Browsing by Author "Kuran, T"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Between consumer demand and Islamic law: The evolution of Islamic credit cards in Turkey
    (Journal of Comparative Economics, 2015-11-01) Çokgezen, M; Kuran, T
    © 2015 Association for Comparative Economic Studies.The elimination of interest from financial transactions has been a salient goal of Islamization movements around the world. Its proponents have had to balance this objective, which they claim to draw from Islamic law (Sharia), against consumer demand for convenient products. In general they have opted to accommodate consumer demand, but surreptitiously, using legal ruses to disguise their compromises. Turkey's experience with credit cards offers a revealing case of the obfuscation in question. Having denounced credit cards as un-Islamic, Turkey's Islamic banks have all proceeded to issue credit cards of their own in order to remain competitive with their openly interest-friendly, conventional rivals. With local variations, the Turkish pattern resembles that of other markets where Islamic credit cards have made inroads. In Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, too, Islamic credit cards function like those of the conventional banks with which they compete for customers. The "Islamic" features of Islamic credit cards amount to branding. Contrary to the claims of their proponents, they do not involve fundamental financial innovations.
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    Institutional Roots of Authoritarian Rule in the Middle East: Civic Legacies of the Islamic Waqf
    (Economic Research Initiatives at Duke (ERID) Working Paper, 2014-06-12) Kuran, T
    In the pre-modern Middle East the closest thing to an autonomous private organization was the Islamic waqf. This non-state institution inhibited political participation, collective action, and rule of law, among other indicators of democratization. It did so through several mechanisms. Its activities were essentially set by its founder, which limited its capacity to meet political challenges. Being designed to provide a service on its own, it could not participate in lasting political coalitions. The waqf’s beneficiaries had no say in evaluating or selecting its officers, and they had trouble forming a political community. Thus, for all the resources it controlled, the Islamic waqf contributed minimally to building civil society. As a core element of Islam’s classical institutional complex, it perpetuated authoritarian rule by keeping the state largely unrestrained. Therein lies a key reason for the slow pace of the Middle East’s democratization process.
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    On the notion of economic justice in contemporary islamic thought
    (International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1989-01-01) Kuran, T
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    PRICE ADJUSTMENT COSTS, ANTICIPATED INFLATION, AND OUTPUT
    (QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, 1986-05) Kuran, T
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    The absence of the corporation in Islamic law: Origins and persistence
    (American Journal of Comparative Law, 2005-09-01) Kuran, T
    Classical Islamic law recognizes only natural persons; it does not grant standing to corporations. This article explores why Islamic law did not develop a concept akin to the corporation, or borrow one from another legal system. It also identifies processes that delayed the diffusion of the corporation to the Middle East even as its role in the global economy expanded. Community building was central to Islam's mission, so early Muslim jurists had no use for a concept liable to facilitate factionalism. Services with large setup costs and expected to last indefinitely were supplied through the waqf, an unincorporated trust. The waqf thus absorbed resources that might otherwise have stimulated an incorporation movement. Partly because the waqf spawned constituencies committed to preserving its key features, until modern times private merchants and producers who stood to profit from corporate powers were unable to muster the collective action necessary to reform the legal system. For their part, Muslim rulers took no initiatives of their own to supply the corporate form of organization, because they saw no commercial or financial organizations worth developing for the sake of boosting tax revenue.
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    The Discontents of Islamic Economic Morality
    (American Economic Review, 1996-05-01) Kuran, T
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    The Economic System In Contemporary Islamic Thought: Interpretation And Assessment
    (International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1986-01-01) Kuran, T
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    The Islamic commercial crisis: Institutional roots of economic underdevelopment in the Middle East
    (Journal of Economic History, 2003-06-01) Kuran, T
    During the second millennium, the Middle East's commerce with Western Europe fell increasingly under European domination. Two factors played critical roles. First, the Islamic inheritance system, by raising the costs of dissolving a partnership following a partner's death, kept Middle Eastern commercial enterprises small and ephemeral. Second, certain European inheritance systems facilitated large and durable partnerships by reducing the likelihood of premature dissolution. The upshot is that European enterprises grew larger than those of the Islamic world. Moreover, while ever larger enterprises propelled further organizational transformations in Europe, persistently small enterprises inhibited economic modernization in the Middle East.