Offering a timely look at financial reform, Risk Sharing in Finance draws on the expertise of author Zamir Iqbal of the World Bank, along with a host of co-authors Abbas Mirakhor, Hossein Askari, and Noureddine Krichene to present a new form of financial reform.

The contemporary finance deals mainly with multilateral and multi-counterparty transactions. Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh) has yet to develop its conceptualization of this modality of financing. Thus far, it has become a norm for large financing projects to rely on a complex structure of interconnected bilateral contracts that in totality becomes opaque, complex and costly. An unfortunate result of the unavailability of an efficient Fiqhi model applicable to modern multilateral and multi-counterparty contracts has been the fact that the present Islamic finance has been forced to replicate conventional risk-transfer (interest rate based) debt contracts thus drawing severe criticisms of duplicating conventional finance. In 2012, a gathering of some of the Muslim world’s most prominent experts in Jurisprudence (Fuqaha) and economists issued the Kuala Lumpur Declaration (Fatwa) in which they identified risk sharing as the essence of Islamic finance. The Declaration opened the door for a new Fiqh approach to take the lead in developing the jurisprudence of multilateral and multi-counterparty transactions. This Declaration (Fatwa) provides a prime motivation to search for a comprehensive model of risk sharing that can serve as an archetypal contract encompassing all potential contemporary financial transactions. From the perspective of Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh), the technicalities of the concept of risk sharing in contemporary finance have yet to be defined in Islamic literature. This book attempts to clarify and shed light on these technicalities from the perspective of Fiqh. It is a comprehensive study that relies on the fundamental Islamic sources to establish a theoretical and practical perspective of Fiqh encompassing risk-sharing Islamic finance as envisioned in the Kuala Lumpur Declaration of 2012. This new paradigm should lead to a more efficient approach to multilateral and multi-counterparty Islamic contracts which, here-to-fore has been lacking in the current configuration of Islamic finance.

How the Islamic finance approach to risk can serve as a model for global reform The recent U.S. financial debacle has affected the entire world and led to major reviews of risk management in financial institutions. Perhaps a simpler alternative is just to adopt the systems used for centuries in Islamic finance. Risk Sharing in Finance expounds upon this novel idea, suggesting that the Islamic financial system can be developed for use around the world by providing a helpful paradigm for crafting global financial reforms. Demonstrating how Islamic finance can successfully expand its array of risk sharing instruments, for example issuing government shares to finance development projects and placing limits on short sales and leveraging, the book makes a compelling case for thinking outside the box to redevelop a vibrant stock market. Provides analysis of the comparative historical, theoretical, and empirical investigation of risk management in both the conventional and the Islamic-type financial systems Explores the benefits and the implications of introducing Islamic finance around the world and explains how wider reliance on risk sharing can be implemented Establishes a connection between the flawed contemporary Western system of capitalist finance and the ancient, traditional forms of risk-sharing prevalent in Islamic finance Offering a timely look at financial reform, Risk Sharing in Finance draws on the expertise of author Zamir Iqbal of the World Bank, along with a host of co-authors Abbas Mirakhor, Hossein Askari, and Noureddine Krichene to present a new form of financial reform.

Franklin Allen and Douglas Gale assemble some of their key papers along with a five-chapter overview that not only synthesizes their work but provides a historical and institutional review and a discussion of alternative approaches as well.

This book examines the application of risk-sharing finance as a national economic policy in history and how it stimulated economic recovery during a short period in Germany between 1933 and 1935. Economic history indicates that risk-sharing instruments have promoted socio-economic development in many parts of the world while risk-shifting methods have imposed huge socio-economic costs on many nations, leading to debt slavery on individual members. This book highlights lessons to be learned from history and argues that risk-sharing is a powerful tool for generating rapid economic recovery and resumption of growth.

Wealth inequality has been not only rising at unsustainable pace but also dissociated from income inequality because of the fact that wealth is increasing without concomitant increase in savings and productive capital. Compelling evidence indicates that capital gains and other economic rents are mainly responsible for wealth inequality and its divergence from income inequality. The main argument of the book is that interest-based debt contracts are one of the drivers of wealth inequality through creating disproportional economic rents for the asset-rich. The book also introduces the idea of risk-sharing asset-based redistribution, which is a novel and viable policy proposal, as an effective redistribution tool to address the wealth inequality problem. Furthermore, a large-scale stock-flow consistent macroeconomic model, which is step by step constructed in the book, sheds light on the formation of wealth inequality in a debt-based economy and on the prospective benefits of implementing risk-sharing asset-based redistribution policy tools compared to traditional redistribution policy options. The research presented in this book is novel in many respects and first of its kind in the Islamic economics and finance literature.

The concept of risk-sharing in financial and social contracts is one of the unique features of Islamic finance. Many theoretical studies generally claim superiority of an Islamic financial system based on pure equity and participatory modes of financing, while empirical studies provide mixed results. Studies and discussions are needed to fully understand how Islamic finance could contribute to the ongoing discussion of financial stability. Against this background, this book addresses various aspects of Islamic finance and the risk-sharing mechanism contributions to the overall macroeconomic and financial stability. Undoubtedly, the findings and recommendation from this book should be of great interest not only to future academic researchers in the field of macroeconomic stability and Islamic finance, but also to policy makers and regulators who are keen on drawing lessons from Islamic finance experiences to prevent similar crisis in the future.