PurposeThis paper reviews economic and finance research on Islamic investments. In the course of our review, we focus on the following issues: the performance of Islamic stock indexes, Islamic finance–growth nexus and Islamic real-estate investment trust market.Design/methodology/approachThis literature survey consists of two stages such as random and systematic. It begins with a random search of articles with the intention to explore the three different areas of Islamic banking and finance. In order to maintain some level of quality of the literature review, we explored inside citations of articles based on relevant and recent articles from SCOPUS and Web of Science.FindingsThis paper represents an attempt to organise current research on Islamic stock markets, Islamic finance-growth nexus and Islamic real-estate finance: (1) the first prevailing finding is that Islamic stock indices are less volatile than conventional stock indices; (2) most empirical studies regarding Islamic finance–growth nexus focus on the impacts of banking sectors on growth and neglect other segments of the Islamic financial market; (3) based on our review of existing studies, there is no unanimous model for Islamic home financing in Islamic banks.Practical implicationsThe mixed findings in this area hinder the understanding of Islamic investment and prevent identifying trends that support decision-making. Our review provides suggestions for prospective research directions. Most empirical studies regarding Islamic finance–growth nexus focus on the impacts of banking sectors on growth and neglect other segments of the Islamic financial market.Originality/valueThere is no literature review on Islamic finance-growth nexus and Islamic real-estate literature. Therefore, we are going to fill this gap to review these three different aspects of Islamic banking and finance.
Purpose
This paper updates the literature regarding the performance of constrained US mutual funds by looking at the relative performance of Christian mutual funds, socially responsible funds and Islamic funds. This paper aims to rank the performance of religious and ethical investment funds.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses monthly returns from 2005 to 2015 to perform traditional asset pricing models as well as data envelopment analysis to determine rank.
Findings
Islamic mutual funds outperform socially responsible funds, which then outperform Christian-based mutual funds; these results are also consistent during the latest 2007-2008 crisis period. The results are robust to different performance metrics and benchmarks. Moreover, this paper reports a significant amount of money “left on the table” by investing in constraint funds and disregarding the sin industry which shows an ethical dilemma for investors.
Practical implications
Investors who seek to invest morally/ethically can be informed of the cost of doing so. They can also compare portfolio with others that have similar holdings and constraints.
Originality/value
This paper not only includes Christian mutual funds in the research but also provides the performance of all constrained assets. It also compares religious funds with “SIN” industry, and thus quantifies the cost of “doing right.”
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