Purpose This paper aims to investigate the relationship between investors’ demographic characteristics (age, gender, education level and experience) and their investment decisions through behavioral factors (sentiment, overconfidence, overreaction and underreaction and herd behavior) as mediator variables in the Egyptian stock market. Design/methodology/approach This paper collects data from a structured questionnaire survey carried out among 384 local Egyptian, foreign, institutional and individual investors. This paper used a partial multiple regression method to analyze the effect of investors’ demographic characteristics on investment decisions through behavioral factors as the mediator variable. Findings Investor sentiment, overreaction and underreaction, overconfidence and herd behavior significantly affect investment decisions. Also, age, gender and the level of education have significant positive effects on investment decisions by investors. Experience does not play a significant role in investment decisions, but as investors gain experience, they tend to overlook the emotional factors. Practical implications The findings of this paper would help to understand common behavioral patterns of investors and indicate a path toward the growth of the Egyptian stock market. Originality/value There is a lack of research in behavioral finance covering Middle East and North African markets. This paper attempts to fulfill the gap by analyzing behavioral factors in the Egyptian market.

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Purpose -This paper aims to examine the impact of financial liberalization and foreign Islamic bank entry on the performance of domestic Islamic banks, and credit availability to the private sector. Design/methodology/approach -The authors use the weighted least squares method to estimate four models. These models are suggested by Lee. For this, the inverse of the number of domestic Islamic banks in each period is used to weight the observations in the regressions to correct for varying number of bank observations in each country. Findings -The results indicate that foreign Islamic banks, on average, follow aggressive financing in host countries and enjoy higher net profit margin. Banking sector returns play an important role in the entry decision and presence of foreign banks. Moreover, favorable macro-economic conditions play a supportive role while higher tax policies play a hostile role for the entry and presence of foreign Islamic banks. The recent financial crisis does not seem to affect the entry decision significantly. But the profitability of domestic Islamic banks has been seriously affected by the recent crisis. Also domestic tax policy and macro-economic environment play important roles in determining the domestic Islamic bank performance. Results also indicate that private sector credit availability seems to suffer because of higher tax and reserve rate. Practical implications -The authors' findings suggest that host Islamic economies should strive for an efficient capital market with supportive macro-economic environment, which in turn helps the local banking sector to develop and benefit from the foreign Islamic bank entry. Originality/value -This is the first paper to analyze the entry of foreign Islamic banks in the host countries with Islamic banking sector.

This paper examines the effects of country conditions on fund manager fees. By using an international sample of 607 funds from 23 countries, the authors show that legal, culture, and political risk have robust effects on fund manager fees. The findings indicate that Islamic and conventional funds in developing countries with weaker legal settings and higher corruption have higher fixed and performance fees. However, performance fees are lower and fixed fees are higher in countries with higher political risk. Overall, Hofstede's cultural values significantly affect the fund fees with robust differential effects between Islamic and conventional funds.