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Financial stability has become a focal point for central banks since the global financial crisis. However, the optimal mix between monetary and financial stability policies remains unclear. In this study, the “soft” approach to such policy mix was tested – how often monetary policy (in inflation reports) analyses financial stability issues. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

A total of 648 inflation reports published by 11 central banks from post-communist countries in 1998-2019 were reviewed using a text-mining method.

Results show that financial stability topics (mainly cyclical aspects of systemic risk) on average account for only 2%of inflation reports’ content. Although this share has grown somewhat since the global financial crisis (in CZ, HU and PL), it still remains at a low level. Thus, not enough evidence was found on the use of a “soft” policy mix in post-communist countries.

Given the strong interactions between price and financial stability, this paper emphasizes the need to increase the attention of monetary policymakers to financial stability issues.

The study combines two research areas, i.e. monetary policy and modern text mining techniques on a sample of post-communist countries, something which to the best of the authors’ knowledge has not been sufficiently explored in the literature before.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and investigate how intensified regulatory requirements related to outsourcing have influenced and changed the outsourcing activities of German financial institutions.

The study involved interviewing 11 outsourcing experts in the German financial sector, including four of the five largest banks in Germany. In coding and analysing the collected data, this study adopted the approach of a qualitative content analysis framework.

The study found that the revised legal requirements have had a significant and potentially negative impact on the efficiency of outsourcing, leading to a necessity for German financial institutions to internally realign their outsourcing managements. The study further revealed practical realigned methods German financial institutions executed to meet the legal requirements.

The impact, meaning and relevance of legal requirements in the outsourcing environment of German financial institutions has been relatively under-researched from a qualitative perspective and focused on other primary fields of investigation like outsourcing decisions and outcomes. This study has, by adopting a qualitative approach, addressed the identified gap by providing first-hand insights and new knowledge.

This study examines the impact of competition and concentration on bank income smoothing in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries.

The two-step system GMM method was used to analyse the impact of competition and concentration on bank income smoothing in 17 CEEs from 2004 to 2015.

Loan loss provisions (LLPs) are negatively related to bank competition and concentration. The authors find no evidence for income smoothing using LLPs in a high-competition or high-concentration environment.

A limitation of the study is that the analysis was restricted to commercial banks. The authors did not examine investment banks or microfinance banks in this study. Also, not having access to databases does not allow them to include recent years in the study.

CEE commercial banks will likely keep fewer provisions or engage in under-provisioning when they face intense competition, and this can expose them to credit risk, which may threaten their stability.

This study is the first to investigate the effect of concentration and competition on income smoothing among CEE banks.

The global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007–2008 had far-reaching consequences for the global economy, triggering widespread economic turmoil. We use the event-study method to investigate whether investors priced the effect of significant events before the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy in European and Asia-Pacific banks. Abnormal returns on the event days range from −4.32% to 5.03% in Europe and −5.13% to 6.57% in Asia-Pacific countries. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt on September 15, 2008, abnormal returns averaged the lowest at −4.32% in Europe and −5.13% in Asia-Pacific countries. The significant abnormal returns show that Lehman Brothers' collapse was a turning point, and investors paid attention to the precrisis events as warning signs of the oncoming crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between ESG disclosure and banks performance and to discuss how banks are committed to the implementation of sustainability issues.

The authors examined the annual, risk and sustainability reports published by 26 banks located in four Central European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) in the period of 2017–2021. The authors applied the methodology of content analysis and developed indexes. Panel regression was performed to improve and ensure the robustness of this study.

The results show that social and governance aspects dominate the ESG preparedness; however, after 2019, there was a significant improvement in the integration of environmental issues. This study confirms a strong association between bank size (total assets) and ESG reporting, and between capital adequacy and ESG reporting. The results demonstrate that there is no connection between banks' operational and financial performance and ESG disclosure. Finally, this study concludes that the integration of ESG risks into the risk management framework is at an early stage.

This study also adds to the existing research in the field of sustainability reporting. For regulators, this research proves their essential role in the facilitation of sustainable development. For practitioners, the ESG disclosure index could serve as a “detection tool” in the sustainability self-assessment process.

The authors examined – through a self-developed multidimensional ESG disclosure index – the sustainability reporting of the banking sector in four countries from the Central European region.

This paper aims to examine the impact of United States (US) financial sanctions on the international dominance of the US dollar.

The survival analysis technique, which incorporates survival and hazard probabilities to determine the probability of central banks' reserve recalibration, is adopted for analysis.

The result shows that the probability of central banks recalibrating the dollar share of their official reserve currencies would increase by 60% for every ten additional financial sanctions by the United States. This could imply that more sanctions might have unintended consequences on the international reserve currency dominance of the US dollar.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study may be a novel attempt to use survival analysis to examine the impact of financial sanctions on the US dollar’s international reserve currency dominance.

Drawing insights from institutional theory, this paper aims to examine whether and to what extent banks have reconfigured their management control systems (MCSs) in response to growing institutional pressures towards sustainability, understood as environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

The authors conducted an exploratory study at the three largest Italian banking groups to shed light on changes made in MCSs to account for ESG issues. The analysis is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with managers from the sustainability and controls areas, as well as from other relevant operational areas particularly concerned with the integration process of ESG issues. Additionally, secondary data sources were used. The Malmi and Brown (2008) MCS framework, consisting of a package of five types of formal and informal control mechanisms, was used to structure and analyse the empirical data.

The examined banks widely implemented numerous changes to their MCSs as a response to the heightened sustainability pressures from regulatory bodies and stakeholders. In particular, with the exception of action planning, the results show an extensive integration of ESG issues into the five control mechanisms of Malmi and Brown’s framework, namely, long-term planning, cybernetic, reward/compensation, administrative and cultural controls.

By identifying the approaches banks followed in reconfiguring traditional MCSs, this research sheds light on how adequate MCSs can promote banks’ “sustainable behaviours”. The results can, thus, contribute to defining best practices on how MCSs can be redesigned to support the integration of ESG issues into the banks’ way of doing business.

Overall, the findings support the theoretical assertion that institutional pressures influence the design of banks’ MCSs, and that both formal and informal controls are necessary to ensure a real engagement towards sustainability. More specifically, this study reveals that MCSs, by encompassing both formal and informal controls, are central to enabling banks to appropriately understand, plan and control the transition towards business models fully oriented to the integration of ESG issues. Thereby, this allows banks to effectively respond to the increased stakeholder demands around ESG concerns.

We aim to conduct a bibliometric analysis that explores and maps quantitative data of the emerging field of central bank digital currencies in science and its implications in practice. We seek to clarify the underlying research structures and streams of the new phenomena, and our motivation is the rising number of pilots between governments seeking to implement different types of central bank digital currency.

We designed the unique set of keywords to explore ongoing projects on central bank digital currencies and the evolution of scientific thought on the topic. We conducted a descriptive analysis and an evaluating bibliometric analysis on the timeline from 2018 to April 18, 2023 and investigated 76 articles in the Web of Science database and 152 articles in the Scopus database using VOSviewer.

We highlight three main directions of discourse on central bank digital currencies in economics using authors keyword analysis, that are: (1) cash, (2) monetary policy and (3) financial stability. We conducted a map-based text analysis of the abstracts and identified the following main streams of discussion in the field: (1) policy-related research on financial systems, (2) a comprehensive review of the design and features of central bank digital currencies and (3) research on the impact of central bank digital currencies on the banking system.

The unique set of keywords allows us to continue the discourse on central bank digital currencies including implications of ongoing governmental projects on the topic and provide directions for future research. We brought the focus on the impact of central bank digital currencies on the banking sector and the new possible order for cash, deposits and payments.

This chapter elaborates on the main factors of the adverse macroeconomic development in Czechia and Europe. Currently, i.e. from 2022, Czechia mainly suffers from double-digit galloping inflation and GDP stagnation. The aim of this chapter is to identify and describe the influence of the main factors from the present and the more distant past on current inflation and approaching stagflation in Czechia. This chapter analyzes an unfavourable mix of demand and supply factors that leave the new banking board of the CNB facing a dilemma, that is, whether to pursue a disinflationary policy of increasing interest rates and thus push the Czech economy closer into recession or to rely on demand-driven economic growth, which will keep unemployment at a low level, but at the same time contribute to inflationary pressures. The new governor of the CNB completely changed the strategy of his predecessor and, despite strong criticism, did not raise interest rates even once. Based on the analysis of inflationary factors, this chapter tries to explain the motives for the Central Bank's new strategy in the fight against inflation, which is the systematic appreciation of the Czech koruna.

This chapter explores the influence of the banking and insurance sectors on the economic growth of Czechia, a nation with unique financial dynamics ideal for this study. Our aim is to ascertain the contribution of these financial institutions to economic growth, addressing the divergence in empirical findings that have marked this research area for decades. We scrutinise the impact of various factors, including sectoral development and the efficiency and stability of these institutions, all within the Czech context. Utilising the Granger causality test, we assess the role of several indicators related to the development of the banking and insurance sectors. Our findings reveal that in Czechia, the evolution and operational efficiency of these financial institutions significantly drive economic growth. This study provides an in-depth understanding of the role these sectors play in the Czech economic landscape, affirming their crucial contribution to the nation's economic prosperity.