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Prior research on the structure‐performance relationship has not investigated all of the relevant relationships among market structure, profits, prices, and explicitly calculated measures of firm efficiency. This paper replicates the four approaches in the literature, adds several innovations, and applies the analysis to banking data. We find more support for the structure‐conduct‐performance hypothesis than for the relative‐market‐power and efficient‐structure hypotheses, although the data are not fully consistent with any of these theories. We also find support for Hick's quiet‐life hypothesis, which implies that firms with market power adhere less rigorously to efficiency maximization. J.E.L. Classification Numbers G21, G28, L41, L89 The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Board of Governors or its staff. The authors thank Dean Amel, Jim Berkovec, Myron Kwast, Nellie Liang, LenNakamura, Steve Rhoades, and participants in the meeting of the Federal Reserve System Committee on Financial Structure and Regulation for helpful comments, and Ken Cavalluzzo, Jalal Akhavein, John Leusner, and Seth Bonime for outstanding research assistance.

This study examined how economic freedom and its related components, such as open markets, regulatory efficiency, rule of law and the size of government, affect bank risk behavior, focusing on the Japanese context.

The study employs a two-step GMM framework on the annual data of Japanese banks ranging from 2005 to 2020 to empirically test the hypotheses. Furthermore, we also use the ordinary least square method to ensure the robustness of our mainline findings.

The finding suggests that economic freedom increases the banks' risk-taking, thus making them fragile. The results also highlight that out of the four main subcomponents of economic freedom, regulatory efficiency and government size increase bank risk-taking, while the rule of law and open markets decrease banks' risk-taking. Additionally, we examine how the banks' specific characteristics affect the results by creating a subsample based on capitalization and liquidity ratios. Overall, the results are consistent with the baseline findings. Moreover, the results are robust to alternative proxy measures of risk.

The study's findings have several implications for regulators and policymakers. The results suggest that regulators and policymakers should reconsider their strategies for economic freedom to ensure that they promote stability in the banking system and reduce banks' risk-taking inclinations.

Although previous studies have examined the impact of economic freedom on bank stability and risk-taking, this study is the first to do so in the Japanese context, contributing to the literature by providing new insights and empirical evidence.

Purpose: Pandemics lead to a sudden decline in the level of economic activities. Lending institutions reduce credit supply to businesses due to fears of rising bad debts during a pandemic. This chapter highlights some approach to financial regulation and bank supervision during a pandemic such as the SARS and COVID-19 pandemic.

Methodology: This chapter uses discourse analysis based on the literature on banking regulation and supervision.

Findings: The author shows that financial regulation during a pandemic can be enhanced by diversifying the financial system, maintaining adequate liquidity in the financial system, stimulating financial institutions to provide more credit, delaying the recognition of significant increase in credit risk, lowering the reference interest rate to encourage more lending, and providing stimulus packages to financial institutions in the economy. The author also suggest measures to improve bank supervision during a pandemic which include adopting a flexible supervisory framework, modifying bank supervisory examinations, using ad hoc stress tests, releasing the countercyclical capital buffer to banks, and increase the use of regulatory forbearance.

Implications: The implication of these approaches to coping with a pandemic is that these measures can help to ensure the survival of small and large businesses and financial institutions. It can also help to preserve jobs and help to reduce the long-term damage to the economy caused by the pandemic.

Originality: Prior studies have not examined the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on bank supervision and financial regulation.

The finance literature has not documented the feeling, the shock and the pain that ordinary people had to go through during the 2008 global financial crisis especially in the United States where it all began. In an effort to shed new light on the global financial crisis, it has become important to present a view of the financial crisis from the lens of those who were affected by the crisis, those who were responsible for the crisis, those who could have prevented the crisis, as well as the views of other observers. The views or quotes in this chapter are concise, useful and thought provoking. They create an opportunity to help reconsider the events of 2008 from a fresh perspective, so that a lot more can be done by everyone, including banks, governments and citizens, to prevent a repeat of those events in the future of finance. Finally, most of the views or quotes reported in this chapter have within them some important lessons and wisdom to guide us on what to do before another future crisis comes.

Purpose: This chapter presents criticisms of financial inclusion.

Methodology: This chapter uses critical discourse analysis to critique the modern financial inclusion agenda.

Findings: The findings reveal that (i) financial inclusion is an invitation to live by finance and leads to the financialization of poverty; (ii) some of the benefits of financial inclusion disappear after a few years; (iii) financial inclusion ignores how poverty affects financial decision-making; (iv) it promotes digital money which is difficult to understand; (v) financial inclusion promotes the use of transaction accounts; (vi) digital money is difficult to understand; and that (vii) some financial inclusion efforts bear a resemblance to a campaign against having cash-in-hand.

Implication: This study will help policymakers in their assessment of the economic, social, political, and cultural factors that hinder financial inclusion as well as the consequence of financial inclusion for society. For academics, this study will provide a critical perspective to on-going financial inclusion debates in the large positivist literature on financial inclusion.

Originality: Currently, there are no studies that use critical discourse analysis to analyze the broader concept of financial inclusion. This chapter is the first study that uses critical discourse analysis to critique some aspects of the modern financial inclusion agenda.

This chapter provides a discussion on some issues in blockchain finance that regulators are concerned about – an area which bitcoin promoters have remained silent about. Blockchain technology in finance has several benefits for financial intermediation in the financial system; notwithstanding, several issues persist which if addressed can make the adoption of blockchain technology in finance easier and accepted by regulators. The blockchain issues discussed in this chapter are relevant for recent debates in blockchain finance.

Purpose: This chapter discusses some policy options that central banks may find useful in dealing with climate change risk in the financial sector.

Methodology: This chapter uses discursive analysis to suggest policy options which central banks can use to deal with the risk of climate change in the financial sector.

Findings: Five policy options are proposed in the chapter, which includes: imposing a climate change capital surcharge; impose a fixed-rate risk capital – based on Tier 2 capital; a reduction in lending to industries whose activities destroy the environment and climate; creating a climate bank; and requiring financial institutions to relocate their important assets to areas less prone to climate change events.

Implication: Several policy experiments are needed to identify the best policy option that works best for each country while taking into account the unique financial sector, financial system, and climate change history of each country.

Originality: Central banks play an important role in regulating the financial sector and in managing its inherent risks, yet there are no studies that suggest policy solutions to help central banks and other financial sector regulators deal with the risk that climate change poses to the financial sector. This chapter suggests policy options that central banks can use to deal with the risk that climate change poses to the financial sector.

This paper surveys the literature on economic research in banking. Two streams of empirical research were reviewed. The first stream of empirical research focus on research examining the effect of bank behaviour on economic performance. The second stream of empirical research focus on research on the effect of economic events on bank behaviour and performance. We provide our views about what we have learned from this research and about what else we would like to know.

Climate change is emerging as an important issue increasing uncertainty in the business circle, and financial institutions through their inaction seem to be unmoved by climate change risk despite the potential for climate change events to affect the financial institutions and the financial system. In this chapter, the effect of climate change on financial institutions and the financial system are highlighted and discussed.

Poor performance of India’s commercial banks, in the public and private sectors as well as those owned by foreign interests, has been a major concern of the policymakers. Their gross non-performing assets (NPAs), as a proportion of gross advances, were 10.2% as of March 2017, which is reported to have grown to 11.6% in March 2018. The public sector banks (PSBs) have a share of 70% of business, and the ratio of NPAs to gross advances is 15.6%. The Reserve Bank of India’s forecast is that the ratio for PSBs would rise to 17.3% by March 2019, of private banks to 5.3%, and of foreign banks to 4.8%. This chapter focuses on causal factors which comprise macroeconomic as well as bank-specific factors, influencing NPA. We undertake a panel approach by using 16 annual observations (from fiscal year 2000–2001 to 2015–2016) for three groups of banks by ownership: public, private, and foreign. The study findings reveal that the macroeconomic and bank-specific factors are important determinants.