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This paper reviews the literature on zombie firms to provide a holistic view by delineating their formation, impact, widespread nature, prevention and policy implications.

This paper uses a systematic literature review methodology, in which 76 papers published in journals ranked on the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) 2022 list were reviewed. The study period was from 2000 to 2022.

Among the main findings, the widespread problems of zombie firms were evident. The authors found that consistent support, either in the form of government grants or a weak financial framework, was responsible for their formation. The suboptimal performance of factors of production, depressed job creation, low innovation and overall negative impact on economic activity are the consequences of zombification. This can be controlled by ensuring better bankruptcy codes, focused on government assistance, technology use and better due diligence by banks.

This review serves as a reference point for future researchers as a cohesive and holistic study presenting a full picture of the problem, so that the proposed solutions are robust and tenable.

This review is among the initial attempts to comprehensively study published work on zombie firms in terms of analyzing their region-specific nature, with an emphasis on definition, causes, impact and prevention.

Shadow banks or non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) are facilitators of credit, especially in emerging market economies (EMEs). However, there are certain risks associated with them, such as their unchecked leverage and interconnectedness with the rest of the financial system. In light of this, the present study analyses the impact of the growth of shadow banks on the stability of the banking sector and the overall stability of the financial system. The authors further examine the effect of the growth of finance companies (a type of NBFIs) on financial stability.

The study employs data of 11 EMEs (monitored by the Financial Stability Board (FSB)) for the period 2002–2020 to examine the above relationships. Panel-corrected standard errors method and Driscoll–Kray standard error estimation are deployed to conduct the analysis.

The results signify that the growth of the shadow banking sector and the growth of lending to the shadow banking sector are negatively associated with the stability of the banking sector and increases the vulnerability of the financial system (overall instability). This implies that the higher the growth of the shadow banks, the higher the financial fragility. Finance companies are also found to negatively affect financial stability. These findings are validated by different estimation methods and point out the risks posed by the NBFI sector.

The extant study builds a composite index (Financial Vulnerability Index (FVI)) to measure financial stability; thus, the findings contribute to the evolving literature on shadow banks.

Using cross-country data on the 1,000 largest global banks for 2019, the paper aims to examine the response of bank risk and returns to the pandemic.

The author employs weighted least squares (WLS) techniques for the purposes of analysis.

The findings suggest that banks with Islamic windows increased their riskiness in response to the pandemic, although there was not much impact on profitability. Additionally, the author categorizes banks based on certain major characteristics and find that these findings are manifest primarily for well-capitalized and less liquid banks.

Research as to the impact of the pandemic on banks' balance sheets has been an unaddressed area of research. By focusing on a large sample of banks across countries with both Islamic and conventional banking presence, the analysis sheds light on the balance sheet response of banks to the pandemic, an aspect that has not been addressed earlier.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether board characteristics moderate the relationship between capital adequacy regulation and bank risk-taking of universal banks in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The paper uses 700 bank-year observations of universal banks in SSA between 2009 and 2019. The paper further uses the two-step generalized method of moments as the baseline estimator.

The paper finds that capital adequacy regulation is positively related to overall bank and liquidity risks. Nonetheless, capital adequacy regulation increases credit risk in the sampled banks. The paper further reports that board characteristics individually and significantly moderate the relationship between capital adequacy regulation and risk-taking.

The findings have implications for regulators of universal banks that board characteristics matter for capital adequacy regulation to impact risk-taking behavior.

The paper extends the existing literature on the effect of board characteristics on the capital adequacy regulations and risk-taking behavior nexus of universal banks.

The purpose of this study is to focus on, namely, the international financial reporting standards (IFRS) or local generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) effects of financial reporting as a corporate governance mechanism on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) for banking institutions during the global financial crisis.

I investigate the characteristics of bank financial statements before the start of the global crisis, which helps to explain the relationships between the accounting standards and the global financial crisis. The observations, which are based on 3,178 deals in a sample period, are crucially important for corporate governance and bank performance. The results from our analysis are robust to a wide variety of modifications in our research design and are corroborated by descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and a two-sample t-test on a sample of banks that voluntarily adopted IFRS for M&As.

The find that IFRS-based monitoring of banks M&As in terms of higher quality financial reporting is negatively linked with bank performance, whereas local GAAP-based monitoring of banks’ M&A is positively associated with accounting performance. Finally, our main results for higher quality financial reporting under local GAAP or IFRS generally hold after controlling for various analyses and relationships between account standards and the financial crisis.

Financial reporting standards setting a corporate governance mechanism are considered since it was impacted recently during the global financial crisis and became a great matter of concern.

The value of this paper is determined by an empirical investigation of the relationships between bank performance and accounting and financial reporting standards in the context of the global economy.