Islamic Finance: Conceptual and Analytical Issues from the Perspective of Conventional Economics

Arjit Singh is one of the world's most renowned Indian-born economists. Singh made fundamental academic contributions in the areas of modern business entreprise, de-industrialisation in advanced and emerging economies and the globalisation of financial and product markets. He obtained his first degree at Punjab university, then a masters from Howard University in Washington. He obtained his PhD in 1970 from the University of California, Berkeley, during which time he was given a fellowship at Cambridge.
 

Andrew Sheng is our Distinguished Honorary Research Fellow of the Tun Ismail Ali Chair, Universiti Malaya. He is also the Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Global Institute, University of Hong Kong. He is Pro-Chancellor of Bristol University, U.K. as well as Chairman, George Town Institute of Open and Advanced Studies, Wawasan Open University, Malaysia.  Previously, Andrew Sheng served as President of the Fung Global Institute, Hong Kong, as Chairman of the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong, and as a central banker with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Bank Negara Malaysia (the Central Bank of Malaysia). He has also worked at the World Bank and chaired the Technical Committee of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). In 2009, he became Pro-Chancellor of Universiti Tun Abdul Razak in Malaysia. He was adviser to the UN Environment Programme’s Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System. He holds the post of Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing and Faculty of Economics & Administration, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. A chartered accountant by training, he has a First Class Honours BSc in Economics and Honorary Doctorates from the University of Bristol and the University of Malaya. Andrew Sheng’s areas of expertise include international finance and monetary economics, financial regulation and global governance. He is a columnist for Project Syndicate, Asia News Network and leading economic journals and newspapers in China and Asia at large. He is author of 'From Asian to Global Financial Crisis: An Asian Regulator’s View of Unfettered Finance in the 1990s and 2000s'. He co-edited the book, 'Bringing Shadow Banking into the Light: Opportunity for Financial Reform in China', with Ng Chow Soon.

Prof Dr Abbas Mirakhor is First Holder, INCEIF Chair of Islamic Finance. A former Executive Director of International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dr Abbas joins INCEIF following a distinguished career as an economist and academician with considerable contribution in the eld of Islamic economics, nance and banking. Dr Abbas is a graduate of the Kansas State University, USA, where he received his Bachelor, Master and PhD Degrees in Economics. In 1968, he started his academic career with University of Alabama, USA. With the exception of a 2-year stint at the AzZahara University in Tehran, Iran, throughout his academic career, Dr Abbas has worked as a Professor of Economics at the University of Alabama, Alabama A&M University, and the Florida Institute of Technology. In 1984, he joined the IMF in Washington DC as an economist. He spent 24 years with the IMF, serving as the organisation’s Executive Director and Dean of the Executive Board, retiring in 2008.