We can go one step further and ask whether this long-tailed distribution of board connectivity has any systematic relationship with the long tail of companies’ productivity performance. Controlling for other firmspecific factors, such as their size and sector, it appears that it does. Indeed, this relationship is both statistically significant and economically meaningful (Table 3). As a thought-experiment, imagine comparing two otherwise-identical companies except for their degree of board connectivity. One company has a board whose members are in the upper decile of the connectivity distribution; it is one of the “in-crowd”. Another has a board drawn from the lowest connectivity decile; it is one of the majority in the “out-crowd”. Average annual productivity growth for the in-crowd company is around 1 percentage point higher than for the out-crowd company. I am indebted to the doyen of monetary and financial economics, Professor Charles Goodhart, for many things. But among them is the following, the only corporate governance joke I know. Question: what is the difference between a shopping trolley and a non-executive director of a company? Answer: a shopping trolley has a mind of its own. The evidence here rejects the null hypothesis in Charles’s joke. It is unclear whether, for Facebook fanatics and Twitter addicts, higher numbers of friends and followers translates into higher levels of productivity and well-being. My casual empiricism suggests, sometimes, it might not. But for companies, the empirical evidence suggests connections do matter. For companies’ productivity, connectivity counts. Indeed, it may help account for the UK’s long tail.

Its emphasis on the close link between financial transactions and economic activity has positioned Islamic finance to be well-anchored to serve the real economy. The adoption of profit- and risksharing, transparency and disclosure, and the universal ethical values of fairness which is implicitly embedded in the Islamic financial system provides the internal checks and  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  balances. Embraced in its entirety, it enhances the prospects for sustainable economic growth and financial stability. The resilience of the Islamic financial system is also further strengthened by the international prudential standards and best practices that have now been introduced. These include the standards issued by the Islamic Financial Services Board since 2002 in the areas of capital adequacy, risk management, governance, and the conduct of business and supervisory process. The industry is also guided by international accounting standards that have been developed by the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions since its establishment in 1990. In enhancing liquidity management in the Islamic financial system, the International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation (IILM), which was established in 2010, is putting in place the mechanism that will facilitate effective liquidity management solutions through the periodic issuance of short-term Shariah-compliant financial instruments. As the Islamic financial system transitions to becoming more diversified and comprehensive, it provides the spectrum of financial solutions that meet the different needs of the economy. Such financing products offered in Islamic finance also include syndicated financing, equity financing and venture capital.