Dr Muhammad Meki

OCIS Lecturer in Islamic Finance

Muhammad Meki is a development economist whose research focuses on microfinance. He is interested in the effect of equity-like financial contracts involving, for example, shared ownership of fixed assets, sharing of revenue streams, or profit sharing -- on the investment and growth of small firms. Equity-based products also have the potential to serve a large number of poor Muslim entrepreneurs across the world, who are often excluded from conventional microfinance products due to the classical religious prohibition on usury. Muhammad has conducted fieldwork in Pakistan, Kenya and Bangladesh.

Prior to academia, Muhammad worked for five years as a trader in the financial markets, for Bank of America in London and Deutsche Bank in Singapore, where he traded European and Asian government bonds, foreign exchange derivatives and other fixed-income products.

Muhammad completed his DPhil in 2018 from the Department of Economics, University of Oxford (St John’s College). He was a Junior Research Fellow at Pembroke College and affiliated with the Department of Economics until 2020. Muhammad has also previously completed postgraduate degrees in finance (MSc, LSE), economics (PGDip, Cambridge), and development economics (MSc, Oxford).

Dr Meki is an Associate Member of the Department of Economics.

Teaching
Publications
News
In the media

Muhammad teaches on the MSc in Economics for Development, offering a module on microfinance, cash transfers and savings.

Research Students supervised

Journal articles and special issues

Meki, Muhammad (with Kashif Malik, Jonathan Morduch, Timothy Ogden, Simon Quinn and Farah Said) (2020) '‘COVID-19 and the Future of Microfinance: Evidence and Insights from Pakistan', Oxford Review of Economic Policy

Chapters

Meki, Muhammad (with Kate Roll, Simon Quinn) (2021) 'Mutuality and the Potential of Microequity'. In Colin Mayer, Bruno Roche (eds) Putting Purpose Into Practice: The Economics of Mutuality , Oxford University Press

Other publications

Meki, Muhammad (with Jing Cai, Simon Quinn) (2021) 'Microfinance', VoxDevLit
28 May, 2021
Muhammad Meki co-authors 'dynamic literature review' on microfinance for VoxDev
08 Jul, 2020
'Microfinance and Covid-19 in Pakistan: What happens after lockdown?'. Dr Muhammad Meki discusses the impact of Covid-19 on Pakistan's microfinance sector in this webinar for FinDev Gateway
04 May, 2020
'COVID-19 and the future of microfinance: Evidence and insights from Pakistan'. New article co-authored by Muhammad Meki examines the impact of the pandemic on local microfinance institutions in Pakistan, offering insights for policy reform
Research interests:

Economic development; microenterprises; microfinance.