On April 15, 2025, the Westminster School of Business (WBS) hosted a research colloquium featuring Alessandro Saccal, Senior Lecturer and DSc candidate in Econometrics and Statistics. He presented his study titled, "A Money Search Model with Islamic Finance Constraints: Extending Neo-Monetarism to Halal Finance."

This work pioneers the extension of neo-monetarism to halal finance, specifically extending a first-generation money search model to incorporate Islamic finance's principal constraints: restrictions on time value return, speculation, and debt finance through the exclusive imposition of profit and loss sharing.

The research yielded several notable theoretical findings. At the notional level, it deduced a summary toleration of Islamic finance, whereby restrictions on time value interest, aversion to speculation, and profit and loss sharing cannot be expected to diminish money trade gains, albeit at the cost of money trade with surety. The model also demonstrated that time value interest exists irrespective of money, meaning that restrictions on time value interest penalize barter as well. Finally, the study concluded that while the introduction of Islamic finance may not increase social welfare, it need not decrease it either—except in the case of restrictions on commodity markups under barter or mixed trade in the presence of fiat money, as also prescribed by conventional finance.