• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.7
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• pp.323-331
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• 2021

This paper examines the relationship between ownership structure and level cash holdings in an emerging country, namely, Saudi Arabia, by constructing a corporate governance mechanism (foreign ownership, family ownership, institutional and managerial ownership). This paper uses data from 100 listed firms at Saudi Stock Exchange (TADAWUL) from 2011 to 2019. The firm's decision to hold cash has come to the fore in the last two or three years as a result of the recent global financial crisis, and the impact that this has had on the firms' ability to raise funds from external sources. Using the random-effect generalized least square (GLS) regression model, the findings reveal that foreign and family ownership negatively influences cash holdings, while managerial ownership has a positive association with cash holdings. Further, institutional ownership did not have a direct effect on cash holdings in Saudi Arabia. Our results suggest that ownership structure include foreign ownership, family and managerial ownership is an essential vehicle to promote the performance of cash holding of all the 100 public-listed non-financial firms in Saudi Arabia. We recommend that sound policies should be targeted toward foreign ownership, family, and managerial ownership since they are essential to improve cash holding in Saudi Arabian firms.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.15-23
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• 2021

Purpose: This study aims to identify the role of technological progress in the distribution sector in Saudi Arabia. Research design, data, and methodology: The study applies the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to estimate the Cobb Douglas production function of the wholesale and retail trade sector in Saudi Arabia, relied on annual data from the General Authority for Statistics from 2005 to 2019. Results: The results show that there is a long run relationship between the production of the wholesale and retail trade sector in KSA and the factors of production labour, capital and technology progress. The elasticity of the wholesale and retail trade production with respect to capital and labour are 0.26 and 0.78 respectively; the coefficients are positive and statistically significant. The wholesale and retail trade sector is operating under increasing returns to scale. The main result indicates that the elasticity of the wholesale and retail production with respect to the technology progress is 4.62%, which is positive and statistically significant. Conclusions: The study concluded that technological progress has a positive contribution to the growth of the distribution sector in KSA. Therefore, the technological progress can improve the productivity and efficiency of the resources allocated to the dis.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.266-272
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• 2022

Private specialized institutions differ from public ones in that they mostly act independently. This paper reports a study designed to assess the provision of specialized institutions for children with intellectual disabilities in Saudi Arabia. The approach taken in this study was qualitative, involving a case study strategy that enabled the researcher to gain rich and in-depth information based on the shared experiences of participants comprising institution leaders, educators and families from two specific specialized settings, one public and one private. The study aimed to examine the existing disparities in service delivery so as to develop a clear picture of the service quality provided by public specialized institutions for children with intellectual disabilities in Saudi Arabia. The results suggest that the weak relationship with inpatient and specialized institutions is a consequence of the parents' poor responsiveness, which may result in these institutes developing a negative impression of the parents. Conversely, the lack of active initiative on the part of the public specialized institutions led to a negative parental attitude towards these institutions. A sensible approach to resolving this problem might be to recognize that these institutions have a significant responsibility to encourage parents of children with intellectual disabilities to become involved in their children's learning, to promote positive attitudes.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.15 no.sup1
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• pp.41-52
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• 2021

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Curfew due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic could influence health behaviors in people, especially in children, who can easily acquire unhealthy eating habits. This study aimed to investigate the effect of COVID-19 on weight, health behaviors including eating habits, physical activity, and sedentary behavior in children aged 6-15 years in Saudi Arabia. SUBJECTS/METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional online survey that included 280 children aged 6-15 years in Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 curfew. The survey included questions on sociodemographic characteristics, anthropometric measures, and health behaviors including eating habits, physical activity, and sedentary behavior. RESULTS: We observed a significant difference in the body mass index before and after the COVID-19 pandemic (P < 0.001). Children significantly tended to skip breakfast, along with a decreased intake of dairy products and fast food (P < 0.001). Moreover, children were less physically active and significantly tended to be involved in leisure screen-based activities, including watching TV and use of computer/games (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence for the negative influences of the COVID-19 curfew on health behaviors, including eating habits, physical activity, and sedentary behavior in children in Saudi Arabia.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.9
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• pp.189-199
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• 2021

This study attempts to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and earnings management practices in the context of Saudi Arabia after mandatory IFRS adoption. It is carried out on an unbalanced panel of 277 observations over the period 2017-2019. For this purpose, CSR disclosure is measured by Bloomberg ESG scores, while the residuals from the modified Jones model are considered for earnings management. As control variables, we have retained the firm performance, market-to-book ratio, firm size, financial leverage, board independence, ownership concentration, managerial ownership, and lagged discretionary accruals. Using the system GMM estimator in the dynamic panel, the results show a positive association between CSR disclosure and earnings management practices, thus supporting the perspective of agency theory. Managers engage in socially responsible activities beforehand to conceal their wrongdoing and convince stakeholders that the organization is transparent. They probably use ethical codes as a tool to achieve their own goals rather than the firm's goals. Our contribution is the use of recent data (2017-2019) taking into account the mandatory adoption of IFRS in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, to our knowledge, this study is the first to address CSR disclosure and earnings management practices using GMM system estimates.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.273-283
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• 2021

The aim of this paper is to review the current knowledge management (KM) practices and their importance in the public sector of Saudi Arabia. Using the term "knowledge management in public sector", a search for available works was done in Google Scholar. In the first stage, the search for literature published under anytime choice was done in the first 10 pages of the search engine. Then another nine pages of Goggle Scholar were searched for more recent works published setting the time as 2014 to 2018. The search yielded 37 usable works for this review. The results of this literature search and review indicated that out of the 37 works reviewed, only three works were related to Saudi Arabia. Number of papers on factors of KM were maximum, many of them giving diagrammatic presentation of their results. KM modelling itself is not easy as only very few papers on KM modelling were available. Problems of too much reliance on qualitative data and hypotheses not matching with the literature backgrounds for them were also found. Considering the works related to KM, the number of papers in various categories may indicate the dimensions of KM to be considered when KM is implemented or evaluated in any public sector of any country. This applies to Saudi Arabian public sector organizations also. There is a fertile ground of research waiting to be investigated by researchers in Saudi Arabia.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.39-46
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• 2022

The spread of Omicron, a mutated version of COVID-19 across several countries is leading to the discussion of lockdown once again for curbing the spread of the new virus. In this context, this research is showing the impact of lockdown for the successful control of the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic around the globe has affected Saudi Arabia with around 2,37,803 confirmed cases within the initial 4 months of transmission. Saudi Arabia has announced a 21-day lockdown from March 23, 2020, to reduce the transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic. Machine Learning-based, Multinomial logistic regression was applied to understand the relationship between daily COVID-19 confirmed cases and lockdown in the 17 most-affected cities of KSA. We used secondary published data from the Ministry of Health, KSA daily dataset of COVID-19 confirmed case counts. These 17 cities were categorized into 4 classes based on lockdown dates. A total of three scenarios such as night lockdown, full lockdown, and no lockdown have been analyzed with the total number of confirmed cases with 4 classes. 15 out of 17 cities have shown a strong correlation with a confidence interval of 95%. These findings provide evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic may be partially suppressed with lockdown measures.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.181-189
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• 2022

The current study examines the nexus between the capital structure (debt-equity) and firm value (Tobin's Q) by including profitability (alternatively Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE)) as a moderator in the companies of Saudi Arabia. The study sample consists of 102 companies listed on Tadawul (the Saudi Arabian stock exchange) from different sectors of Saudi Arabia during the period 2013 to 2020. The study estimates pooled regression, panel regression with fixed and random effects, and dynamic panel regression models to report the results. The study results report that there is a negative and significant association between capital structure and firm value in model 1, while in models 2 and 3 there is a more negative and significant impact between the two study variables compared to model 1 after the inclusion of interaction variable, i.e. profitability in terms of ROA and ROE. The comparative result shows that the companies of Saudi Arabia hold more debt in their capital structure mix, hence evidencing a decrease in the firm value. The reported results also show that models 2 and 3 are better in explaining the impact of capital structure on firm value due to the interaction of profitability compared to model 1.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.12
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• pp.171-177
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• 2022

The number of people who own indoor plants is growing today, but as a result of their busy lifestyles-such as work or travel-as well as a lack of enthusiasm in caring for their plants, their plants wither. The use of an irrigation control system with a surveillance camera can assist such folks in taking care of their plants. Such a device can assist in remotely watering plants at predetermined times and checking on the health of the plants. The proprietors would be able to live comfortably without feeling bad thanks to this change. Internet access is required for this technology in order to monitor the plants and control the watering through apps. A sensor is installed in the soil to monitor soil humidity and send data to the microcontroller for irrigation, allowing the owner to schedule irrigation as they see fit and keep an eye on their plants all day. With the use of a remote irrigation control system, the plants will grow properly and be irrigated with the proper amount of water, and the owners will be so glad and delighted to watch their plants. Knowing the time and quantity of water are vital parts of the plant growth.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.79-89
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• 2023

The paper aims to investigate the asymmetric long-run and short-run relationships between inflation and remittance outflows in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (hereafter KSA) over the period 1971-2019 by using the Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model. The statistical tests have supported the validity and stability of the model. The Wald F-test statistics confirm the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship among the model variables; remittance outflows, positive (negative) shocks in inflation rates, investment, real GDP, and trade openness. Moreover, the empirical results confirm the existence of an asymmetric effect of the inflation rate on remittance outflows. The response of foreign workers to an increase in inflation rates differs from their response to a decrease in inflation rates. However, this asymmetric relationship between the increases/decreases in inflation and remittance outflows is significantly weak. The weakness of this relationship is due to the high marginal remittance propensity of migrant workers, which is explained by the low consumption propensity of foreign workers and their ability to adjust to the high cost of living due to inflation and the imposition of accompanying fees. Finally, the change in the inflation rate is not among the main factors influencing foreign remittance decisions in Saudi Arabia.