Stock Market Developments in the Countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council

AHSAN MANSUR is Division Chief at the Middle East and Central Asia Department of the International Monetary Fund. He obtained his BA (Hon.) in Economics from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and his PhD from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. During his long career at the IMF, Mr. Mansur has worked on Middle Eastern, Asian, African and Central American countries. He also served as the IMF Senior Resident Representative to Pakistan during 1998-2001 and as the Fiscal Advisor to the Minister of Finance, government of Bangladesh (1989-91). Most recently, he served as the Division Chief for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Division, when he also headed the team working on recent stock market developments in the GCC region. Mr. Mansur has published extensively in various journals (including Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory and the IMF Staff Papers), in edited books on special economic topics and in the IMF Occasional Paper and Working Paper series.   FERNANDO DELGADO is Deputy Division Chief, Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund, where he leads missions to Bahrain, Djibouti and Syria. As mission chief with the Money and Capital Markets department of the IMF he headed the technical assistance teams during the banking crisis in Ecuador, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Dominican Republic. Previously he was General Manager of the International Division of Caja de Madrid, the fourth largest Spanish financial group,member of the Board of Caymadrid Ltd., Chairman of the Economic and Monetary Policy Committee of the European Savings Bank Group and Associate Professor in the Applied Economics Department of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He has published a number of articles and working papers, mainly in the field of industrial organization applied to the financial system. He has a PhD in Economics from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain; a MBA from the IADE-Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and a Master in Banking Management from the IESE, Spain.

• Executive Summary Introduction Background The Booming Years 2003-5 The 2006 Price Correction The effect of the Correction on Financial Stability and Economic Growth Lessons and Recommendations References Appendices