This study examines the relationship between entrepreneurship and sustainable development in Saudi Arabia from 2006 to 2022, focusing on the economic, social, and environmental dimensions. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, the research investigates both short-run and long-run dynamics to understand how entrepreneurial activities influence sustainable development within the framework of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 initiative. The findings indicate that entrepreneurship significantly contributes to economic growth through job creation and innovation, thereby aiding in the diversification of the economy away from oil dependency. Socially, entrepreneurial initiatives have a positive impact on gender equality and social inclusion by empowering women and integrating youth into the labor market. Environmentally, entrepreneurship helps reduce carbon emissions and promotes sustainable business practices. Despite these positive outcomes, challenges such as regulatory barriers, limited access to finance, and the need for a supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem remain. Recommendations include enhancing entrepreneurial education, providing financial incentives, and streamlining regulatory processes to better support start-ups and SMEs. This study highlights the necessity of addressing these challenges to fully realize the potential of entrepreneurship for sustainable development in Saudi Arabia. By providing empirical evidence on the significant role of entrepreneurship in driving sustainable development, this research offers actionable insights for policymakers aiming to foster a more resilient and diversified economy in line with Vision 2030.

As prominent oil producers, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have played a significant role in the global energy market. However, as the world’s attention increasingly shifts towards environmental sustainability, understanding the implications of the GCC’s economic activities on CO2 emissions becomes indispensable. This research paper investigates the relationship between specific economic indicators and their impact on CO2 emissions in the GCC from 2001 to 2021. This study employs quantile regression, a robust statistical method that estimates the conditional quantiles of a response variable given a set of predictor variables. The findings reveal several essential insights: Financial institution efficiency is significant and negative at a 1% level at the lower (10th, −83,537.3) and higher quantiles (90th, −549,002.3). The relationship between the GDP per capita and CO2 emissions varies across quantiles, highlighting the complexity of the growth–environment nexus. Total patents exhibit a positive and significant relationship with emissions, underscoring the importance of directing innovation towards environmentally sustainable solutions. Renewable energy consumption displays a nuanced relationship with CO2 emissions, with a more substantial negative impact observed at higher consumption levels. This underscores the potential of renewable energy to mitigate emissions when integrated at scale. This study’s outcomes hold crucial policy implications for GCC countries as they seek to align economic growth with environmental sustainability. The findings emphasize the importance of fostering financial institution efficiency, promoting green innovation, and expanding renewable energy sources to reduce emissions.

As prominent oil producers, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have played a significant role in the global energy market. However, as the world's attention increasingly shifts towards environmental sustainability, understanding the implications of the GCC's economic activities on CO2 emissions becomes indispensable. This research paper investigates the relationship between specific economic indicators and their impact on CO2 emissions in the GCC from 2001 to 2021. The study employs quantile regression, a powerful statistical method that estimates the conditional quantiles of a response variable given a set of predictor variables. The findings reveal several important insights: Financial institution efficiency is significant and negative at a 1% level at the lower (10th) -83537.3 and the higher quantile (90th) -549002.3. The relationship between GDP per capita and CO2 emissions varies across quantiles, highlighting the complexity of the growth-environment nexus. Total patents exhibit a positive and significant relationship with emissions, underscoring the importance of directing innovation towards environmentally sustainable solutions. Renewable energy consumption displays a nuanced relationship with CO2 emissions, with a stronger negative impact observed at higher consumption levels. This underscores the potential of renewable energy to mitigate emissions when integrated at scale. The study's outcomes hold crucial policy implications for the GCC countries as they seek to align economic growth with environmental sustainability. The findings emphasize the importance of fostering financial institution efficiency, promoting green innovation, and expanding renewable energy sources to reduce emissions

This study examines the relationship between entrepreneurship and sustainable devel-opment in Saudi Arabia from 2006 to 2022, focusing on the economic, social, and en-vironmental dimensions. Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, the research investigates both short-run and long-run dynamics to understand how entre-preneurial activities influence sustainable development within the framework of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 initiative. The findings indicate that entrepreneurship significantly contributes to economic growth through job creation and innovation, thereby aiding in the diversification of the economy away from oil dependency. Socially, entrepreneurial ini-tiatives have a positive impact on gender equality and social inclusion by empowering women and integrating youth into the labour market. Environmentally, entrepreneurship helps reduce carbon emissions and promotes sustainable business practices. Despite these positive outcomes, challenges such as regulatory barriers, limited access to finance, and the need for a supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem remain. Recommendations include enhancing entrepreneurial education, providing financial incentives, and streamlining regulatory processes to better support start-ups and SMEs. The study highlights the ne-cessity of addressing these challenges to fully realize the potential of entrepreneurship for sustainable development in Saudi Arabia. By providing empirical evidence on the sig-nificant role of entrepreneurship in driving sustainable development, this research offers actionable insights for policymakers aiming to foster a more resilient and diversified economy in line with Vision 2030. .

This study examines the determinants of non-performing financing (NPF) in Islamic banks operating in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) over the period 2014-2024. Motivated by the growing importance of asset quality for financial stability in Islamic banking systems, the analysis integrates macroeconomic conditions and global economic policy uncertainty within a structured panel econometric framework. The empirical strategy combines fixed-effects and random-effects estimators with panel quantile regression to capture both average and regime-dependent effects across the conditional NPF distribution. The Hausman test supports the fixed-effects specification, confirming the presence of correlated unobserved heterogeneity. Mean-based results indicate that bank size is the most robust determinant of NPF, while profitability and capital adequacy do not exhibit statistically significant average effects. Quantile regression reveals substantial heterogeneity: the effect of size strengthens markedly in higher NPF regimes, while liquidity becomes a significant stabilizing factor in the upper quantile. Economic growth reduces NPF in lower quantiles but loses explanatory power in high-distress states. Inflation and global policy uncertainty show limited statistical relevance. The findings suggest that financing distress in GCC Islamic banks is primarily driven by structural characteristics and liquidity conditions rather than profitability or capital strength alone. By adopting a distribution-sensitive approach, the study contributes nuanced evidence to the Islamic banking and financial stability literature and offers implications for risk-based supervisory frameworks.

This research analyses the heterogeneous effects of digital infrastructure on sustainable economic growth in five developing countries (Egypt, India, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and Sudan) using the period 2014-2025. We use panel fixed effects with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors to investigate the effect of internet penetration, mobile broadband and fixed broadband on the GDP per capita growth. Our results suggest that digital infrastructure has a statistically and economically significant impact on economic growth. Internet penetration yields the largest benefits, followed by mobile broadband, whereas fixed broadband is not statistically significant in the full model, which is reflective of limited access in these countries. An exploratory Random Forest analysis with the important caveat of limited sample size suggests that internet penetration is the most important predictor of growth, followed by mobile broadband and human capital. However, these machine learning results should be considered exploratory given the small sample (N=60, or N=48 when excluding Sudan) and should not be over-interpreted. Our heterogeneity analysis finds that internet penetration drives growth in middle-income countries (Egypt, India), while mobile broadband drives growth in low-income countries (Sudan, Kenya). The moderation by human capital is large: the marginal impact of internet penetration more than doubles once average education exceeds six years. However, we note that this threshold is illustrative, based on the distribution of the sample and not necessarily a policy cutoff. The results have implications for SDG 4 (quality education), SDG 9 (infrastructure and innovation) and SDG 10 (inequality reduction). However, with our purposively selected five-country sample, these results are better considered as case-based evidence rather than statistically representative of all developing economies. The stark digital divide is evident in the 87% internet penetration in MENA countries compared to 44% in Sub-Saharan Africa and underscores the need for context-specific policy approaches. We suggest that low-income countries focus on expanding mobile broadband and middle-income countries make complementary investments in internet infrastructure and human capital, but emphasize that these policy suggestions are indicative rather than conclusive.