FINANCIAL CRISIS AND USURY IN DIGITAL ECONOMIC

Abstract

This paper investigates the inadequate evidence of usury in the economy in ASIA 5, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, and South Korea, to answer why major religions (Islam, Christianity, Judaism) prohibit usury. We use a qualitative research method of content analysis by collecting several justifiable evidence using source triangulation and method triangulation and combining with quantitative content analysis, which quantifies the qualitative findings and analyzes them quantitatively using Threshold Autoregressive. It is a proxy for forecasting future economic conditions considering each exchange rate regimes and the period of crisis experienced by the five countries. We found that the higher the riba proxied by the interest rate, the more burdening the five countries to recover from the crisis. Moreover, we find that the concept of sharia, which is proxied by direct investment, can boost the economy and can increase economic resilience against the financial crisis, which was evident in three countries, namely Thailand, Malaysia, and China, during the Asian crisis period (1997) to the digital economy era (2020).