Economic growth and financial development are intrinsically related. Literature provides evidence that economic growth leads to financial development and financial development also leads to economic growth. The study analyzes this association between economic growth and financial development considering institutions for countries with substantial oil rents. The study uses the Pedroni test for cointegration, Granger causality, Ordinary Least Squares (Panel, Fully Modified, and Dynamic) methods to study the relationship on a panel data of six countries from 2000 to 2019. The study proceeds with the hypothesis that economic growth leads to financial development in countries having oil rents. The study finds that economic growth has a significant positive impact on the financial sector development of the GCC countries and not vice versa. The study also reports that poor institutional quality constraints the contribution of oil rents to financial development. The results imply that in countries accruing oil rent, the quality of institutions needs to be improved for furthering the cause of financial development. Although the study advances the empiricism on the link between economic growth and financial development, incorporating institutions and oil rents is the study’s novelty.

The interplay between oil rents, institution and economic growth is important for resource abundance economies as they are hypothesized to be suffering from ‘resource curse’, which denotes poor growth in the presence of abundant natural resource. The current paper aims to study the triptych relationship between economic growth, oil rents and institutions with an added dimension of sectoral contribution to growth. The Middle East and North African (MENA) region is an archetypal case of resource abundant region. Both the pattern of economic growth and institutional quality in the region is diverse and debatable. This study bases itself on 18 countries of the MENA region for the period 2004 to 2018, using various static and dynamic panel data methods including Arellano-Bond-Generalized Method of Moments. The main findings indicate that oil rents and institutions determine economic growth. We estimate two models: A first model relating GDP per capita with the sectoral shares on real value added and a second model relating GDP per capita with sectoral real values per capita. In the first model, the negative and insignificant effects of agriculture share, manufacturing share and service sectors share on GDP might indicate the relative unimportance of these sectors in the economies accruing oil rents, indicating the presence of a resource curse. In the second model, the level of industrial production per capita, positively related with Oil rents per capita, shows a positive and significant effect on real value added of Sectors and GDP per capita. These results confirm that oil rents per capita is not a curse but an important positive advantage for economic development. An important highlight of the result that differentiates this study with others is the positive impact of institutions. The study negates the presence of resource curse as oil rents are contributing positively to growth and concludes with the note that poor performance of some sectors in some countries in the MENA region is not exactly due to the quality of institutions; rather it is because of lack of diversification.

Expenditure on health is vital in the development of a country. Furthermore, the current COVID-19 pandemic emphasises the importance of health investments in maintaining a healthier economy worldwide. A substantial amount of empirical research on the relationship between health expenditure and economic growth yields conflicting results. The study intends to investigate the relationship between health spending and economic growth and institutions’ role in causing health spending to promote growth. 

The study uses longitudinal data to examine the relationship between health spending and economic growth in seven MENA countries from 2000 to 2017. The study uses the Phillips Perron (PP) Fisher chi-square stationarity test, indicating that the data series is not stationary. Following this, we used the Pedroni test for cointegration, and the results show long-run relationships between the variables. Next, Granger causality determines the direction of causality. Finally, panel data methods of panel ordinary least squares (Panel OLS), fully modified OLS (FMOLS), and dynamic OLS (DLOS) supplement the 

Foreign aid and remittances augment the income of economies. The present study examines the relationship between economic growth, poverty, inequality, remittances, and foreign aid in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries using panel data methods from 1991 to 2019. The study focuses on the MENA region due to the rise in labor immigration and significant foreign aid. The empirical findings reveal that remittances, foreign aid, and economic growth play a significant role in bringing down the MENA region’s poverty levels. Besides, a rise in income share accruing to the lowest quintile is observed despite the negative income growth, which indicates that on average, the income increased more rapidly of the poor in comparison to the non-poor households. Thus, the study finds evidence supporting the hypothesis that remittances and foreign aid augment per capita income and income share in the MENA member countries.

Terms of trade is associated with the gains from trade and subsequent economic welfare for a nation. Previous studies on terms of trade for oil exporting countries particularly investigating for a favorable terms of trade are missing. The study applies the Fixed Effect model on a panel of six oil producing countries of Gulf Cooperation Council for the period 2008 to 2016 and find that oil price is negatively associated with terms of trade, albeit weakly. Terms of trade is positively associated with economic growth; hence this study refutes the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis for these countries. Moreover, terms of trade is positively associated with trade opens and are not significantly associated with institutions, exchange rate and inflation. The results imply that these oil exporting countries have to reduce their dependence on oil price to attain favorable terms of trade through diversification of the export basket. Also further integration with the world economy through higher trade openness will help these countries to improve their terms of trade. This examination of factors impacting the terms of trade of oil exporting countries of GCC happens to fill a gap in the existing literature.

Females have an unfavourable position when it comes to being actively involved in the business. This unequal situation is no different for Saudi Arabia. The purpose of this study is to probe gender differences in entrepreneurial intention in Saudi Arabia. This study employs a primary survey based on the Theory of Planned Behavior to study the entrepreneurial intentions of female university students and see how it is different from their male counterparts. The study reports that there is no difference between the entrepreneurial intentions of female and male students. The study further reports that females have higher perceived behavioural control and lower attitude towards entrepreneurial intentions. Social norms do not significantly affect the formation of entrepreneurial intention for both males and females. An oil dominant country, Saudi Arabia is aggressively pushing for economic reforms to move away from oil and diversify it. It has also announced empowerment strategies for the women of the country. Improving the overall social acceptability of entrepreneurship may give females an advantage over males to contribute to the country's economic reform and growth process. The few existing studies on Saudi Arabia have not studied the differences in gender in terms of entrepreneurial intentions and their determinants. The study uses the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to explore the differences between male and female entrepreneurial intentions