Unlike conventional finance, sustainable finance seeks to integrate social, environmental, and climate change considerations into financial institutions’ business strategies. The financial system’s ability to positively respond to sustainability transition demands is contingent upon a directional transformation that involves regulatory, political, structural, theoretical, and relational shifts. Accordingly, this paper performs a quali-quantitative analysis that combines both a bibliometric method with a content analysis process to investigate the trend of sustainable finance literature in the Scopus database and provide directions for potential future research. Our bibliometric performance analysis of 723 publications reveals that the UK, China, the US, Switzerland, and Japan are the major centers of research excellence in sustainable finance. They are the most productive countries and hold the most relevant institutions. Moreover, the prevalence of transdisciplinary journals over mainstream finance and economics sources is obvious. Our network map analysis, on the other hand, shows the substantial relevancy of sustainable/green banks’ involvement in sustainable development. Nonetheless, its relatively low density underlines the existence of relevant research gaps. Therefore, we undertake a content analysis of that particular topic’s literature to derive its conceptual structure and truly understand banks’ important role in sustainability transition. Key research themes in this respect include sustainability performance and banks’ profitability associations; sustainable banks’ risk profile; determinants of banks’ willingness to introduce sustainability criteria into their business strategy; depositors’/customers’ responsiveness to banks’ sustainability performance; and relevant macroprudential regulations, monetary policies, and supervisory guidelines to sustainability transition.

The rapid rise and widespread global adoption of cryptocurrencies in recent years has fundamentally transformed the international financial landscape, with digital assets increasingly being recognized for their potential to influence the stability and performance of traditional capital markets. Against this backdrop, this study aims to empirically investigate the impact of cryptocurrency returns on Islamic vs. conventional stock returns in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The salient distinctions between Islamic and conventional stock markets include fundamental differences in principles, investment allocations, and risk profiles, underscoring the importance of examining the impact of cryptocurrency returns on these distinct equity segments. Daily data were collected from stock indices in five GCC countries over the period 2016–2019, including two sub-periods: before and after the 2017 crypto crash. Pooled OLS, fixed effects, random effects, and generalized linear models (GLMs) were used to analyze the data collected during the study. With the GCC increasingly focusing on cryptocurrency markets, there is growing concern about these markets’ potential impact on regional stocks. This study addresses the important questions of whether the impacts of the cryptocurrency market on Islamic vs. conventional stock markets differ throughout the GCC region and how these impacts have evolved since the crypto crash period. The findings reveal that cryptocurrency returns had a negative impact on both GCC Islamic and conventional stock market returns for the full sample period (2016–2019), and the negative effect was far more pronounced for conventional stocks. For the two sub-periods before and after the crash, only the cryptocurrency market and conventional GCC stocks remained negatively correlated, while the cryptocurrency market and the GCC Islamic stock markets became uncorrelated. Thus, for the calmer sub-periods before and after the crypto crash, the rise in cryptocurrency returns may have enticed GCC investors away from conventional stocks, perhaps resulting in a decline in their investment in these stocks. Meanwhile, those who invest in Islamic stocks may not be exposed to this temptation.

Complementary currencies are alternative units of exchange designed to complement official currencies. They have been used in both developed and developing countries to bridge societal and economic gaps that are inadequately addressed by official monetary systems. This paper explores the potential for Afghanistan to implement complementary currencies and the challenges it may face in this process. A qualitative research approach is employed, using analogical methods and content analysis to assess the potential advantages that complementary currencies could offer Afghanistan. The findings suggest that complementary currencies could significantly contribute to Afghanistan’s economic and social welfare, particularly in addressing gaps in resource distribution. The paper emphasizes critical success factors for the introduction of complementary currencies in Afghanistan, notably the need for political will, government support, legal frameworks, public awareness, and international cooperation. This study is the first to address the potential for complementary currencies in Afghanistan, highlighting its importance and forecasting its contribution to enhancing the financial system in the country.

Despite the positively significant evidence of the sustainability performance (SP)-financial performance (FP) association across various sectors, the empirical results from the banking industry are still inconclusive. This study, therefore, seeks to investigate the SP-Islamic banks’ FP relationship over a sample of 32 Islamic banks drawn from nine key jurisdictions in Islamic finance industry for the period from 2016 to 2021 using GMM estimator. We collected SP data by applying weighted content analysis method on the sustainability indicators developed by the GRI framework for the financial services sector index. This standard provides relevant items which helps measure financial institutions’ economic, social and environmental sustainability impact. Our results underline the existence of significantly negative impact of overall sustainability performance, social and environmental sustainability scores on Islamic banks’ FP. Moreover, the results show that the establishment of sustainability committee, experience of sustainability disclosure, and Islamic banks’ adherence to sustainable finance networks’ specifications do not significantly moderate the SP-Islamic banks’ profitability relationship. A key implication of this study is the imperative to establish effective Islamic banks-policymakers’ collaborations. This may ultimately create a conducive environment for better governance of Islamic banks’ sustainability strategies and better management of their various stakeholders’ interests. This, in turn, may help Islamic banks leverage their sustainability experience, better align their strategies with other sectors’ sustainability guidelines, and consistently steer their financial resources towards more sustainable projects, which may ultimately trigger a positive SP-FP relationship.