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Education reform and policy formation have become national priorities in all of the Gulf States that make up the six member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This move toward developing and sustaining effective education provision for the national citizenry gained greater importance in the wake of the Arab Spring movement that swept across the region. Although not as directly impacted as some other Arab nations further north, the leadership of Gulf States recognized that the large youth demographic in the region needed greater education and employment options, partly to stem the tide of unrest in their own nations. Many Gulf States, including the Kingdom of Bahrain, were already looking overseas for education models and systems that they could “buy-in” and implement in local schools. One such provider that seemed attractive to Bahrain, among others, was Singapore, which is widely hailed in the Gulf region as a model of a high-performing, global economy and education system. Yet importation of foreign models, with little or no accommodations made for local needs and cultures leads to an uncomfortable “grafting” of systems that seem out of place. This, coupled with the desire by Gulf States to take part in international benchmarking exercises, such as TIMSS, has created an awkward skewing in many educational practices and processes in Bahrain and other GCC states. This chapter, using Bahrain as a case study, will explore the regional importation of systems and models and the effect that participation in international assessments is having on localized education practices.

The purpose of this brief chapter is to set out the current trends and issues related to comparative and international education (CIE) in the Arabian Gulf region. As the field of comparative and education studies and research is relatively new in the Gulf, this chapter attempts to tell the story of the current state of the field in the region. One result of such an emergent area of the broader field is that there is little history and literature to draw upon, hence this chapter will defer to the literature regarding the field in general, drawing on specific area studies relating to the Gulf when available. Many aspects of education development, history, policy and practice have been examined, yet the distinct field of CIE, both as a teaching methodology and a research focus, remains a small, yet growing, part of the wider educational discourse and practice in the region.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the incentives, options, and obstacles to transfer technology to the Arab Gulf region.

A validated and reliable instrument was used to gather data from former expatriates who were employed by American-based multinational corporations.

The results indicate that the Arab Gulf States possess a wide range of resources and incentives offered to investors which contribute to the Gulf's attractiveness. At the same time, however, industrialization efforts, including transfer of technology to the Gulf region, are hampered by lack of industrial management expertise and technical skills among the relatively small national population and by resistance to new forms of technology by local residents.

Technology transfer cannot be seen as the only resort for attaining growth rates. Education, innovation, and basic science are necessary to achieve economic development. In addition, the Arab Gulf States must address serious demographic challenges.

This exploratory, empirical investigation provides insight into the opportunities and challenges of technology transfer to the Gulf region. It identifies areas that need further investigation.

The Gulf States (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman Bahrain and Qatar) represent a major global market accounting for 26 per cent of European exports, 22 per cent of Japanese exports, 27 per cent of South East Asian exports, and 14 per cent of US exports. Despite this importance comparatively little interest has been shown in buyer behaviour in the Gulf States. Based on extensive research and direct experience a number of salient differences between western models of organizational buying behaviour and actual practice are identified and give rise to specific recommendations for marketing strategy in the region.

The development of a knowledge society in the Arabian Gulf is a nested and contextualized process that relies upon the development of nation-specific knowledge economies and region-wide knowledge cultures. The role of internationally comparative education data and mass education systems in the Gulf as mechanisms for the development of knowledge economies, societies, and cultures are discussed and debated in relation to the unique contextual conditions countries operate within. The role of “big” data and mass education in creating expectations for achievement, accountability, and access is shown to significantly contribute to the development of knowledge societies by providing the infrastructure and capacity for sustainable change, which potentially leads to the institutionalization of knowledge acquisition, exchange, and creation in the Gulf and beyond.

The paper aims to give an interesting insight into the rise in event bidding and delivery of sports mega‐events from Qatar and the Middle East. This paper seeks to examine the shift in government policies and citizen relationships in the Middle East and Gulf Region, focusing on the specific case of Qatar from its staging of the 15th Asian Games in 2006 to present.

The paper begins with an overview of the main literature on the importance of sport events as a vehicle for securing global profile for cities and nations. The paper draws upon the authors' participation at the 15th Asian Games and interviews conducted there and latterly, desk‐based research involving scrutiny of Qatar's recent policy pronouncements and published materials pertaining to sporting events in the intervening period since the 2006 Games.

The findings are presented in the form of a case study, using the Asian Games as a starting point and finishing with Qatar's latest bids for sporting mega‐events. The paper presents a conceptual analysis of the situation in Doha and reveals a ten‐year strategy from Qatar to set itself apart from its neighbors in bidding to host mega‐sporting events and in its progress in terms of civil rights for women. This has allowed wider participation in sport and ensured Qatar can bid for the most prestigious global sporting events.

This paper adds to the wider public policy discussion and contributes to the body of knowledge in this area. The authors have written extensively on events policy but believe issues of democracy versus ruling states, emotional bidding and awarding to such states will continue to rise over the coming years and these have significant implications for both event owners in awarding such bids but also for policy makers in legitimizing bidding for such events in this context.

The paper reveals that the currency of awarding events to countries in the Middle East, Africa and South America is politically and socially important and of major interest to both the public and academics at present.

This paper aims to investigate the dynamic linkage between stock prices and exchange rate changes for the Gulf Arab countries (Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates [UAE]).

The author uses the Markov-switching autoregression to detect regime-shift behavior in the stock returns of the Gulf Arab countries and Markov-switching vector autoregressive (MS-VAR) model to capture the dynamic interrelatedness between exchange and stock returns over the period 2000–2018.

This study’s analysis finds evidence to support the persistence of two distinct regimes for all markets, namely, a low-volatility regime and a high-volatility regime. The low-volatility regime illustrates more persistence than the high-volatility regime. Specifically, exchange rate changes do not have an influence on the stock market returns of the Gulf Arab countries, regardless of the regimes. On the other hand, stock market returns have a substantial impact on exchange markets for all countries, except Saudi Arabia, and it is more noticeable during the regime of high volatility.

The findings shed light on the interconnectedness between two of the most important financial markets in the complex international financial environment. They are thus of particular interest for economic policymakers and portfolio investors.

The author distinguishes this study from previous studies in several ways. First, while previous empirical studies of the dynamic linkage between stock prices and foreign exchange markets are primarily devoted to developed markets or emerging markets, this study’s interest is concentrated on four Gulf Arab financial markets (Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE). Second, unlike most investigations in the literature that only estimate this link for the whole period, this study attempts to estimate during the good and bad period by using a two-regime MS-VAR model. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study of the Gulf Arab countries on the stock and foreign exchange markets to apply this model.

The purpose of this study was to investigate challenges for new Western/Western-educated faculty and their responses to those challenges as they began teaching at a national women’s University located in the Arabian Gulf. Twenty-four new faculty were recruited for the study. Faculty were hired from America, the UK, Canada, and Australia to provide an American-like education to students. 75% percent of participants were native English speakers, and 54% had not taught in a foreign university before. Before arriving in the country to begin teaching, the participants were asked to complete a questionnaire measuring their attitudes towards student learning and performance, and their teaching methods. Six to ten weeks after the beginning of their first semester they were asked to participate in focus groups. The focus group questions asked faculty to discuss issues and challenges they were facing and how they were coping. Results of the quantitative data and the focus groups show faculty were facing classroom challenges but were committed and creative in finding teaching/learning strategies. Focus group data further showed faculty were experiencing cultural differences that were challenging and frustrating. They were finding their teaching rewarding and were enjoying the experience of interacting with the students who were the first generation of women in the nation to be educated in a Western-style pedagogy.