Incongruity in Contemporary and Shariah Compliant Current Accounts and Ijarah Operated by Islamic Banking

Current accounts and Ijarah has been foremost and important tools operated by the Islamic Financial Institutions. This study attempts to explore a few misgivings in the handling of current accounts by the Islamic banks in Pakistan. Financial management of Islamic banks is not under consideration which leads to the violation of Shariah’s fundamentals. Also in case of Ijarah, a bank’s client suffers from financial losses which must be borne in Islamic Banking system. Islamic Banks transfer the burden of some charges emerging form ownership of leased asset on their clientele which does not have any justification according to Shariah. This research has been carried out by taking unstructured interviews from some of the concerned staff of Islamic Banks. The results depict that current accounts and Ijarah is in operation and need to be revised and refined and must comply with Shariah.

Household Energy Demand in Pakistan the Role Climate Change and Demographic Transition

This research consists of closely interlinked studies evaluating household energy consumption in relation to demographic transitions, income and price elasticities, and global climate change. First, we examine the impact of ageing and generational effects on household energy consumption behavior. Demographic shift is a worldwide phenomenon, which is mainly common among industrialized nations. However, in the age of fast technology transfer and globalization policy makers cannot undervalue population aging in developing countries, like Pakistan. The relationship between population aging and energy demand has gained importance in Pakistan during the recent times. On the basis of a detailed analysis of micro data spanning over period of 16 years, this study explores the role of generational behavior towards energy consumption, while considering the effects of cohort and age, along with other determinants of energy demand. The decomposition of energy consumption exhibits significant differences in cohort and age effects. The study concludes that, in addition to aging effects, policy makers cannot ignore the recent generation‘s trends of spending increasingly more on energy than previous generations. Secondly, we present a thorough analysis evaluating income and price elasticities of energy demand at household level. For this purpose micro data based on eight independent household surveys spanned over the period of 16 years from 2001 to 2016 are used. We apply pseudo-panel approach by creating 1200 cohorts based on different factors, such as region (urban or rural), climatic zone, the months, and the income deciles. The study reports a relatively higher own price elasticities and these clearly illustrate a decline in the household electricity usage with any increase in the electricity prices. Therefore, any national policies that tend to increase electricity price would curb the overall usage of household electricity. Our estimated cross price elasticities tell that electricity are substitute for gas and firewood in Pakistan. Further, we used quantile regression to explore the relationship between energy consumption and predictors at the middle and both ends of the distribution (20th and 80th percentiles). The results indicate that elasticities are significantly different at different levels of electricity usage. We also estimated electricity elasticities across different heterogeneous groups of households as low, middle, and high income households and rural versus urban households. Our results indicate that electricity demand among low income group is more price elastic than among the high income group. Furthermore, electricity demand in rural areas is more price elastic than in urban areas. Therefore, any policies induced in the energy sector might entail significant redistributive effects. Our findings also unveil that how different income groups heterogeneously respond to any changes in energy price and income. In particular, the rural households are strongly responsive to price changes, while the urban households are responsive to income changes. Finally, in the context of global warming, we examine the impact of climate change on household energy consumption. This study focuses on energy consumption patterns of Pakistani households and further examines the relationship between climatic temperature and the usage of electricity while taking into account the purchase of cooling and heating equipment. We compile household level pseudo-panel data for Pakistan by employing repeated cross sections from 200102 to 2013-14. The direct effects of climatic temperature‘s on electricity consumption are determined by estimating the usage of cooling/heating appliances and indirect effects are determined by estimating the purchases and adaptation of additional cooling/heating appliances. We report substantial differences amongst different climatic zones in terms of their appliances adoption and electricity consumption patterns in relation to climatic temperature changes. The findings of our study can be used to guide policy makers towards adopting some better and a prosperous future plans for the energy sector. These plans will be based on sustainable projects which will tackle the challenges of global warming and climate changes, especially pertaining to diverse climatic-based geographical regions of Pakistan.