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Supplemental Material, sj-docx-1-teu-10.1177_1354816621999968 for Tourism research for the GCC region: Current status and future research directions by Ali Salman Saleh, Charbel Bassil and Arsalan Safari in Tourism Economics

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the financial performance of listed firms on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) over two sample periods (1998-2007 and 2008-2010) before and during the global financial crisis periods. Design/methodology/approach The generalized method of moments (GMM) has been used to examine the relationship between family ownership and a firm’s performance during the financial crisis period, reflecting on the higher risk exposure associated with capital markets. Findings Applying firm-based measures of financial performance (ROA and ROE), the empirical results show that family firms with ownership concentration performed better than nonfamily firms with dispersed ownership structures. The results also show that ownership concentration has a positive and significant impact on family- and nonfamily-owned firms during the crisis period. In addition, financial leverage had a positive and significant effect on the performance of Australian family-owned firms during both periods. However, if the impact of the crisis by sector is taking into account, the financial leverage only becomes significant for the nonmining family firms during the pre-crisis period. The results also reveal that family businesses are risk-averse business organizations. These findings are consistent with the underlying economic theories. Originality/value This paper contributes to the debate whether the ownership structure affects firms’ financial performance such as ROE and ROA during the global financial crisis by investigating family and nonfamily firms listed on the Australian capital market. It also identifies several influential drivers of financial performance in both normal and crisis periods. Given the paucity of studies in the area of family business, the empirical results of this research provide useful information for researchers, practitioners and investors, who are operating in capital markets for family and nonfamily businesses.

The study serves to clarify doubts on the potential of commercial microcredit as a strategic vehicle of implementing of small-scale biogas plants in Sri Lanka, as an alternative to subsidy-based process. The quantified sum of unsubsidized microloan interest born by the biogas users in a modeled situation of maximum potential of the biogas sector financed through microfinance institutions is compared with national technology savings on a macro level. The analysis concludes that an economic justification for the microfinance-fuelled implementation of small-scale biodigesters employing a market-based approach does exist. Annual savings on macroeconomic level surpass the annual cost expressed as a sum of unsubsidized interest. The study furthermore proposes a three-party credit contract, which prevents credit defaults caused by the lack of customary after-sales care by integrating the provision of service providers into a contractual agreement with both the user and the financing source, thus assuming part of credit responsibility.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a macroeconomic framework to predict the impact of transient donor funding on a developing economy and to facilitate evaluation of the effectiveness of alternative uses of this funding in attaining the desired outcomes. Design/methodology/approach A simulation analysis of the macroeconomic impact of donor funding on the Lebanese economy is conducted. Findings The paper evaluates the potential outcomes for the country from alternative uses of this donor funding and concludes that targeting infrastructure expenditure, mediated through the government, will produce the most beneficial longer term outcomes. Originality/value This paper is the first substantive macro model to be developed for the Lebanese economy. It is the first major study of the contribution of donor funding to the Lebanese macro-economy. The framework, however, can be generalised to other developing donor recipient nations.

Microfinance services are essential tools of formalization of shadow economics, leveraging immature entrepreneurship with external capital. Given the importance of shadow economics for the social balance of developing countries, the importance of an answer to a question of how microfinance entities come into existence, is rather essential. While decision-taking process leading to entrepreneurship were explained by the effectuation theory developed in the 90’, these explanations were not concerned with the logics of creation of microenterprises in neither developing countries nor microfinance village banks. While the abovementioned theories explain the nascence of companies in environment of developed markets, importance of a focus on emerging markets related to large share of human society of microfinance clientele is obvious. The study provides a development streak to the effectuation Theory, adding the musketeer principle to the five effectuation principles proposed by Sarasvathy. Furthermore, the hitherto not considered relationship between social capital and effectuation related concepts is another proposal of the paper focusing on description of the nature of microfinance clientele from the point of view of effectuation theory and social capital drawing a comparison of microfinance markets in four countries, Turkey, Sierra Leone, Indonesia and Afghanistan.

While tourism research on Qatar has been growing, the area is still understudied with many untapped research opportunities. This research focuses on the impact of the blockade on international tourist arrivals to Qatar. We adopt a standard tourism demand model and augment it with a blockade variable. To capture the effects of political incidence such as the blockade, we develop a dummy variable that characterizes the periods when the blockade on Qatar occurred. The research model also includes origin-destination characteristic variables, such as tourism competitiveness, corruption perception and trade freedom. The main objective is to investigate whether the inclusion of these control variables can minimize the effects of the blockade. Data are based on an unbalanced panel of 552 observations, with a total of 47 countries of origin from 2007 to 2018. The result confirms the convergence theory of growth (Cuaresmaa, Ritzberger-Gru¨nwald and Silgoner, 2008). The strength and sign of the coefficients for the two economic control variables, namely GDP growth and currency appreciation in the sourced country are as expected- an increase in income in the sourced country increases people’s affordability to travel and in turn enhances growth in tourist numbers in Qatar significantly. Moreover, the coefficients of the main focus variable, the blockade, show the expected negative sign and statistical significance (1% level of significance), implying that the blockade imposes constraints on visitors to Qatar from neighboring countries, which in turn has adverse effect on the number of tourist arrivals.

Much of the current literature that deals with the effect of urbanization on energy demand focuses only on a specific region or a single country. This research extends the current literature by concentrating on a sample of countries containing developed and emerging countries. Our study inspect for those countries the impacts of urbanization and other key determinants on demand of non-renewable energy during the period 1980–2014. In addition, this empirical research employs an advanced heterogeneous panel techniques such as Augmented Mean Groups (AMG). Our empirical results suggest that a one percent rises in urbanization rises the consumption of non-renewable energy by 0.72%. We find that (as compared to the effect of factors such as the GDP and the price of oil) urbanization has the largest effect on non-renewable energy demand.

This study empirically tests the traditional trade-off model against the pecking order model of capital structure using data from the Japanese listed companies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. A pooled sample of 1,362 publicly listed nonfinancial companies from 1991 to 2015 is used to establish the relationship between leverage and its determinants by using the generalized methods of moments econometric framework. The results show that the financing pattern of Japanese firms is consistent with the basic pecking order model, which predicts external debt financing driven by the internal financial deficit. - 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Scopus

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the long-term operating performance of family and non-family firms from the agency theoretic perspective. The analysis is focused on investigating the impact of family ownership on principal–agent conflicts of interest. Design/methodology/approach – This paper examines the relationship between firm operating performance and family ownership for a large sample of 677 Australian-listed companies. The paper uses the Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) estimator model developed by Arellano and Bond (1991) and used by other studies in finance (Baltagi, 2012; Bond, 2002; Mohamed et al., 2008). Findings – The empirical results show that firms with ownership concentration has a better operating performance due to the alignment of owner-management interests. This study also finds that family-listed companies have higher survival rates and perform better than non-family companies. Findings support the hypothesis that agency costs arise as a result of privileged access of information and self-interest behaviour of managers (outsiders) in firms with dispersed ownership structures. Originality/value – Earlier studies have only focused on short-term perspectives, particularly investigating small and medium types of Australian family businesses from narrow aspects, such as productivity, business behaviour, capital structure and leverage. Therefore, this paper has conducted a comparative examination of family and non-family firms listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) to identify the impact of agency costs on their financial performance.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of financial leverage on firm’s performance in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Additionally, this paper investigates the impact of recent financial crisis on GCC firms. Design/methodology/approach – The authors argue that the firm’s performance has a dynamic relationship that cannot be measured in cross-sectional data. Hence, the authors use a panel data to examine the effect of financial leverage on firm’s performance using the dynamic Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) estimator. Findings – The results from the GMM estimator show that companies’ leverage is a significant determinant of firm’s performance in GCC countries. The authors also found that financial crisis had a negative and significant impact on firms’ performance in GCC countries. Research limitations/implications – First, the data used in this paper rely on information published by the firms, and therefore, the robustness of the results were limited by the accuracy of the data provided. Second, failed firms were excluded from the study sample which may affect the results. Third, macroeconomic variables could be used in future research to investigate their impact on companies’ performance before and after the global financial crisis. Fourth, some other important variables (such as firm age and firm ownership) could be used in future studies to examine the effects of the 2008 financial crisis on companies’ performance. Practical implications – This research provides initial guidelines for policy makers in GCC countries to understand how to enhance the performance of their firms using financial leverage and other firm-specific factors. Originality/value – This is a first comprehensive study to investigate the effect of capital structure and financial crisis on firms’ performance in GCC countries.

By using panel data over the 1980?2017 period and two alternative indicators of environmental pollution (carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions), this paper investigates the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Using three alternative econometric estimation techniques, we find strong evidence of a long-run inverted U-shaped relationship between real GDP per capita and both environmental indicators in the GCC region. Country-level short-run analysis indicates that the EKC hypothesis holds for Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) when CO2 emissions are used as a measure of environmental pollution. However, when SO2 emissions are used as a measure of environmental pollution, the EKC hypothesis holds for Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The results of a recently developed panel causality test reveal one-way causality from real GDP per capita to CO2 emissions and from real GDP per capita to SO2 emissions. Scopus

This study introduces Net Export (NX) models to examine the determinants of the trade flows between Australia and eight selected trading partner (TP) countries (China, France, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States of America) in four selected Trade Deficit (TD) categories (Pharmaceutical Products; Nuclear Reactors, Boilers, Machinery and Mechanical Appliances; Electrical Machinery and Equipment; Sound Recorders and Producers, and Vehicles Other Than Railway or Tramway Rolling-Stock). A total of 29 NX models are estimated, which are based on both the monetary and Quantity (QTY) values. Findings in this study suggest that macroeconomic variables such as money supply, interest rates and savings rates have no-significant effect in the determination of the NX levels in the selected categories. This highlights that monetary policy cannot influence the NX levels in the selected TD categories in Australia. This study also identifies some policy implications which arise from this paper.

The tourism industry makes a significant contribution to Lebanese gross domestic product (GDP). Lebanon has been rocked by political instability and regional conflicts over the past several decades. These exogenous shocks can adversely affect visitor arrivals. Using monthly data from 2008 to 2013, this article attempts to identify some statistically significant shocks to visitor arrivals to Lebanon and their nature (i.e., whether or not the impact of the shocks was temporary). The empirical analysis based on univariate as well as panel unit root testing procedures, where structural breaks are endogenously determined, suggests that at least one exogenous shock has significantly affected tourist arrivals to Lebanon. However, in overall terms, the impact of these shocks on visitor arrivals has been temporary.

This study re-examines both pure technical and scale efficiency of Australian banks using bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA). The aim is to improve the choice of variables of the core profit efficiency model which is commonly used in earlier Australian banking efficiency studies. After we introduce the “interest income” over “net interest income” variable in the core profit efficiency model, the proportion of fully pure technical efficient banks decreased to 23% which is significantly lower than 81% which was reported in a recent study. This research argues that the main issue that has contributed to this difference is that improving the choice of variables significantly increases the discriminatory power of efficiency estimates. Additionally, emphasising on statistical properties of efficiency estimates, this study employs bootstrap DEA to provide confidence intervals and bias corrected estimates of pure technical efficiency scores of the sample banks. The bootstrap results show the importance of incorporating sample variation and bias in estimating efficiency scores. Earlier Australian banking efficiency studies ignored such issues. The new findings from the sample banks could have important implications for the banking industry in Australia.

This paper examines the contribution of tourism industry to the GDP of three selected destinations in the Middle East region: Bahrain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. We introduce a quadratic functional form and apply the advanced panel cointegration dynamic model with robust estimation to test our hypothesis. Our analysis is based on a comprehensive set of panel data of tourism receipts, education investment, foreign direct investment and fixed capital formation over the period of 1981–2008. The results show a long-run relationship between tourism growth and GDP. We also show that tourism has a stronger impact on the economy than other related sectors. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This article reviews the shari'a approach to markets and examines its treatment by certain twentieth-century Islamic economists such as Nejatullah Siddiqui, Nawab Haider Naqvi, Umer Chapra and M.A. Mannan. It characterises the arguments of these economists as largely statist, redistributive and socialist, possibly reflecting post-colonial intellectual experiences. Yet shari'a endorses negative freedom by proscribing price controls and guaranteeing consumer protection from coercion. Islamic law, this article argues, as evinced in both revealed knowledge and human exegesis, has endorsed a market-friendly, libertarian and limited-government philosophy.

Given the number and the frequency of external shocks encountered by Thailand in the last two decades, this study identifies the number and the location of the breaks and tests to determine whether the breaks have a transitory or a permanent effect on international tourist arrivals to Thailand for its top 10 source countries using both univariate and panel unit root tests with structural breaks. The findings suggest that break dates coincide with the Asian financial crisis, the September 11 attack, and the SARS and the bird flu outbreaks. The univariate unit root tests with structural breaks reject the null hypothesis of a nonstationarity in tourist arrivals from all countries. Furthermore, panel unit root tests with one and two structural breaks also reject the joint null hypothesis of a nonstationarity. These findings imply that external shocks have only a transitory effect on tourist arrivals and Thailand's tourism sector will return to its long-run equilibrium path.

Purpose – This paper examines the long‐term relationship between saving and investment as a criterion for assessing international capital mobility for the case of Saudi Arabia, the largest economy among the Middle Eastern and Arab nations.Design/methodology/approach – The approach is modeled on Feldstein and Horioka covering the period 1963‐2007 for Saudi Arabia. We use the bounds testing approach and the Gregory and Hansen cointegration methods to test for the long‐run relationship between saving and investment. Additionally, before testing for this relationship, we conduct unit root tests, including the additive outlier model developed by Perron with an endogenously determined structural break.Findings – The study finds no evidence of a long‐run relationship between saving and investment and therefore concludes that capital is highly mobile in Saudi Arabia. This finding is plausible given the economic and financial reforms which have occurred in Saudi Arabia along with increased capital inflows into the...

Problem statement: The problem of budget deficits and current account imbalances has attracted serious consideration from academics and policy-makers in both developed and developing countries. The question is whether such relationships between budget deficits and current account deficits exist in the case of Philippines. Approach: The purpose of this study was to test the validity of the Keynesian proposition and the Ricardian equivalence hypothesis with respect to the direction of causality between budget deficits and current account deficits in the case of the Philippines. Testing procedure was applied to data from that country for the period 1970-2005 to test such relationships. Results: A bi-directional causality between budget deficits and current account deficits was found. This finding was plausible, given the economic crisis in the early 1980s which was associated with economic driven foreign debt in the Marcos era. Conclusion: The results suggested that policy measures to reduce the budget deficit could play an important role in reducing the current account imbalances and vice-versa.

This research attempts to examine the links between fluctuating oil prices, economic sanctions and the employment in the Libyan economy. In particular, this study attempts to answer the basic question whether UN’s resolutions number 748 (1992) of 31 March 1992 and oil price fluctuations have any significant influence on the employment in Libya. One of this study’s key findings is that fluctuating oil prices and economic sanctions have strongly affected both the Libyan and non-Libyan employees. The periods of sharp decline in oil prices (1983-1998) and economic sanctions (1990-2003) had a negative impact on the movement of skilled non-Libyan workers. This resulted in a huge loss of this type of labour, which is almost impossible to replace in the short term. It could also negatively affect various other sectors in the country, such as oil production and industry, among others. In addition, our cointegration results show that there is no evidence of long run relationship between the non-Libyan employees and fluctuating oil prices in Libya. This research brought a new empirical evidence on the relationship between fluctuating oil prices, economic sanctions and the employment in the Libyan economy. It also provides important policy implications for the Libyan government, the Security Council and multinational companies. JEL classification: C22, E20, E30.

Over the past few decades the brisk development of information and communication technologies (ICT) has had a phenomenal impact on the economic stability and development of many countries. Empirical studies show that most developed economies have gained significant payoffs (in terms of economic growth) from their ICT investments. This study investigates the hypothesis that ICT-based investment has paid off for Australia and the ASEAN-5 countries (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines) between 1992 and 2006. Applying a new cointegration technique[12], which takes into account the presence of a potential structural break, shows that ICT investment has had a positive and significant long-run relationship with economic growth in Australia, Malaysia and Singapore. However, in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand ICT investment did not contribute significantly to economic growth during the same period. These three countries have yet to reap the benefits of ICT. Our empirical results suggest that the three lagging ASEAN countries should increase their ICT investment in order to achieve sustainable economic growth in the new knowledgebased economy.

Since the onset of the Civil War in 1975 Lebanon has experienced burgeoning fiscal deficits and an unsustainable public debt overhang. Much of this arose from the loss of revenues during the period of the Civil War 1975–1990 and attempts to maintain basic public expenditure, while from 1990 to 2006 this reflected post-Taif rebuilding and reconstruction of key infrastructure with limited revenue capacity. Considerable progress from the 1990s had been achieved in rebuilding the shattered economy from both public and private international and domestic sources, but its legacy is a huge public debt and a servicing requirement that currently absorbs alone almost 30 per cent of total government revenue and is the highest in the world on a per capita basis. While the need to reduce this debt to a sustainable level would be daunting enough in itself, Lebanon's fiscal predicament was further compounded by the outbreak of war with Israel during July–August 2006. The consequence of this 34-day war was the devastation of residential property, vital infrastructure, loss of agricultural production, industrial production, exports, environmental damage, the collapse of tourism and a further erosion of the influence and power of the central government. Estimates of the direct and indirect costs for Lebanon of this relatively brief but devastating war conservatively vary from US$ 10–15 billion. The implications of such reconstruction and rebuilding costs for the budget and public debt are potentially calamitous for Lebanon which is already struggling under the weight of debt overhang and its servicing. A key question is whether Lebanon can tackle this enormous task in insolation. This paper explores the background to the fiscal crisis, identifies from available literature the extent, nature and cost of the war damage, analyses the options available to the authorities in rebuilding the economy and highlights key policy issues and measures that will be required if a sustainable economic recovery is to be achieved. Despite its demonstrated and remarkable resilience to past trauma the paper concludes that the fiscal crisis makes it impossible for Lebanon to tackle the reconstruction and rebuilding task on its own and particularly in the wake of the events of summer 2006. The country will require substantial and ongoing financial support from international lenders and donors. The success of these efforts in the case of Lebanon is of particular interest as it could well be a microcosm of possible future outcomes for the region more generally.

Many economists have argued that prolonged fiscal expansions contribute to current account imbalances. The purpose of this paper is to explore this phenomenon in the case of Sri Lanka during the period 1970 to 2003. In this study, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and the bounds test for cointegration (Pesaran et al. 2001) were used to assess the long-run dynamics between the twin deficits in Sri Lanka. The empirical analysis in this paper supports the Keynesian view that there is a long-run relationship between current account imbalances and budget deficit. The empirical results also show that the direction of causality runs from the budget deficit to the current account deficit. Thus, any policy measures to reduce the budget deficit in Sri Lanka could well assist in reducing the current account imbalances. Strategies and policies to manage the twin-deficits are discussed in this paper.

This study provides evidence on the validity of Wagner's Law on the impact of government spending on economic growth in Sri Lanka. To test for stationarity, we use the Narayan and Popp's (2010) new Perron-type innovational unit root test; and to test for the long-run relationship, the study uses Hatemi's (2008) co-integration method. This study finds that a long-run relationship exists between GDP, consumption and investment expenditure. Various policy implications have also emerged from these findings. Studies on the impact of government spending on economic growth in the case of South Asian countries, and particularly for Sri Lanka, are very limited. The study disaggregates public expenditure into its two components and uses advanced methodologies which take into account structural breaks.