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The MENA region is very rich in terms of natural resources. At the same time, the MENA region has also been a victim of terrorism during the last few years. This study is an attempt to investigate whether there is any relationship between natural resources and terrorism in the MENA region.

We have focused on 15 resource-rich countries located in the MENA region for the period 2002–2019. We have applied appropriate econometric techniques and have also controlled for other dominant determinants of terrorism while studying the relationship between these two variables.

The results provide solid evidence in favor of the hypothesis that natural resources encourage terrorism. We find that natural resources have positively impacted terrorism. Besides, the natural resources, other factors such as per capita GDP, trade openness, political stability, domestic investment and government expenditures have negatively impacted terrorism. Moreover, the findings suggest that FDI and corruption are irrelevant in explaining terrorism while the findings regarding employment level and terrorism are unexpected. The obtained results are robust to alternative estimating methodologies.

The results have serious policy implications for the MENA region. The MENA region in general is suggested to devise appropriate policies regarding their huge natural resources so as to tackle the terrorism problem effectively. Similarly, paying favorable attention to trade liberalization, political stability, government expenditures, investment, rising income of the population in the presence of macroeconomic stability in the form of lower inflation would also help the MENA region to eradicate the problem of terrorism.

The available literature has largely ignored the role of natural resources in explaining the problem of terrorism. Therefore, this study has provided relatively new evidence regarding the determinants of terrorism.

Sustainability is essential to the ongoing operations of banks, though it is much less clear how Islamic corporate governance (ICG) promotes economic sustainability (ES) and thereby prevents bankruptcy. To explore the unexplored, this study aims to examine the efficacy of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and enhancing the ES of Islamic banks operating in Pakistan.

The current study measures ES through Altman's Z-score to analyze the level of the industry's stability and consequently examines the effect of ICG on the ES of Islamic banks in Pakistan for the post-financial-crises period. Using the country-level data, this study utilized a fixed-effect model and two-stage least squares (2SLS) techniques on balanced panel data spanning from 2009 to 2020 to provide empirical evidence.

The empirical results unveiled that board size and meetings have a significant positive influence on the ES while managerial ownership demonstrated an unfavorable effect on ES. Interestingly, the insignificant effect of women directors became significant with the inclusion of controlled variables. Overall, the findings indicate that ICG is an efficient tool for promoting ES in Islamic banks and preventing them from the negative effects of emerging crises.

The findings provide concrete insights for policymakers, regulators and other concerned stakeholders to execute a sturdy corporate governance system that not only oversees the economic, social and ethical aspects but also provides measures to alleviate the impacts of potential risks like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Examining the role of ICG in alleviating bankruptcy risk is an informative and useful endeavor for all social actors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first efforts to provide evidence-based insights on the role of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and offers a potential research direction for ES.

This paper explores the relationship between natural resources and economic growth of Brunei Darussalam, an underresearched area in the available literature.

Annual data are sourced from reliable sources for the period 1989–2020. Appropriate cointegration techniques for time series data are employed to estimate the specified models and extract results.

The results provide evidence about the positive and significant role that natural resources have played in the economic growth of Brunei Darussalam. Similarly, trade openness and domestic investment have also positively and significantly impacted the long-run economic growth. On the other hand, the impacts of government expenditure and the growth of human capital on economic growth are although positive but insignificant statistically in the long run. The short-run results show that natural resources, government expenditures and domestic investment have influenced economic growth both positively and significantly. Moreover, the positive and significant impact of trade openness on economic growth, which was observed in the long run, turned negative and insignificant in the short run. Finally, the insignificant positive relationship between the growth of human capital and economic growth observed in the long run remained the same in the short run.

This paper studies the resource curse hypothesis for Brunei Darussalam for the first time, and therefore, the findings will be of significant interest for policymakers and researchers.

This paper explores the direct and indirect associations between financial resilience and life satisfaction, using the moderation of non-impulsive behavior and mediation of financial satisfaction.

The authors analyze the Australian household dataset, named the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, to meet the objectives of this paper. Furthermore, the authors use the PROCESS Models 4 and 7 to test the mediation and the combined moderated mediation relationships, respectively.

The authors find the complete mediation of the relationship between financial resilience and life satisfaction by financial satisfaction. Also, this study finds that both financial resilience and non-impulsive behavior positively contribute to financial satisfaction, which is positively associated with life satisfaction.

This research supports the need for consumers to build emergency funds as financial resilience is related to consumer well-being. This research also recommends that impulsive behavior should be addressed by the personal finance curriculum and financial advisors.

This research contributes by showing that financial satisfaction is an important predictor of consumers’ well-being. The ability to access financial resources, which increases for non-impulsive consumers, is associated with increased life satisfaction but only via financial satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential impact of trade openness on economic growth for the economy of Brunei Darussalam.

Empirical analyses are conducted using the autoregressive distributed lagged model (ARDL) procedure and the data used were spanning from 1989 to 2018.

The obtained results indicated a positive and statistically significant relationship between trade openness and economic growth. Similarly, the results also revealed that domestic investment and natural resources positively impacted economic growth. Further, this paper found that human capital has impacted economic growth both negatively and significantly, which is against the prior expectation. Moreover, in the short-run, trade openness and domestic investment have lost its significance level while all other variables have maintained both their significance levels and signs of their coefficients.

This paper has provided comprehensive evidence regarding the relationship between trade openness and economic growth for Brunei Darussalam. Therefore, the policymakers of Brunei are suggested to take practical steps to gear up trade liberalization, and hence attain higher growth. Further, a favorable attention is also needed toward economic diversification and encouraging domestic investment to accelerate the long-run economic growth.

As this is a comprehensive study on the economy of Brunei Darussalam, therefore, this paper expects that the policymakers would find it useful while formulating and exercising suitable policies related to trade openness.

Trade openness plays a significant role in the growth process of countries. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of macroeconomic determinants on the trade openness of countries.

The study focuses on the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) member countries and the data used were from 1971 to 2011. Panel data econometrics techniques and two stages least square method (TSLS) are used to carry out empirical analysis and robustness testing.

The main finding of the paper is that macroeconomic determinants such as investment both in physical and human capital and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) positively affect trade openness. Further, the size of labour force and currency exchange rate has also impacted trade openness negatively and significantly.

It implies that efficient macroeconomic management matters for higher trade openness. The sampled developing countries are suggested to pay favourable attention to macroeconomic variables if they want to grow in the long run through outward-oriented policies.

This paper is an original contribution in the context of SAARC countries by focusing on the relationship between macroeconomic determinants and trade openness.

Improving the quality of life of the masses is the prime objective of all policymakers of both developed and developing countries. However, the determinants of improved quality of life are not well explored in the empirical literature. This study has, therefore, tried to identify the determinants of quality of life by focusing on military expenditures.

Panel data from 1990 to 2017 are collected from internationally reliable sources for the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN hereafter) member countries, and suitable econometric techniques are employed to estimate the designed models.

The results show that military expenditures have affected the quality of life of the ASEAN member countries both negatively and significantly. Similarly, the inflation rate has also negatively affected the quality of life. In terms of magnitude, the negative impact of the inflation rate on quality of life has exceeded than the impact of military expenditures. On the other hand, trade openness, per capita income, urbanization and government expenditures have played a positive and significant role in improving the quality of life in the ASEAN region. Moreover, it is found that the positive impact of per capita income on quality of life is highest among other determinants.

This study provided comprehensive evidence about the relationship between military expenditures and quality of life in the ASEAN context. Consequently, the ASEAN member economies will benefit a lot from the results of this study.

Intellectual capital (IC) is a paramount resource for competitiveness in the knowledge-based financial sectors of the economy. As financial technology advances, specifically in the banking industry, it is vital to understand the effect of IC on financial performance. This study aims to investigate the effect of IC on return on equity (ROE), with a unique emphasis on the moderating role of board attributes. Previous studies have overlooked this moderating role.

The study sample consists of 17 banks and a panel data set spanning 2016–2021, extracted from annual reports. Antel Pulic’s value-added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) model is used to compute IC. To analyze the data, a generalized least squares analysis is conducted. The robustness of the analysis is ensured by using the two-stage least squares (2SLS) econometric technique.

The findings indicate that both the VAIC and human capital efficiency (HCE) have a significant impact on the ROE of banks. In terms of moderation, it is observed that board size (BS) exerts a negative effect on the association between VAIC, HCE, structural capital efficiency and ROE. Additionally, BS positively compounds the connection between capital employed efficiency and ROE. Similarly, the presence of independent directors (IND) significantly moderates the effects of VAIC and its components on the ROE of banks in Pakistan.

Banks should focus on the HCE for a higher ROE. Moreover, banks ought to prioritize appointing more independent directors in the boardroom for effective utilization of IC and greater ROE.

The findings of the study, which analyzed data from Pakistan’s banking sector, are original and provide additional insights into the literature on IC and board attributes.

This paper empirically examines the impact of terrorism on the insurance–growth relationship in the context of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, thereby attempting to address the unexplored area in the relevant literature.

The study considered MENA as it has been one of the terribly affected zones in the world during the study period. Panel data for the period (2002–2017) are sourced from reliable sources for 14 member economies of the MENA region.

After employing the suitable econometric procedures on the panel data, the results indicate that terrorism appears to have detrimental impact on the observed positive relationship between insurance and economic growth. In addition, trade openness seems to be the main driving force behind economic growth of the selected MENA countries. Surprisingly, the study suggests a negative association between the growth of physical capital and economic growth. Human capital has played a positive but insignificant role in improving economic growth as it is insignificant in majority of the specifications. The growth of labor force has although positively but insignificantly influenced economic growth. Finally, the results demonstrate that government expenditures and high inflation are harmful for growth.

The study investigated the impact of terrorism on the insurance–growth relationship for the first time, and hence policymakers of the MENA region are expected to be benefited enormously from the findings of the study.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contending role of important external inflows on the economic growth of Pakistan economy. The main purpose behind focusing on Pakistan is that it is receiving significant inflows from different international sources such as International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

The study adopted the autoregressive distributed lag cointegration approach for the purpose of exploring the long-run cointegrating relationship among the variables. As Pakistan Government had been implementing some major liberalization policies during 1990s, data from 1976 to 2018 is used to estimate the specified models to reflect the impact of the surge of foreign inflows occurring from that time. In addition, error correction model is estimated for examining the short-run relationships.

The findings revealed the significant role played by different inflows in accelerating the economic growth. According to results, in the long run, all inflows, for example, Foreign direct investment (FDI), debt, official developdment assistance and remittances, have influenced significantly and positively the economic growth. The two control variables such as inflation and employment level included in the model have also played their expected role in the growth process. In the short run, some of the variables such as remittances, FDI and inflation rate have lost their significance level while for debt, aid and employment level, the signs of their coefficients become reversed.

Based on the findings, the study suggests the policymakers of Pakistan economy to liberalize the economy and attract more inflows from the external sources to accelerate economic growth.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive empirical study on the role of foreign inflows in the process of economic growth in the context of Pakistan economy.