This study examined the moderating role of competitive strategy in the relationship between financial leverage and performance of firms based on a sample of industrial firms in Jordan between 2007 and 2016. The interaction between competitive strategy and financial leverage was revealed to influence the effects of financial leverage towards the performance of firms in terms of return on assets (accounting-based measure) and market-to-book ratio (market-based measure). Conclusively, obtained results are in line with the notion that firms that employ cost leadership strategy experience tax advantages and increased efficiency through debt financing and/or debt covenants. This study extends the overall understanding on the effects of financial leverage towards performance of firms and how this relationship is moderated by competitive strategy among firms in an emerging market such as Jordan.

Past studies have mostly investigated the significance of financial attributes in trade affairs of developed countries, while dismissing such importance among developing nations. As such, this study looked into the influence of financial leverage upon the growth of Jordanian firms. For that purpose, a sample of 91 firms from Jordan had been analyzed via panel data regression method for the period between 2006 and 2015. As a result, the findings portrayed the irrelevance between financial leverage and growth of assets, but a significantly positive correlation with the growth of sales and employment. On top of that, this study revealed that growth of sales and employment had been significantly and positively correlated with firm size. In short, this study dismissed the speculation the constraint Jordanian firms were in, but on the contrary, displayed the ability to gain external financing to ascertain successful progress.

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This paper investigates the association between CO2 emissions and a range of factors, including electricity consumption, economic growth, urbanization, and trade openness for six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using data covering the 1965-2019 period. Namely, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. Contrasting with the standard literature, our empirical strategy uses the wavelet coherence approach on the frequency domain, thought to complement the time-series econometric procedures reported on this topic. Supplied at the country-level, associated evidence presents far-reaching policy recommendations whose applications may directly benefit environmental planning and bring high information value for the sake of sustainable energies in the Gulf region.

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In this article, the co-movement between GCC and US stock market returns was investigated using the wavelet coherence method. The Dynamic Conditional Correlation GARCH (DCC-GARCH) modelling is then applied on timevarying components in order to provide a point of comparison with the results extracted from wavelet analysis. The investigation was conducted on the weekly stock index prices of two USA stock markets, namely Dow Jones and S&P 500 and six GCC stock markets, namely the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain. The data were retrieved from Thomson Reuters's data stream and the sample duration was from 7 January 2007 to 24 June 2018. As a result, a definite co-movement between several GCC stock markets and those of the US stock markets for a long term was found. Moreover, the results also displayed signs of the significant disparity between the co-movements of the stock markets throughout the scales of time during economic decline. This phenomenon was possibly expected during the economic decline, where a significant divergence occurred as opposed to co-movement. The implications of the findings for global investors were considerable due to the indication from long-term co-movement that these investors would not be capable of gaining simultaneous profit from time and portfolio being diversified. In fact, the results showed the major difference in the opportunities for international portfolio diversification throughout these markets in terms of scale and time.

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This paper investigates the association between CO2 emissions and a range of factors, including electricity consumption, economic growth, urbanization, and trade openness for six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using data covering the 1965-2019 period. Namely, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. Contrasting with the standard literature, our empirical strategy uses the wavelet coherence approach on the frequency domain, thought to complement the time-series econometric procedures reported on this topic. Supplied at the country-level, associated evidence presents far-reaching policy recommendations whose applications may directly benefit environmental planning and bring high information value for the sake of sustainable energies in the Gulf region.JEL: Q43, C22, C23, E20, O44.