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This article examines the main factors that drive live animal imports in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the Middle East.

The analysis is based on a gravity model framework, and it incorporates annual data for imports of cattle, sheep and goats during the period 2004–2017 for six countries. The panel estimation technique is employed to disentangle the drivers of the GCC live animal imports.

The results reveal that imports of live animals are consistently positive and statistically significantly correlated with the economic sizes of importer countries, liner shipping connectivity (LSC) (for cattle and goats) and culture (for cattle and sheep). Other determinants include falling tariffs for live cattle imports and falling costs of doing business for live sheep imports. Distance is found to exert statistically significant friction for imports of live goats.

The GCC countries offer substantial opportunities for livestock trade to fulfil the growing demand for meat as a dietary requirement. Countries aiming at the GCC live animal segment of agricultural business would have to ensure reliable access to maritime transport connectivity and better understanding and insights into the business environment, transport logistics, trade policies, economic strength and cultural connections with meat consumption. The food-related supply chain system ought to have an extensive awareness of variables as the findings of this study revealed that can impact exchanges encountered across the supply chains.

Until now, no study has empirically investigated the effect of live animal imports within a coherent trade theoretical framework in the GCC. The novelty of this research is that it makes the first attempt to identify the factors driving the extensive GCC live animal imports for meat consumption with a specific geographical focus. This study also complements the existing sparse empirical literature on trade-in live animals.

Islamic finance is becoming a core part of the financial services economy in the Middle East countries. There is a strong likelihood that Islamic finance is also driving the expansion of trade in insurance services. However, research on Islamic finance’s effect on trade in insurance services is scant. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating if Islamic finance has promoted trade in insurance services.

This study adopts the gravity modelling framework and the panel data estimation procedure in understanding the effects of Islamic finance on trade in insurance.

The empirical results reveal a statistically significant positive correlation of Islamic finance with the exports and imports of insurance services. Economic sizes (domestic and trading partners), growth in trading partners, cost of doing business, legal rights and financial freedom are other statistically significant determinants.

It makes a positive contribution to the Islamic financial services literature. Islamic finance is an integral part of the conventional banking and financial sector in the Middle East that actively fosters the expansion of insurance services that need support, given its essential role in services trade.

This study is unique as it directs attention to the role of Islamic finance in fostering trade in insurance services within an inclusive modelling framework that has been overlooked in the Islamic finance literature.

Rising greenhouse gases have contributed to global warming above the pre-industrial levels with detrimental effects on world climatic patterns. Extreme weather has inflicted drastic impacts, including loss of lives and livelihoods and economic disruption. However, collective international cooperation in adopting greenhouse gas emission mitigating measures can translate into long-run beneficial effects of improving environmental quality. This study examines if international environmental cooperation among the world's top ten polluters can reduce production side emissions.

The panel estimation procedure was applied to data from ten top polluting countries from 2000 to 2019.

The results revealed a statistically significant inverse association between a nation's commitments to international environmental treaties and carbon dioxide emissions. Other than confirming the environmental Kuznets curve effect, industrial intensification, international trade and law rule are other strong correlations of carbon dioxide emissions.

The main policy implication is the urgency for the leaders of the world's top ten polluters to actively cooperate in developing and implementing new production-side carbon emission measures as well as the implementation and enforcement of existing international treaties to minimize further environmental damage and let the countries in the lower ranks of carbon emissions to enjoy the long-run benefits of the decarbonized world.

This study makes a new contribution to the environmental research literature by unfolding how collective global cooperation on environmental challenges can help reduce environmental damage in a coherent analytical framework.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2022-0598

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of trade policy pertaining to imported processed food on poorer health outcomes of people’s in the Pacific island countries.

Using an extended gravity model, the paper adopts the OLS time varying importer/exporter effects method and a Pseudo Poisson maximum likelihood estimator on a cross-sectional panel data set of 215 countries and territories. The estimation procedure controlled for 11 Pacific island countries between 2003 and 2013.

The empirical findings revealed a positive and statistically significant relationship between trade liberalisation and increased processed food imports in the Pacific island countries. The findings also reveal that the access ratio (kg/person) to selected imported processed food high in salt to Pacific island countries has increased significantly over time.

While much of the trade literature reveals positive impact of trade on the prosperity of nations, this study makes a new contribution in terms of supporting a negative impact of trade liberalisation policy on people’s health in small island developing states.

This study investigates if wealth from natural resources impacts child health in developing countries.

The methodology includes testing the effect of rents from natural resources on under-five mortality rates using a multifactor health production model for 57 developing nations. The panel estimation procedure was applied to data covering 2002 to 2017, disaggregated by non-renewable and renewable resources and low and medium human development countries.

The results provide strong evidence that wealth from total natural resources has not been associated with reductions in under-five mortality rates. However, disaggregation of the sample countries by natural resource constituents revealed that only the wealth of non-renewable is strongly inversely associated with under-five mortality rates. Further disaggregation of countries by the low and medium human development constituents revealed a statistically insignificant negative correlation of non-renewable resources wealth and under-five mortality in the low human development countries. In contrast, the results of the medium human development countries revealed that wealth from natural resources (both non-renewable and renewable) had not been associated with any reductions in under-five mortality rates. The results also confirm that immunization levels, nutrition, private spending on health care, air quality, urban living and countries closer to the equator are other strong correlates of under-five mortality rates in low human development countries.

The findings here have implications for the timely achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3 (to reduce under-five deaths to around 25 per 1,000 live births by 2030). Governments ought to ensure that incomes from the extractive sector are aligned in forms that promote and feed into improving child health wellbeing.

This research creates a shift from aggregate health wellbeing research agenda to investigate how specific aspects of human development can be linked to wealth from non-renewable and renewable natural resources in developing nations. It adds new knowledge and provides health and natural resources policymakers opportunities to combine their policies and synergize efforts to improve child health outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to systematically review the existing literature on Islamic marketing and its major impacts on consumer behaviours. In addition, this study seeks to shed light on global trends and dynamics beyond Islamic marketing and how Islam, as one of the most prominent religions worldwide, affects the consumption and purchasing choices of Muslim consumers.

A systematic literature review of published peer-reviewed articles on Islamic marketing was conducted. A comprehensive search strategy was applied on different databases, including Google Scholar, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, MUSE and Directory of Open Access Journals, and the retrieved articles were then selected from 14 leading journals published between 2010 and 2018.

Islam as a religion has been found to impact the ethical beliefs and behaviours of Muslim consumers from different countries, as well as consumers’ choice of services and some taboo products on the basis of Islamic Shariah law. The results show that Islamic marketing has a significant impact on the characteristics of Muslim consumers and therefore affects their key choices about certain products and services.

The studies included in this review are extensively based on peer-reviewed articles published in high-ranked marketing journals (A* and A in the Australian Business Deans Council list), which may be perceived as a limitation in the present study. Another limitation is that this study only took into account peer-reviewed articles written in English.

The important relationship between Islam and the heterogeneous Muslim consumer will have a considerable practical implication for companies that explore the marketing supply capacity in the Islamic world. The authors hereby expect the current review to significantly impact the identification of methodologies for the main trends in the academic analysis of Islamic marketing and Islamic consumer behaviour.

This review provides a strong contribution to Islamic marketing literature by recommending the need to integrate the Islamic practices related to consumer consumption of goods and services in studies focused on consumer behaviour analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the export, import, and total trade determinants using reduced form equations for six Pacific Island countries (PICs) with an institutional focus.

A fixed effects model, controlling for AR(1) errors, using panel data for selected PICs is utilized. Controlling for common determinants of trade, four indicators of institutional quality: government effectiveness; rule of law; regulatory quality; and control of corruption are tested.

The empirical results indicate that improvements in institutional quality variables matter for improved levels of trade. The results also provide confirmation that the appreciation of currency does not significantly harm trade; higher levels of technological diffusion are vital for improved trade; and that gradual liberalization of trade through tariff reduction strongly facilitates more trade.

This study clearly points out that the institutional quality in the selected countries is a significant factor in determining the level of trade.

This paper expresses the view that institutions matter for enhanced trade.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if distance is a friction to Pacific Island countries (PICs) trade with the USA.

A gravity model is used to estimate trade flows using time‐series cross‐country data for period 1981‐2005.

The empirical findings utilizing panel data estimation procedures here provide confirmation that distance imposes significant regressive effect on PICs exports to the USA.

This paper expresses the view that distance can impose regressive effects on PICs commodity exports to the USA.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of business environment indicators (time required to start a business, time required to register a property, time required to enforce a contract, and time to resolve insolvency) on trade in a sample of four Gulf Co‐operation Council (GCC) countries: Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.

The methodology included in this paper is based on a regression analysis of annual data on trade and business environment indicators for the 2003‐2009 period. The data are pooled across the four countries. The empirical analysis uses the fixed effects estimation procedure as this is considered to be the most appropriate given the nature of the available data and sample countries.

The results obtained through fixed effects estimation provide strong evidence that the time required to start a business and time required to resolve insolvencies is negatively and statistically significantly correlated with imports. The findings also reveal that the time required registering a property, the time required to enforce a contract, and the time required to resolve insolvencies are negatively and statistically significantly correlated with exports. Other standard determinants of imports and exports are also confirmed.

The major limitation is the absence of measures of business environment indicators for two of the six GCC countries (Bahrain and Qatar) where consistent measures were not available and these countries are eliminated from the empirical analysis.

These results lead to the conclusion that domestic business environment matters for trade in the GCC countries. There is a need for GCC countries to continuously reform their business environment so as to be integrated and stay competitive in this globalizing world.

The international tourism industry is booming, giving many developing nations unprecedented opportunity in trade. But for some developing nations, law and order problems appear to have obstructed growth in tourism. With little attention in the literature given to the influences of safety considerations for tourist demand, this paper investigates the deterrent effect of crime on tourism in developing island economies of the South Pacific and Caribbean. Using annual time‐series data, a simple country‐specific model is estimated. The empirical results confirm the importance of crime levels as a hindrance to the demand for tourism, the inference being that news of a deteriorating law and order situation in destination countries is being successfully disseminated to potential tourists in source countries despite the general inaccessibility of up‐to‐date crime statistics.