Stability and sustainability of the biggest banks in any country are extremely important. When big banks become unstable and vulnerable, they typically stop lending. The resulting credit squeeze pushes the economy into recession or a slow growth path. The present study examines the financial stability and sustainability of the 30 large banks operating in the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries. These banks represent 70% of the GCC banking market. Monte Carlo simulation was attempted assuming that key drivers can vary randomly by twenty percent on either side of the current values. The conclusions are drawn based on 300 simulation trails of the five-year forecast balance and income statement of each bank. Year 2020 is not favorable for the GCC countries because of the COVID-19 pandemic and low oil prices, though the future years may be better. The study identifies several banks, which may become financially unsustainable because the simulations indicate the possibility of negative profitability, unacceptably low capital ratios and potential for heavy credit losses during periods of economic turbulence, which is the current situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through simulation the paper is able to throw light on which factors lead to bank instability and weakness.

This study aims to investigate the main factors that affected the government health expenditures in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait), during the period from 2005 to 2019. The study employs a panel data technique in order to monitor the pooled determinant variables of healthcare expenditures in these countries. The study’s results indicate, by using FMOLS approach for panel data, that the average healthcare expenditures per capita in GCC countries have a positive and a significant relationship with the government revenues, the size of the population, and the governments’ public debt. The positive and the significant relationships of governments’ public debt may be explained even if the governments of the GCC countries suffer from a budget deficit; the GCC countries continue to increase the healthcare expenditure. The study suggests that the policymakers of the GCC countries must take into consideration those variables when they develop their healthcare policies. Also, the GCC countries urgently need to have high levels of foreign exchange reserves to maintain the expected level of spending on the healthcare sector, because their public revenues depend mainly on the oil revenues, which are fluctuating continuously.

This study examines the association between governance quality at country level and stock market performance. Specifically, the study investigates the influence of control of corruption, government effectiveness, political stability and absence of violence, rule of law, regulatory quality, and voice and accountability on all-share index of the stock markets of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. This study is anchored on two theories – the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) and Institutional Theory. The study employs panel data spanning from 2006 to 2017. The findings show that political stability and absence of violence and rule of law exhibit a significant positive impact on stock market performance, while regulatory quality and voice and accountability have a significant, but negative relationship with stock market performance. The results imply that quality of governance in terms of rule of law and political stability devoid of violence have strong impact on stock market returns. Similarly, improved stock market returns are largely dependent on the efficiency of the institutional environment of market as investors are always wary of the inherent risks associated with the uncertainty of the market. This study has crucial policy implications for the government of the GCC countries and stock market participants.

In this paper, we present a Sound Source Localization (SSL) based GCC (Generalized Cross Correlation)–PHAT (Phase Transform) and new measurement method of angle with robot auditory system for a network-based intelligent service robot. The main goal of this paper is to analysis performance of TDOA and GCC-PHAT sound source localization method and new angle measurement method is compared. We use GCC-PHAT for measuring time delays between several microphones. And sound source location is calculated by using time delays and new measurement method of angle. The robot platform used in this work is wever-R2, which is a network-based intelligent service robot developed at Intelligent Robot Research Division in ETRI.