Basel III, Risk and the Middle East Financial Markets

As a response to the recent global financial market crash, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has recommended revised measures to the central banks in a bid to improve stability in the financial markets. These include ratios that cover capital adequacy, leverage and liquidity in the financial institutions. While these measures were developed with a primary focus on the developed markets that suffered due to the crash, they may not take into account differences in regional markets and Islamic products. Additionally, there is limited academic research focusing on this region and the regional products. This makes it that much more important to study the impact of these proposed changes on the local markets.