Corporate Governance in Islamic Banks
This study investigates the efficiency of the Shariah supervisory board as a corporate governance mechanism in Islamic banks. The authors mainly seek to examine the effect of the Shariah board's composition (size and academic background of its members) on the performance of Islamic banks. They also try to highlight the transmission channels explaining this effect, and compare the efficiency of the Shariah board with that of traditional corporate governance mechanisms, namely the board of directors. The empirical investigation is based on a sample of 72 Islamic banks from 19 countries. Estimation results suggest that the Shariah board positively affects the Islamic banks performance through the number of Islamic Shariah scholars. This effect is mainly due to the size and cost transmission channels. These results are robust to different performance measures. On the other hand, results show that the board of directors' size produces a positive effect on a bank's performance, offering evidence for complementarity between traditional and Islamic governance mechanisms.