الفكر السياسي الإسلامي وتطوره من الشورى إلى الديمقراطية

There has been a tussle going on between Islam and democracy for many decades in the Muslim world which has benefited most certainly the anarchic factions like kings, lords and army dictators. Though democracy is close to Islam and thought to be the best of all types of governments as majority is authority in it that may make or mar the government. In a democratic setup, the individual and personal rights and freedom are considered which is why it is preferred more these days. Many as Muslim thinkers are also in favor of it, but still there is a large faction of clerical scholars who deem democracy as the root of all evils since it empowers general public as an authoritative and decisive force. However with the passage of time, the Islamic counseling system has evolved and come very close to the spirit of democracy. Therefore, may contemporary scholars hold Islamic counseling and democracy almost similar. This article aims to present a preview of democracy and counseling in the light of what the Ulema (Scholars) say about it.

Exploiting the Market Inefficiencies: the Case of Single Stock Futures Arbitrage at Pakistan Stock Exchange Limited

This study examines the pricing efficiency of the derivatives segment of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), particularly the Single Stock Futures (SSF), to look for the arbitrage opportunities. Futures provide profit-making opportunities to the arbitragers if these contracts are being traded above or below their theoretical fair price. A positive mispricing helps to get a riskless profit by selling the futures and buying the underlying stock and negative mispricing yields through buying the futures and selling the underlying stock. These contracts are available for more than forty individual stocks listed on PSX that are selected biannually through uniform selection criteria. The analysis is piloted on one-year data collected from twenty-two firms, engaged in stock futures trading on PSX. Summary statistics confirmed numerous instances of deviation of these future contracts from their fair prices calculated by the cost of carry formula. Though negative deviations were greater in magnitude, positive deviations were relatively more in frequency, leading to the conclusion that SSFs are generally sold on premium in our stock market and arbitrage trading is easier in this market. Results of random effect Tobit model indicated that behavior of price deviations in SSFs can be determined by different factors. It is observed that absolute mispricing increases with the increasing time to maturity of these contracts. Increasing price bands are also associated with increasing volatility of underlying stock. Absolute mispricing behaves differently for liquidity, as measured by trading volume, of futures and their underlying stock. Lower liquidity of underlying stock and higher liquidity of SSFs increases the mispricing spreads. Open interest cannot significantly explain the behavior of mispricing.