This paper examines the effect of corporate governance denoted by board size, duality, agency cost etc. on theperformance of selected 24 GCC banks based on the criteria of total assets for the financial year 2012-13.Tobin’s Q and Return on Total Assets (ROTA) are adopted as a measurement of accounting and financialperformance respectively.The results indicate that smaller boards are more capable for monitoring the management closely in GCCbanking sector. Dual role of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) are likely to improve the GCC bank performance.The presence of block holders in ownership structure of GCC banks tends to have a positive effect on theperformance of banking sector. Overall, the study concludes that the corporate governance poses a significantinfluence on the financial and accounting performance of GCC banking sector.

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes original research papers and case studies

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes original research papers and case studies

The purpose of the present study is to test how do the four important psychological antecedents, namely need for achievement (nAch), propensity to risk (PtR), self-confidence (SeC), internal locus of control (IlC) are mediated by the entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) to predict the entrepreneurial intention (EI) in a traditionally oil-based Saudi economy striving for economic diversification. Hypotheses are tested by applying the partial least square (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM) to a sample of 282 undergraduate business students (male and female) collected from a public university of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The results suggest that psychological variables and self-efficacy play a fundamental role in enhancing entrepreneurial intention (EI) of Saudi students. Personality-related variables have direct influence over EI in other context, but in Saudi context, psychological variables are necessary but not sufficient to develop entrepreneurial intention unless combined with self-efficacy. Self-efficacy has a strong mediating effect between psychological variables and entrepreneurial intentions in Saudi context.

In the event that the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across various stock markets, this study may be deemed as one of the primary studies to evaluate cross-market interactions. The study examines the spread of contagious effects originating from developed economies (the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan) to selected emerging markets (China, India, Thailand, Taiwan, Egypt, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates). The countries studied are classified into three regions: developed economies, Asia, and Africa and the Middle East. The crisis period is identified with the deployment of the Markov regime-switching model. The conditional correlations are compared before and after the crisis episode using the time-varying multivariate DCC-GARCH model. The findings confirm that certain emerging markets are experiencing contagion from developed markets, while others remain unaffected. Overall, investors in the two regions examined (Asia, and Africa and the Middle East) have comparable diversification options. The findings are expected to bolster policymakers and international agencies in developing post-crisis measures.