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This study attempts to comprehensively analyze the cost Malmquist productivity index of conventional and Islamic banks in Saudi Arabia, the largest dual banking sector in the world, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study employs the novel approach of cost Malmquist productivity index, which focuses on production costs, to measure the change in cost productivity so that the actual impact of the COVID-19 pandemic could be captured.

The Saudi Central Bank has successfully mitigated the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the Saudi banking sector by implementing several policies and services. This success is reflected in the large positive shift in the production frontier of Saudi banks. Moreover, it was found that Islamic Saudi banks were by far more productive than conventional Saudi banks during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the total cost productivity index (CMPCH) of Islamic Saudi banks starts to decline sharply in the last quarter of 2022 compared to conventional Saudi banks, indicating that Islamic banks in Saudi Arabia are suffering the most from the tighter monetary policy recently implemented by the Saudi Central Bank.

The results provide insights for policymakers and investors on how different types of banks respond differently to economic crises and monetary policy changes. Targeted support measures may be needed to ensure all banks remain productive and efficient.

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to use this innovative methodology to assess the impact of COVID-19 on bank performance in a dual banking sector.

This study aims to extend the literature by simultaneously investigating the relationship between risk, efficiency and capital in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) dual banking system.

The study employs the simultaneous-equation modeling technique with a three-stage least square estimator on 60 listed GCC commercial banks from 2005 through 2018.

Although GCC Islamic banks are more capitalized and liquid, they are riskier and less efficient than GCC conventional banks. Moreover, a higher level of capital reduces the insolvency and credit risk of GCC banks for both types of banks. However, it enhances the cost efficiency of GCC conventional banks only. GCC conventional banks also exhibit skimping behavior, while for GCC Islamic banks, cost efficiency is negatively associated with bank risk. This implies that the risk-taking behavior in Islamic banks is prompted by the incentives of the shareholders following the risk-sharing nature of Islamic banking.

This study differs from previous studies in many aspects. First, it relies on a recent long data set that covers the implementation of the accords of Basel II (introduced in 2004) and Basel III (introduced in 2010). Second, it estimates the efficiency of GCC banks based on separate frontiers for Islamic and conventional banks, ensuring the robustness of the results. In conclusion, to the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the intertemporal relationship between risk, efficiency and capital in the GCC dual banking industry.

This study aims to examine in depth the impact of merger activities on banks in Saudi Arabia.

Event study, financial ratio and efficient frontier analyses with a mixture of parametric and non-parametric tests are used for the sample period 2016Q1–2022Q4.

Event study analysis shows that merging banks (bidders) have higher positive cumulative abnormal returns than merged banks (targets), indicating that investors believe that bidding banks will benefit the most from the merger strategy. It was also found that the efficiency measures of the combined banks of Saudi British Bank and Alawwal Bank deteriorated, while they improved for the combined banks of National Commercial Bank and Saudi American Bank in the post-merger period, confirming investors' views.

Although the study focuses on the Saudi banking sector, its findings could be generalized to other banks in the region, as the Saudi banking sector is one of the largest in the Middle East region and is expected to grow further in the future.

The mere act of merging two banks does not guarantee the realization of cost synergies or efficiency gains. This research shows that mergers are not automatically cost-effective and that their success depends on good integration and restructuring strategies.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study to provide a comprehensive analysis of the short- and long-term impacts of merger activities in the Saudi banking sector.

This study aims to analyse Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Islamic and conventional banks’ productivity and to investigate the impact of Basel III on their productivity change. This study is conducted on 73 GCC banks (45 conventional and 28 Islamic) over the period of 2005-2015.

This study uses the data envelopment analysis-type Malmquist productivity change index and its component indexes to obtain a deep insight into the source of productivity change.

The results show that Islamic banks are less productive than their conventional counterparts. Also, the results indicate that Basel III accord has impeded the GCC banks’ productivity and this negative effect is larger on Islamic banks. However, there is scale efficiency progress in the past years that offsets the production frontier deterioration, which leads to stagnation in total productivity change for both banks.

This study differs from the previous GCC banks’ productivity studies in several ways. Firstly, it covers a recent period that includes major events such as the global crisis and focuses on the influence of Basel III accord on GCC banks’ productivity. Secondly, as opposed to the previous studies, this study will estimate the GCC banks’ productivity index and its components based on separate frontiers for Islamic and conventional banks that will ensure the homogeneity in the sample and the robustness of the results. Thirdly, this study uses a combination of parametric and non-parametric tests to confirm and check the robustness of the findings. Lastly, to the best of the knowledge of the authors, this is the first study that tries to analyse the GCC banking sector productivity around the new Basel III announcement.

This study aims to extensively investigate the efficiency of real estate investment trusts (REITs) in Saudi Arabia.

The study employs the data envelopment analysis on 17 Saudi REITs with an innovative profit-oriented approach in selecting REITs' inputs and outputs.

It is found that the traditional approach underestimates the efficiency of Saudi REITs in comparison with the profit-oriented approach, implying that relying on the traditional approach in assessing the efficiency of REITs will underestimate their efficiency and provide misleading results about their actual performance. However, both approaches showed that Saudi REITs are very efficient in utilizing their inputs, and the major source of their inefficiency is related to their scale inefficiency. Moreover, small Saudi REITs are more efficient than large ones. Finally, a higher level of debt is supposedly associated with lower levels of efficiency, indicating that Saudi REITs should not rely on debt funding because there is no tax advantage from using debt.

This paper has several contributions to the literature. First, it employs an innovative profit-oriented approach in selecting REITs' inputs and outputs. Second, this study focuses on analyzing the efficiency of REITs in Saudi Arabia, which is the largest country in the Middle East region, regarding size, stock market capitalization and gross domestic product. Finally, to the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the efficiency of REITs in Saudi Arabia, and it provides substantial information for REITs' investors and managers about the current efficiency of the Saudi REITs industry.

This study aims to extend the literature by extensively investigating the impact of foreign exchange and interest rate changes on the returns and volatility of bank stocks in Saudi Arabia, which is the largest dual banking industry.

This study employs the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model on stock returns of four fully Islamic Saudi banks and eight conventional Saudi banks.

The results showed that the foreign exchange rate return has a positive impact on Saudi conventional bank returns, while it has an adverse impact on Saudi Islamic bank returns. Moreover, a higher interest rate return has a positive impact on Saudi bank stock returns implying that the assets side is more sensitive to changes in interest rates than the liability side. Finally, higher foreign exchange and interest rates volatility increases the volatility of Saudi bank returns, where the former has the largest significant impact. Therefore, Saudi regulators should pay more attention to the risk management of their banks because this could threaten the stability of their financial system.

To the best knowledge of the author, this is the first study that tries to extensively analyze the joint impact of foreign exchange and interest rates on bank stock returns and volatility in Saudi Arabia by applying the GARCH model. The study uses a long data set from 2010 to 2019 that includes all Saudi banks and employs four measures of interest rates to increase the robustness of the results.

Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, is exposed to several natural hazards, among which flash floods are most common and frequent. Expanding development and higher intensity of rainfall are the primary causes of flash floods. As the urbanisation is growing, the number of exposed properties, people and business premises are also increasing. This may have a detrimental impact on the socio-economic state of the city. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to investigate the frequency and intensity of flash flood occurrences between 2011 and 2016 and to delineate how it is impacting the urban livelihood. For this study, several news reports of flash flood events, previously published and reports were reviewed to elicit information so that the frequency and intensity of flash floods can be analysed for identifying flash flood risk areas. Along with the information from newspapers, Google map was used to identify the spatial locations of flash flood events, thus identifying the risk zones. This study found the City Centre as the most risk prone to flash floods. It was noted that 39% of flash floods occurred in this place. The Damansara-Penchala area comes in the second position with 20% of flash floods occurring in this place. Most of the people of these zones are exposed to flash flood and the affected people suffer from road blocking and heavy traffic jam. This study will help researchers and policymakers to understand the impact of flash floods in the city. This will also help to identify the most flood-prone areas of the city.

This study aims to empirically compare the performance of Islamic indices vis-à-vis to their conventional counterparts in India.

The performance of the Islamic and selected conventional indices is evaluated using various risk-adjusted performance measures such as Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio, M-square (M²) ratio, information ratio, capital asset pricing model (CAPM), Fama-French three-factor model and Carhart four-factor model in India context. The period of study is from December 2006 to 2018.

The risk-adjusted performance measures based on the Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio, information ratio, the M² ratio show that the return of Islamic indices provides slightly superior performance. However, performance investigated using CAPM, Fama-French and Carhart benchmarks produce a statistically insignificant differences in return of the Islamic and conventional benchmarks.

The Sharīʿah-compliant indices can provide a viable, ethical and alternative investment avenue for faith-based investors as it will not make them worse off in comparison to the conventional benchmarks. This also offers opportunity to conventional investors for portfolio diversification. The promotion of faith-based investment can serve as a tool for financial inclusion to attract a huge segment of Indian population in the formal financial system. The findings of the study suffer from the limitation of small sample size and empirical methods used.

This study contributes to the literature on the comparative performance of Islamic and conventional indices in general and emerging markets, in particular, using most recent data and covering a relatively long span of time. To the best of the knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study examining the performance of Islamic indices, using multiple Islamic indices and various risk-adjusted measures in the Indian context.

Digital technologies have been found to have long-lasting impacts on poverty. This study has been conducted to shed light on the contributions made by digital technologies toward poverty alleviation and also provide future research directions.

The authors thoroughly studied the sample of 258 publications from the Scopus database, covering the period from 1982 to June 2023. Using VOS viewer and Bibliometrix R, various graphs and networks are developed to understand publication trends, research collaborations and intellectual structures.

A significant amount of the existing literature on the impact of digital technologies on poverty alleviation demonstrates the need for more studies in this area. Lack of information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and access exhibits less opportunity for work, social networking and entrepreneurship, directly affecting people’s livelihoods in developing countries.

This study will help country planners, regulatory bodies and academicians get a deeper insight into the impact of digital technologies on poverty alleviation and also develop the future research agenda.

This study employs a considerable period of time, from the year 1982 to June 2023. To the best of authors’ knowledge, the current study is a pioneer in using bibliometric analysis to identify the impact of digital technologies on the alleviation of poverty. This attempt will surely be helpful to academicians, researchers and those working on identifying the impact of digital technology on poverty alleviation.

Given the dearth of thorough summaries in the literature, this systematic review and bibliometric analysis attempt to take a meticulous approach meant to present knowledge on the constantly developing subject of stock market volatility during crises. In outline, this study aims to map the extant literature available on stock market volatility during crisis periods.

The present study reviews 1,283 journal articles from the Scopus database published between 1994 and 2022, using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 flow diagram. Bibliometric analysis through software like R studio and VOSviewer has been performed, that is, annual publication trend analysis, journal analysis, citation analysis, author influence analysis, analysis of affiliations, analysis of countries and regions, keyword analysis, thematic mapping, co-occurrence analysis, bibliographic coupling, co-citation analysis, Bradford’s law and Lotka’s law, to map the existing literature and identify the gaps.

The literature on the effects of crises on volatility in financial markets has grown in recent years. It was discovered that volatility intensified during crises. This increased volatility can be linked to COVID-19 and the global financial crisis of 2008, as both had massive effects on the world economy. Moreover, we identify specific patterns and factors contributing to increased volatility, providing valuable insights for further research and decision-making.

The present study is confined to the areas of economics, econometrics and finance, business, management and accounting and social sciences. Future studies could be conducted considering a broader perspective.

Most of the available literature has focused on the impact of some particular crises on the volatility of financial markets. The present study is not limited to some specific crises, and the suggested research directions will serve as a guide for future research.