This paper investigates the impact of lagged-exchange rate along with market risk and financial sector indicators on country risk in Kuwait. For this purpose, time series analyses both in aggregated and disaggregated approach are conducted along with the correlation and descriptive outcomes. Overall study sample is divided into fourth groups; namely the whole-time period, 1980 to 1990, 1991 to 2000, 1991-2005 and finally 1995-2005. To achieve this objective, regression equations are developed, indicating the set of lagged predictors along with market and financial sector indicators of exchange rate volatility. For the whole sample of the study, it is found that exchange rate lagged values are significant predictors of country risk from 1980 to 2005. Under the first subsample, lagged 1 and market risk through real interest rate are blamed for creating exchange rate (ER) volatility. For the 2nd disaggregated analysis, the factors like lagged 1 of ER along with deposit interest (DIR) and price level of the Government (PLG) are significant predictors of exchange rate. Additionally, during the period 1995-2005, none of the regression models appears to create the exchange rate volatility. However, for the last disaggregated time series analysis, it is found that ERL1, and PLG significantly determine the country risk in the region of Kuwait. Findings of the study are contributing in the present literature while confirm the fact that lagged values of exchange rate are very much significant to be observed to understand the current trend in ER. Besides, the re-sults can also support the argument that exchange rate risk and interest rate are interlinked with each other.

This paper examines the effect of supply chain on performance indicators including sales growth and market value in the context of manufacturing firms in Kuwait. The dimensions of supply chain; namely strategic supplier partnership, information sharing, and information quality are also added in the model. Along with sales growth and market value, industry leadership, future outlook, overall response to competition, overall business performance, employee’s productivity, process productivity, and success rate in the launching of new product are some of the important indicators for measuring firms’ performance. Both factor analysis and structural equation modelling approaches are applied to the sample of 314 respondents taken from the manufacturing firms in Kuwait. Factor analysis provides some evidence that all the indicators for supply chain and business performance can be considered for the structural modelling and regression analysis. The core findings under structural modelling indicate that both strategic supplier partnership and information sharing had positive and significant impacts on the overall business performance. However, information quality appears to be the insignificant determinant of business performance. For the sales growth and market value, strategic supplier partnership and information sharing are significant determinants obtained through the regression analysis. The originality of the study can be viewed with reference to the selected performance measures and their determination through supply chain management. However, this study is confined only to the manufacturing sector and the services sector can be focused by incorporating additional performance measures and suitable sample size in future studies.