Economies

This study examines the impact of key governance dimensions on public budget rationalization in Palestine from 2002 to 2023. Utilizing Legitimacy Theory, the research assesses how institutional quality affects fiscal outcomes, including revenues, expenditures, net lending, and budget balance. Time-series data from the Palestinian Ministry of Finance and the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators were analyzed using multiple regression techniques. The results indicate that Rule of Law exhibits statistically significant effects across multiple fiscal dimensions, while Government Effectiveness shows a significant positive impact on public revenues and a marginal effect on budget balance. In contrast, Political Stability, Control of Corruption, Voice and Accountability, and Regulatory Quality do not demonstrate statistically significant effects within the multivariate framework. These findings underscore the importance of strengthening administrative capacity and legal enforcement mechanisms to improve fiscal discipline, particularly in politically fragile environments. Policy implications emphasize enhancing institutional effectiveness and reinforcing legal predictability while supporting broader structural reforms for sustainable public finance management in Palestine.

This study examines the short-run dynamics and long-run determinants of bilateral trade between Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Jordan during the period of 1995–2024 using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach. Employing a country-pair time series framework, the analysis examines how economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), inflation differentials, and crude oil prices affect trade volume between the two countries over time. The ARDL bound test confirms the presence of long run cointegration among the variables. The Long-run results suggest that crude oil prices, inflation differential, and FDI exert positive and statistically significant effects on bilateral trade, while Saudi economic growth and FDI show negative long-run effects, suggesting that Saudi’s economy structural characteristic and domestic absorption may decrease the demand for Jordanian’s products in the long-run. The short-run results reveal a negative and statistically significant error-correction term, confirming convergence toward long-run equilibrium with approximately 32.16% of deviations corrected each year, implying a moderate speed of adjustment following economic shocks. In the short-run, economic growth, FDI, Inflations differentials, and oil prices exert significant but mixed effect on trade volume, with oil prices emerging as the most influential determinant. Several variables displayed lagged responses due to adjustment costs, production constraints, and contractual rigidities between the two countries. Overall, the findings contribute new time-series evidence on the macroeconomic drivers of bilateral trade between an oil-exporting economy such as Saudi Arabia and a neighboring non-oil-exporting partner like Jordan, offering policy insights for strengthening trade integration and economic cooperation.

Attaining education sustainability is indeed important as it ensures the overall economic sustainability of countries and it is directly connected with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-4). However, the literature evidence on the determinants of education sustainability is indeed very scarce and largely inconclusive, particularly in the case of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Accordingly, this research paper focuses on exploring the determinants of education sustainability by focusing on the role of government education spending. The paper utilized annual time series data for the period 1991–2023 and applied the time series cointegration technique of “Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL)” to assess the long-run and short-run impact of government education expenditures on education sustainability in KSA Our results based on the ARDL approach demonstrated that government expenditures have casted a positive influence on education sustainability both in the long run and short run in the case of KSA. Similarly, we found that trade openness, which is the main determinant of economic performance, has positively contributed to education sustainability in the long run and short run in KSA. On the other hand, the unemployment rate has worsened education sustainability both in the long and short run. The results further demonstrated a negative short-run impact that FDI has on education sustainability, suggesting structural or sectoral dynamics that need further empirical investigation. Moreover, GDP per capita has improved education sustainably only in the long run while its short-run impact is insignificant. Our results offer important policy implications for the policymakers of KSA to attain education sustainability and contribute to the overall economic sustainability, which is aligned with the Vision 2030 of KSA.