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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of revenue diversification, non-interest income and asset diversification on the performance and stability of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) conventional and Islamic banking systems.

The authors implement a panel of 69 conventional and Islamic banks listed in six GCC markets over the period of 2003–2015, using the System Generalized Method of Moments methodology.

Non-interest income diversification has a negative impact on GCC banks’ performance, while asset-based diversification affects banks performance positively. However, Investors tend to penalize the value of the banks’ assets, which are highly diversified. Government intervention, lack of competition, legal protection and high control of Central banks on GCC banks’ have positive impact on performance. Contrary to the results on conventional banks, asset diversification adds value to Islamic banks. Overall, both banks’ revenue and non-interest diversification have negative impact on GCC banks’ stability, while asset diversification improves Islamic banks’ stability.

The analysis is limited to a sample of banks, which are listed in the GCC stock exchanges. The lack of data on private and foreign banks operating in the region made the analysis and, consequently, the results specific to shareholding companies. Also, the authors’ measures of bank stability might not be appropriate to use for Islamic banks, given their banking models implemented.

Research results provide important implications for regulators, bank managers and policy makers, as to the expected ways to support economic diversification through bank diversification strategies.

Unlike related studies, the authors’ sample of homogeneous banks has a market structure that is different from the samples in the literature covering either developed countries or heterogeneous samples from both developed and developing countries. Furthermore, using an efficient econometric methodology, the authors deal with two types of banks: conventional banks and Islamic banks. The research determines which type of bank is more able to benefit from different types of diversification. Unlike previous research, this research explores the sensitivity of the results both to the regulatory environment of the GCC market and to general market conditions.

This research examines the bidirectional relationship between Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) voluntary disclosure engagement and financial performance of a panel of banks extracted from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) banking industry, covering a period of 11 years (2007–2017). We find that GCC banks, and in particular Islamic banks, voluntarily disclose low level of information related to ESG activities. Using system GMM methodology, we provide evidence that ESG disclosure adversely affects bank performance, regardless of the bank performance measure used. Thus spending on ESG turns out to be costly for GCC banks, a result that is consistent with the agency problem, where managers are likely to reduce long-term expenditures related to ESG actions in order to boost short-term profits. As managers' compensations often relate to short-term financial performance, managers tend to reduce their spending on ESG activities. Furthermore, contrary to previous research, our results indicate that the relationship between ESG and financial performance is bidirectional and dynamic. We also find evidence that ESG disclosure positively affects performance only for well-diversified banks. Finally, although conventional banks disclose significantly more information related to ESG activities, we do not find any significant differences between the two types of banks in the relationship between ESG disclosure and performance. Our suggestion is that these results are consistent with what we call “clientele” and “gravitation” effects, where a customer tends to choose to deal with the bank that reflects his religious beliefs (gravitation effect) and with the bank that provides him with the best services (clientele effect) regardless of its ESG disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether stock market liberalization creates excess stock return volatility in the Qatar Exchange (QSC).

The study utilizes two methods, simple analysis of variance and the EGARCH model with dummy variables.

Results reveal no change in market volatility following the partial removal of the restrictions on foreign participation. Results suggest, however, that the degree of persistence in volatility is high, which implies that once volatility increases it remains high over a long run. In addition, conditional volatility tends to rise when the absolute value of the standardized residuals was large. While, contrary to what has been found in the literature, the return volatility seems to be symmetric.

The finding of volatility persistence and clustering might imply an inefficient stock market. Therefore, policy makers should emphasize and direct their attention toward increasing the efficiency of the stock market.

Being able to make predictions about financial market volatility is of special importance to investors and policy makers since it makes available to them a measure of risk exposure in their investments and decisions.

This paper provides a contribution to the empirical literature on stock market volatility. It is the only study, to the authors' knowledge, that investigates the issue of QSC liberalization and volatility. The authors believe that QSC has its own unique characteristics, and the results of the study depend mainly on the market's specific conditions, the quality of its financial institutions and the extent of financial liberalization obtained.

This paper presents new evidence of the relationship between financial market development (banking sector) and economic growth for a set of seven Middle East and North African economies over the period 1965–2002. We find evidence that in six of the seven countries, banking-sector development Granger causes increases in economic growth. However, in three of those six countries, economic growth also Granger causes banking development. Our co-integration analysis reveals that there is a stable long-run equilibrium relationship between banking-sector development and economic growth for all our countries. However, based on vector error-correction models, there is limited evidence that banking-sector development boosts economic growth in the short run.

This study aims to examine the factors affecting the foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign portfolio investment (FPI) flows among the 16 economies comprising the Middle East and North African (MENA) region.

Panel data for the period 1984-2012 are used, and the generalized method of moment (GMM) technique is implemented.

The results support the agglomeration effect, which indicates that countries which have already had FDI attract more FDI in the future. Economic risk affects FDI significantly and negatively, whereas trade openness has a significant and positive impact on FDI. Of the political risk factors considered, three of them, namely, law and order, ethnic tension and internal conflict, significantly affect FDI. The results on FPI show that the lag in FPI and the degree of openness play a significant role in attracting FPI into the MENA region. In addition, stock market capitalization, as well as the return on investment affects the FPI flow positively. The study also reveals a negative government structure impact on FPI, whereas, surprisingly, religious tension in the MENA region affects FPI positively.

This research examines, simultaneously, the factors that determine not only FDI but also FPI flow. It uses a powerful econometric technique which avoids common estimation problems such as endogeneity, heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation. Policymakers in the MENA region recognized the need for outside capital as a major catalyst of development, economic growth and modernization. Therefore, it is essential to know the factors that would lead to a surge in capital flow to these countries.

Purpose – In the recent financial crisis, the risk-taking behavior of banks led to severe financial and economic instability. Many reasons have been attributed to the cause of the financial crisis. This paper attempts to investigate the effect of government ownership, market structure, and regulations on risk-taking behavior in a sample of banks listed on the stock exchanges of the six Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) markets during the period from 1998 until 2010.

Methodology – The paper utilizes the fixed effect regression model to measure the impact of government ownership indicator, and market structure on risk while controlling for bank-specific characteristics and macroeconomic indicators in the GCC region.

Findings – We find consistent evidence that private-owned banks are more risky than government-owned banks. The results also show a positive and significant relationship between market concentration and risk. Islamic banks show more stability than conventional banks, while government regulations are insignificantly related to risk.

Originality and value – This research is essential to understand the probability of government ownership entities facing losses associated with distress due to both direct and indirect insurance guarantees provided by the government agencies in case of crisis. The results of the study are crucial for understanding the implications of bank ownership and market structure and its relation to risk for the stability of the financial system in the GCC market.

This paper empirically explores the relationship between the identity and concentration of different block holders and firm value for 89 industrial and service firms listed at the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) over the period 1998–2001. The paper examines the role of block holders (institutional investors who are not on the board of directors, the institutional investors who are on the board of directors, the ownership of the board of directors, and the financial policy of the firm, such as the capital structure) in controlling the managerial actions which leads, on average, to better firm valuation in the emerging market of Jordan. The paper employs a piecewise regression specification methodology. The results of the piecewise regression analysis indicate a positive and significant relationship between the ownership of securities above 25% by the board of directors, institutional investors on the board of directors, the institutional investors not on the board of directors and firm value. There is no significant relationship between the above-mentioned ownership and firm value for ownership below 25%. The results also indicate a significant and negative relationship between ownership by the CEO below 5% and firm value. Leverage is significantly and positively related to firm value when we relate ownership by institutional investors not on the board of directors and firm value. This might imply that creditors work as complementary monitors of value along with institutional investors who are not on the board of directors. The paper concludes that block holders are important monitors of firm value especially if they own large amounts of securities to justify the high cost of monitoring.