In the modern era of globalization, natural resources have become an important factor in shaping a sustainable future; however, the evidence on the role of globalization in reducing the adverse environmental impacts of natural resources is relatively scarce. The current study explores the dynamic interaction between energy consumption, economic development proxied through the human development index, population, natural resources, globalization, and ecological footprint under the core idea of the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIRPAT). This research applies panel data for the period from 1999 to 2018 in nine countries with the highest oil production (Brazil, Canada, China, Iran, Kuwait, Russia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and the United States). The results of this study are based on the panel Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR). Empirical findings foundthat economic development, energy consumption, population, and natural resources contribute to increased environmental degradation, while globalization seems the main source of environmental sustainability. Concerning the indirect impacts of globalization, expanded interaction and integration among oil-producing countries helped to inhibit ecological footprint; nevertheless, natural resources complicate the design of a sustainable future by promoting environmental degradation. Additionally, a bidirectional causality relation was discovered between population, energy consumption, globalization, and ecological footprint; however, the panel Dumitrescu and Hurlin causality test results revealed a unidirectional causality association from economic development to ecological footprint and from natural resources to ecological footprint. Our findings shed new light on the criticality of globalization in achieving environmental sustainability by providing cleaner practices that will prevent rent-seeking.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine bank performance using the different performance measures, namely, return on assets, return on equity and bank margins (MAR). Design/methodology/approach: Unbalanced panel data were constructed to test the related hypotheses and provide evidence on the relationship between ownership types, banking models and performance indicators adopting the random effects techniques. Findings: The findings of the paper substantiate that the banking models are significant performance indicators. However, the results are contingent on the GDP growth of the country. Moreover, the evidence indicates that the impact of ownership types is inconclusive in all measures of performance. However, the GDP is significant when it interacts with the types of ownership, particularly for foreign and government banks, although the evidence is mixed and unfavourable for government banks. Practical implications: The results of the study provide insights for bankers and policymakers to enhancement Yemen’s banking sector. Originality/value: This study is considered as the first attempt in examining the role of banking model and ownership type and their link to banking model.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the efficiency types of Islamic and conventional banks. It seeks to show whether the efficiency level of conventional and Islamic banks significantly differs from each other. In addition, it investigates the influential factors on each type of efficiency. Design/methodology/approach: The paper utilises the data envelopment analysis in its windows version to estimate the efficiency scores reflecting the time variance and compares between banking models. The paper uses pure technical efficiency (TE) and scale efficiency to achieve the objective of the study. In addition, the panel data technique is adopted to assess the determinants of the efficiency of the banks econometrically. Findings: The findings of panel regression initially indicate that the pure TE is higher for conventional banks compared to Islamic banks. However, the Islamic banks are more scale efficient than their conventional counterpart. Macro and micro indicators have different impacts on the both types of efficiency. However, the unique factors that show consistent influence on the efficiency types were loans/finance, non-interest income/finance/liquidity and GDP. Furthermore, the determinants are shaped differently for Islamic and conventional banks when the banking model is controlled for. Originality/value: This paper examines the efficiency types using a unique window analysis approach to examine the types of efficiency with a longitudinal set of data from 1996 to 2011.

Recently, financial inclusion and bank stability have gained attention among researchers, particularly since the 2008 global financial crisis. This study investigates how financial inclusion may have influenced bank stability given differences in banks’ structure based on operating principles (Islamic and conventional banks) during the period of 2003–2017, using Kuwait as a high-income economy case. The current paper assesses how bank stability responds to financial inclusion. This work adopts a Linear Mixed Model (LMM), which tracks variables over time while considering other time-invariant variables. The findings show that the adopted measures of financial inclusion, access and depth, are both significant and negatively related to bank stability. Furthermore, the results unveil a slight difference between the response of Islamic and conventional banks’ stability to the dimensions of financial inclusion. Additionally, the study concludes that the financial crisis had an inverse and significant impact on bank stability. However, the extent of the impact appears to have been greater on Islamic banks compared to their conventional counterparts. Based on this study, banking with more financial inclusion can improve stability if institutional quality in Kuwait is improved so that these banks can operate more efficiently.

Objective: Although logistics practices could contribute a lot to countries’ economic and ecological factors, there is still a need to know which logistics practices could contribute to specific ecological domains. Previous studies in many cases have limited their investigation either to a specific environmental indicator, such as CO2, or to a specific region. This study opts to close the gaps of previous studies by investigating the impacts of logistics aspects on the environmental variables in Gulf countries and expanding the focus of the tested environmental domain to include energy consumption as an additional variable to CO2. Methods: The study adopted a panel data approach, which uses both cross-sectional and time series approaches together. The panel approach includes more data coverage, reduces the variables’ internal correlations, and provides a more efficient model with high freedom degrees. The logistics performance data has been derived from LPI, which was published by the World Bank in 2007. At the time of writing this paper, the index covers data from 2007 to 2023. Although LPI data are available from 2007 to 2023, the CO2 and energy consumption were only available until 2020. Results: The results indicated that different logistics indicators have different impacts on ecological issues. The results revealed that only infrastructure and customs logistics indicators have significant effects on CO2 emission and energy consumption in the GCC. Conclusions: This study recommends that decision-makers should consider the environmental consequences of engaging in logistics practices. Although the improvements in logistics indicators will lead to facilitating the movements of goods internally and externally, caution should be taken with regard to harm it may cause to the environment.