Five papers make up this issue. The first one, titled Analysis of Islamic Bank’s Financing and Economic Growth: Case Study Iran and Indonesian by Yazdan Gudarzi Farahani and Seyed Mohammad Hossein Sadr, examines the short-run and the long-run relationships between Islamic banking development and economic growth in the case of Iran and Indonesia, with this regard we use quarterly data (2000:1-2010:4), this paper utilizes the bound testing approach of cointegration and error correction models, developed within an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework. Some of the issues and challenges that Islamic banking has been facing in Iran have also been addressed. It also seeks to examine modes of Islamic financing and the commitment of commercial banks to implement the Islamic banking law. The results show a significant relationship in short-run and long-run periods between Islamic financial development and economic growth. The relationship appears to be bi-directional relationship. This paper uses empirical evidence to show the role of Islamic banks’ financing towards economic performance of a country.

The second paper, titled Revisiting Health and Income Inequality Relationship: Evidence from Developing Countries by Mohammad Habibullah Pulok, examines the health-income inequality hypothesis using panel data from 31 low income and low middle income countries for the period of 1982-2002. Application of fixed effects and random effects model to control for country specific heterogeneity in this study provides contradictory findings to the existing cross country studies. In other words, empirical results of this paper confirm that there is a positive relation between health and income distribution in this set of developing countries over the study period.

The third paper, titled Bid-Ask Spread, Futures Market Sentiment and Exchange Rate Returns by M. Faisal Safa and Neal C. Maroney, analyzes spot foreign exchange bid-ask spread and the future market sentiment as two important variables to explain the exchange rate returns. In this paper uses two sentiment indices based on futures market return and volume. Time series and cross-sectional analyses of three different currency exchange rates; Australian Dollar, British Pound and Canadian Dollar – to US Dollar suggest that the spot market bid-ask spread is one important variable that positively affects the spot exchange rate returns. The return based sentiment index does not seem to be a significant factor, but the volume based sentiment index affects the spot exchange rate returns significantly. The negative sign of sentiment indices implies lower spot market return associated with higher investor interest in futures market, although higher trading in futures market contributes positively in the spot market.

The fourth paper, titled Food Security, Policies and Institutions in Africa: Prospects for a Revolution by Ogujiuba Kanayo, Ogbonnaya Ufiem Maurice and Omoju Oluwasola Emmanuel, examines the challenges and problems of food security in Africa and identifies the prospects for a double green revolution in Africa. The paper recommends, as a strategy in tackling the food crisis, a restructuring of existing state institutions and collaborations among African states to ensure food sufficiency.

The last and fifth paper, titled Evidence of Global Financial Shocks Transmission: Changing Nature of Stock Markets Integration during the 2007/2008 Financial Crisis by Salina H. Kassim, aims to empirically examine the nature of integration among the Malaysian stock market with two of the world’s biggest stock markets, namely the US and Japan, during the global financial crisis in 2007/2008. By assessing the changes in the nature of integration among these markets during the crisis, the study aims to find evidence on the international transmission of the financial shocks through the global stock markets. The study covers the period from September 1, 2006 to May 30, 2009. In efforts to capture the changing nature of integration among the stock markets, the sample period is divided into three sub-periods, namely the pre-crisis period, during crisis period I and during crisis period II. The study finds that the nature of integration among these markets changes over the three periods due to the crisis.

Abstract articles of the Journal of Economic Cooperation and Development, Vol.33 No.4 (2012)