We examine the impact of corporate governance on risk and forward-looking disclosures in Qatar. Design: We automatically measure levels of risk and forward-looking disclosures in the annual reports of Qatari firms for the period 2008-2014. We also use two ways clustered error pooled panel regressions to examine the determinants of these disclosures. Findings: We find that firms with a higher percentage of foreign ownership disclose more forward-looking information; conversely, board size has a negative impact on the forward-looking disclosure. Financial firms tend to disclose less forward-looking information, however, they tend to disclose more forward-looking information after the 2008 global financial crisis. We also find negative relationships between the risk disclosure and both the number of non-executive members of the board of directors and duality role of the CEO. Research implications: Our findings should help the users of corporate annual reports in Qatar to understand managerial incentives for reporting risk and forward-looking information. This should help regulators to set a proper set of disclosure rules. Moreover, this study increases our understanding of the behavior of international investors and the board characteristics (i.e. board size) in motivating risk and forward-looking disclosures in Qatari firms. Originality: We provide the original empirical evidence on the impact of corporate ownership and board characteristics on risk and forward-looking disclosures for Qatari firms using two ways clustered error pooled panel regressions.

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This study sets out to provide fresh evidence on the dynamic interrelationships, at both return and volatility levels, between global equity, gold, and energy markets prior to and during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. We undertake our analysis within a bivariate GARCH( p , q ) framework, after orthogonalizing raw returns with respect to a rich set of relevant universal factors. Under the COVID-19 regime, we find bidirectional return spillover effects between equity and gold markets, and unidirectional mean spillovers from energy markets to the equity and gold counterparts. The results also suggest the presence of large reciprocal shock spillovers between equity and both of energy and gold markets, and cross-shock spillovers from energy to gold markets. Most probably driven by the recent oil price collapse, energy markets appear to have a substantial cross-volatility spillover impact on the others. Our results offer implications for policymakers and investors.

This article explores the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) in oil-dependent economies and revisits the role of natural resources in attracting FDI to countries of this kind. Panel data from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have been employed, covering the period from 1990 to 2015. First, we investigate the FDI determinants during the entire sample period, and then run another investigation starting from the beginning of 2000, when the FDI in the GCC region increased substantially. The results show that there is a positive nexus between market growth, trade openness, inflation, infrastructure, oil price and FDI. Interestingly, oil reserves have a negative impact on FDI; this may be because countries with large reserves of oil like the GCC countries have enough financial resources to finance their economic development. This leads these governments to set up restrictions to protect their resources, thus reducing the amount of resource-seeking FDI. JEL Codes: E22, F21, F23, F43, O13

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