نشریه مطالعات اقتصاد اسلامی
سال چهارم شماره 1 (پیاپی 7، پاییز و زمستان 1390)

In this paper this question is tried to be answered: How did the Islamic Contract Law affect transaction costs? Our first approach for answering this question is a historical approach which compares the prevailing contract laws in the Northern Arabian Peninsula before and after the dawn of Islam. In the second approach which is an analytical approach we explained the role of Islamic legal teachings in filling the gaps of incomplete contracts. For this reason we explained how the Islamic jurisprudential rules could fulfill the mission of the default rules. Also, by referring to the informational problems we described how the Islamic teachings had regulated contracts. We studied the prohibition of some contractual forms that privileged in the pre-Islamic era as an obvious example of Islamic regulation of contracts. The findings of the paper show that we cannot accept the hypothesis that asserts: "Islamic Contract Law did not decrease the transaction costs."

This paper shows that the fundamentals and analysis methods used by economics to describe the economic facts are different from each other. The Appearance of these methodological differences originates from the different already-accepted fundamental axioms. This research tries hard to show that there are high distinctions in the methodological principles of economists belonging to the different schools of economic thought, including: neoclassics, Keynesians, Marxists, oldinstitutionalists, and new-institutionalists. In addition, this paper sheds light on the fact that if the methodological axioms of an economist or school of thought are different from the other ones, the approaches that originate from these different views would be different.

Man has a social existence. His different needs and abilities limitation lead him to exchange in order to provide his needs. For this purpose, he exchanges his production surplus with other’s production surplus. In this case, the equal value of traded goods is to ensure justice. Today, the most transactions are paid with money. However, these questions come to existence when the price of goods and services increase and the purchasing power of payrolls decline in Islamic community: What will be the duty of government dealing with this situation? Can the government set prices for goods and services and monitor or control them? Will advising people to forbid the vices and to promote the virtues be enough? In this paper, the methodology is based on the documents and deductive reasoning, using original Islamic resources, such as Quranic verses and interpretations and also Imams’ Hadiths. This paper shows that Islamic governor should not intervene in pricing goods and services and the relative abundance and scarcity of goods and services, seasonal conditions and other factors determine prices freely. In the case of abnormal conditions, when the increase in the prices is led to people’s suffering, government should intervene in market affaires and pricing in order to prevent injustice to people. In a normal condition, the Islamic governor’s or his representative’s guidance to people to pay attention to their religious and ethical duties can be effective in ensuring the fairness of prices.

The theories of consumers’ behavior indicate the human behavior as a creature having will and aim. These involve particular assumptions that very often are based on what should be done and what should not be done. In the modern economic theories, the analysis of the consumers behavior is based on this fact that a rational economic man only minds his own interests and profits and tries to maximize his utility from the goods and services. He ranks the various commodities according to the utility and degree of satisfaction, and then chooses the optimum way to have the highest satisfaction. While from the viewpoint of capitalism, these hypotheses may sound reasonable and acceptable, the Islamic thought and values lead to an alternative set of assumptions that all of these imply a different framework for the analysis of the typical Muslim consumption behavior. This article comprehensively surveys Islamic values and constraints on consumption behavior, and then constructs a mathematical model of optimization based on these assumptions.

Nowadays, the economical and commercial activities play an important role in the countries’ political stability. Also, the diplomatic ties and countries bilateral or multilateral relations are based on their economical and commercial power. However, in the today’s world, money laundering has become a global problem. This predicament has become common all over the world and appears as a universal unlawful phenomenon in the universal economy. Because of this, international community has decided to fight against it. For reaching this end, the international community has done several activities such as united nations convention in narcotic drugs or convention of anti-narcotic campaign and hallucinogenic drugs, Basel committee statutes, EU 1990 charter, Palermo convention. The Islamic Republic of Iran because of some gaps in the banking system and being in the transit route of drugs has planned a campaign against money laundering from years ago. Finally, legislators at parliament passed in 2008 a related and necessary act, and the mechanisms to campaign against this phenomenon were explained. Although there are some deficiencies in the banking system, currency, customs, taxation, statistics and. .. the country still needs to review and update the policies to fight against this phenomenon.

The most important behavior of individuals and households is consumption. As the consumption compromises a considerable part of GDP in most of the countries, any small change in the quantity and quality of it will have a huge impact on the growth and development of the country. In conventional economics, consumption analyses and theories only deal with the market variables such as prices and incomes and the role of non-market variables, and the psychological and cultural ones, are ignored. Non-market variables such as psychic expectations of consumers about the future of the market, precautionary behavior, imitating behavior, consumer’s confidence in the market and caring about relative consumption have substantive impacts on the level of consumption so that they cause consumption either to be increased more than enough in booms and generate bubbles, or to be declined more than enough in recessions and make them longer and more intense. In designing its economic system, Islam has directed and conducted innate incentives and motivations and also posed legal and ethical constrains. In doing so, Islam has tried to manage consumption behaviors so that it not only prevents extensive economic crises but also provides the conditions for advancing the economy. Among the Islamic policies which control the troubling part of the consumption and provide the necessary demand for economic growth are: ethical settlement of the incentives before entering the market, prohibiting prodigal consumption and planning to bring all the people to a Kafaf level of consumption, prohibiting Riba and not recommending to debt-financing the consumption, and finally, introducing divine incentives for working and making money.