Four papers make up this issue at hand. The first one, titled The Law of Consistency and Socio-Economic Development, by Sayuti Hasibuan, intends to give support to the statement that there is no world-view other than the unity of the divine law of Tawhid in the Qur’an which can properly explain in a cognizant and formal manner the differential socioeconomic development experience in the world today. To this end the world empirical phenomena has been divided in two groups: the physical phenomena which are the subject of the physical sciences and the human phenomena which are the subject of the social sciences. These phenomena are guided by the same divine law, the law of consistency. The paper has emphasized on the human phenomena while including ideas about the physical one. On the human side, it has particularly tackled economy, finance and development. Based on the arguments it has submitted, the paper has strongly recommended that Muslim countries review their development strategies to make them more in line with the basic values of shar’iah economics.

The second paper, titled Human Capital and Income Distribution in Malaysia: A Case Study, by Rahmah Ismail and Ishak Yussof aims to identify the role of human capital in explaining income distribution in Malaysia, where a remarkable high economic growth has been achieved accompanying the vision to achieve the status of newly industrialized nation by year 2020. The study constructs Gini coefficient by various segments like ethnics, regions and strata to look at patterns of income distribution. The analysis has also used other measurements of income distribution such as income ratio and income percentage to support the idea that achieving high economic growth alone cannot guarantee a decent life of the society if there is large income gap between them.

The third paper, which deals with controversial issues, as implied in its title Accelerating and Growth Effects of Trade Openness across OIC Countries, is written by Omid Ranjbar and Zahra (Mila) Elmi. The paper investigates whether trade openness accelerates income per capita convergence process across OIC countries. For this purpose, the authors used convergence-growth equation that include three trade openness measures i.e. intra-trade openness, extra(outside)-trade openness and overall trade openness and dynamic GMM-SYS panel data estimator. They found that growth effect of trade openness varies by different openness proxies and by income groups. The results reached by them show that overall openness trade and intra-openness trade proxies have dampened GDP per capita convergence process. But, extra (outside)- trade openness has accelerated this process.

The fourth and last paper in this issue under the title of: Economic Performance of the OIC Countries and the Prospect of an Islamic Common Market; by M. Kabir Hassan, Benito A. Sanchez and M.Ershad Hussain, examines economic performance of the OIC Member Countries and analyzes the prospect of Islamic Common Market by analyzing trade data within a gravity model framework. It also examines various sub-regional grouping within the context of gravity model, and finds that D8 comprising eight bigger OIC Member Countries is trade creating. The paper suggests a number of policy parameters tailored for more trade flow among the countries under consideration. It also emphasizes that the issue of Islamic Common Market should be examined further in light of new data and changed global perspectives.

Abstract articles of the Journal of Economic Cooperation and Development, Vol.31 No.2 (2010)