مطالب

The Sukuk market has become the fastest growing segment of the Islamic financial services industry. Governments and other corporate entities have started tapping the local and international Sukuk markets in order to raise the required funds. The investor base is also expanding and Sukuk has now become a popular and obvious choice for retail investors in a number of jurisdictions. However, because of lack of suitable market conditions and some cross-border restrictions, the international Sukuk market is not developed enough in Iran. Using international Sukuk issuance data for 2001–2015, this study investigates the determinants of international Sukuk issuance and the capacity of issuing such securities in Iranian financial market. We use ANOVA analysis and PCA to explore main factors. Using the data of 34 indicators for 21 countries that have issued international Sukuk, we found that the main determinants of international Sukuk issuance are the ratios of bank deposits to GDP (%), Stock market capitalization to GDP (%), International debt issues to GDP (%) and outstanding international public debt securities to GDP (%). After determination of the basic factors for the countries, using the discriminant model, we estimated the Iranian financial market’s capacity for issuing international Sukuk. Keywords: Islamic finance, International sukuk, Sukuk issuance, Iranian financial market. JEL Classification: G15, G23, E27, C21

The real macroeconomic instability and frequent changes in the monetary and banking regulations with financial contagion to the banks’ financial statements in the banking network of Iran cause intensified instabilities in its financial behaviors. In this paper, using statistical analysis and three-dimensional charts, we have analyzed the behavior of the financial statements of consolidated balance sheets covering the banking network of Iran. The paper also uses a non-linear estimation to calculate the threshold value regarding financial statements such as the nonperforming loan ratio. Results indicate that the banking network financial statements must be restructured due to exogenous shocks. Also, in the recession periods of the year 2011 fourth period and 2012 first period, the recession has reached the banking network with lag and banks have been able to change the return on assets ratio regimes neither in the year 2011 nor in the beginning months of the year 2012. Furthermore, the banks have started a contracting policy in providing loans. As time passes, yields and the performing loans depict the fact that yields on assets as profit indicators are increased unless the interest earning and different periods of time changes are also augmented. Going beyond the critical threshold, generating loans will be likely to drive non-performing loans since these loans are not going to be reimbursed. Banks will have to extend their loans to new loan contracts to consider them as performing which will lead to identification of fake profits in their statements. Key words: Financial Statement restructuring, Nonlinear Estimation, Threshold value JEL Classification: E21, G21, L2

One of the psychological variables which may have a long-lasting effect on our life is labeling, and students’ accomplishments might be severely undermined through the teacher’s labeling. In spite of this issue, few studies have been carried out on the ramifications of labeling in the educational contexts, in general, and EFL classrooms, in particular. The current study is an attempt to investigate the occurrence possibility of negative labeling and how such labels eventually influence students’ psychological/academic potentials. Since it was not possible to expose the students to the experience of negative labels in their real situations, the 100 high-school female participants of the study were asked to make predictions on social/academic success of a fictitious student who was labeled as dyslexic (Hunt, 2006). Besides, they were given a modified 11-item questionnaire (Mwania & Muola, 2013) about their experiences of being labeled. The participants were also asked to fill in the Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory (SEI) (1967) to determine if there is a relationship between their labeling experiences, their self-esteem and their reported academic achievements. The collected data was then processed using SPSS. The findings of the study indicate that teacher’s negative labeling was significantly related with students’ self-esteem, their academic potentials, and their future life/success/expectations.The study bears some significant implications for teachers’ education since the findings show that the negative ramifications of labeling in EFL contexts should be taken into more serious consideration in teaching.

The language register used in academic communities has the special features of density, complexity, and abstractness which are associated with nominalization with which new members of the communities might not be familiar. To explore the possible distance between novice and established members regarding their awareness of this grammatical feature, the present study investigated the employment of nominalization in the writings of Iranian graduate students (both MA and PhD students) and experienced figures in applied linguistics. Forty five research articles in the discipline by the three groups of writers served as the corpus of the study. A rigorous analysis began by identifying and outlining nominalization instances manually through and per all rhetorical sections of the articles. The occurrences of the two types of nominal expressions was counted and normalized. So as to detect the possible significant differences between the samples, chi-square tests were run. The results revealed that the experienced writers used significantly more nominalization in their writings. However, although the total nominal expressions used in MA texts were more than those used in PhD texts, the difference turned out not to be significant. There were also similarities and variations in the ranking patterns of the two types of nominalization in four rhetorical sections of the three groups of the articles. It can be concluded that the differences might reflect the distance between the novice and the established authors regarding their awareness of the importance of nominalization in academic writing. The implications of the study for EAP courses were also discussed.