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The present study investigates the impact of financial soundness variables on bank performance in emerging countries.

This study uses macro-level panel data from 17 countries from 2011 to 2020. The analysis adopts six models. While four models include bank profitability, the dependent variable of the other models is Bank Z Scores. Regulatory Capital to Risk-Weighted Assets, Liquid Assets to Total Assets, Non-Performing Loans to Total Gross Loans and Non-Interest Expenses to Gross Income are proxies of financial soundness variables.

The authors estimate fixed and random effects models with the Arellano, Froot and Rogers methods. Empirical results show that Non-Performing Loans to Total Gross Loans harm ROA and ROE. Regulatory Capital to Risk-Weighted Assets negatively affects ROE. Non-Interest Expenses to Gross Income on Bank Z Scores have a significant and negative effect. Moreover, Inflation, Foreign Direct Investment and GDP are macroeconomic variables that increase bank profitability.

This study contributes to the literature in different aspects. The first is the model of the study. The authors contribute to the literature regarding the variables used to measure financial soundness. Secondly, emerging countries are samples in the study. A significant part of the studies on financial soundness has focused on developed countries. Finally, the authors analyze the macro-level data. Bank soundness studies mainly investigate country-level variables. Macro-level analysis may provide an advantage in combating global financial crises.

Commercial banks face several risks, including credit, liquidity, operational and disruptive risks. In addition to these risks that are challenging for banks to control and manage, crises and disasters can exert substantially more destructive shocks. These shocks can exacerbate internal risks and cause severe damage to the bank's performance, leading banks to bankruptcy and closure. This study aims to facilitate achieving resilient banking policies through a model-based assessment of business continuity management (BCM) policies.

By applying a system dynamics (SD) methodology, a systemic model that includes a causal structure of the banking business is presented. To build a simulation model, data are collected from a commercial bank in Iran. By presenting the simulation model of the bank's business, the consequences of some given crises on the bank's performance are tested, and the effectiveness of risk and crisis management policies is evaluated. Vensim Personal Learning Edition (PLE) software is used to construct the simulation model.

Results indicate that the current BCM policies do not show appropriate resilience in the face of various crises. Commercial banks cannot create sustainable value for the banks' shareholders despite the possibility of profitability, as the shareholders lack adequate resilience and soundness. These commercial banks do not have the appropriate resilience for the next pandemic after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Moreover, the robustness of the current banking business model is very fragile for the banking run crisis.

A forward-looking view of resilient banking can be obtained by combining liquidity coverage, stable funding, capital adequacy and insights from stress tests. Resilient banking requires a balanced combination of robustness, soundness and profitability.

The present study is a combination of bank business management, risk and resilience management and SD simulation. This approach can analyze and simulate the dynamics of bank resilience. Additionally, present of a decision support system (DSS) to analyze and simulate the outcomes of different crisis management policies and solutions is an innovative approach to developing effective and resilient banking policies.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between political instability and the performance of Islamic banks in emerging countries.

For a data sample of 93 Islamic banks in 20 emerging countries during the period from 2011 to 2016, the authors identify indicators that matter most for the activities of Islamic banks.

The study finds that a stable government and law and order are positively correlated with the health of Islamic financial institutions. On the other hand, corruption and military involvement in politics can create an unstable environment for businesses, leading to uncertainty and risk. The study also reveals that Islamic banks operating in regions or communities with lower risk of socio-economic conditions tend to exhibit higher levels of profitability.

Overall, the study provides valuable insights into the impact of political instability on Islamic banks in emerging countries.

This study aims to examine the impact of economic freedom and corruption on bank stability in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

This study uses 38 countries in SSA from 2008 to 2019 using system GMM technique.

The authors found that greater economic freedom increases economic efficiency through improving bank stability. Besides this, the authors also find that banks in environments with greater business freedom, financial freedom, trade freedom and investment freedom are less prone to solvency. The results also show that corruption improves bank stability, suggesting evidence of the “grease the wheels” hypothesis.

The results suggest to policymakers that a high economic freedom may be an appropriate policy toward enhancing bank stability. Besides this, the results also suggest to policymakers to prioritize addressing the core issues that encourage corruption to extort bribes.

This study provides insightful discussion on whether economic freedom and its subcomponents and corruption have an effect on bank stability in SSA.

The paper analyzes the impact of bank opacity on financial stability in an emerging economy.

Based on a unique dataset of 31 Vietnamese commercial banks from 2007 to 2019, the paper captures earnings opacity via discretionary loan loss provisions and reflects individual bank stability through the accounting-based Z-score index and its disaggregate components. The least squares dummy variable corrected (LSDVC) approach is employed for empirical analysis.

In contradiction to most studies on developed economies, earnings management improves bank financial stability in Vietnam. Earnings management is more important for the financial stability of smaller banks. Further, the effect of financial information disclosure on bank stability is strengthened by unfavorable macroeconomic conditions, particularly economic downturns, the global financial crisis and uncertain times in banking.

This is the first study to shed light on how bank opacity influences bank financial stability in an emerging market. The evidence with the conditioning roles of bank size and macroeconomic factors, such as uncertainty in banking, is entirely novel in the related literature. Additionally, the paper contributes to a growing body of banking literature by using the LSDVC estimator to examine the association between bank opacity and bank stability.

Academic research has intensively analyzed the relationship between market concentration or market power and banking stability but provides ambiguous results, which are summarized under the concentration-stability/fragility view. We provide empirical evidence that the mixed results are due to the difficulty of identifying reliable variables to measure concentration and market power.

Using data from 3,943 banks operating in the European Union (EU)-15 between 2013 and 2020, we employ linear regression models on panel data. Banking market concentration is measured by the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), and market power is estimated by the product-specific Lerner Indices for the loan and deposit market, respectively.

Our analysis reveals a significantly stability-decreasing impact of market concentration (HHI) and a significantly stability-increasing effect of market power (Lerner Indices). In addition, we provide evidence for a weak (or even absent) empirical relationship between the (non)structural measures, challenging the validity of the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm. Our baseline findings remain robust, especially when controlling for a likely reverse causality.

Our results suggest that the HHI may reflect other factors beyond market power that influence banking stability. Thus, banking supervisors and competition authorities should investigate market concentration and market power simultaneously while considering their joint impact on banking stability.

This study aims to investigate the impact of liquidity creation (LC) on the profitability and stability of banks while considering the moderating role of corruption.

Panel data from 23 conventional banks and five Islamic banks in Pakistan spanning from 2008 to 2021 were used for analysis. The study used fixed effect and random effect models, along with the generalized method of moments estimation to ensure robustness of the results.

The study reveals a negative relationship between LC and banking profitability, but a positive association with banking stability. Additionally, corruption is found to play a moderating role in the relationship between LC, profitability and stability in the banking sector of Pakistan.

The findings have practical implications for bank managers and investors, emphasizing the negative relationship between LC and profitability in Pakistan. Moreover, the study highlights the significant impact of corruption on bank performance, which can guide policymakers in formulating strategies to strengthen the banking sector and prevent financial turmoil in the future.

This study makes a significant contribution to the existing literature by examining the moderating role of corruption in the relationship between LC, profitability and stability in both conventional and Islamic banks.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and fintech have emerged as critical megatrends in the banking industry. This study aims to examine the impact of financial technology on the relationship between CSR and banks' financial stability. Specifically, it investigates the moderating effect of fintech on the association between CSR and the financial stability of conventional banks operating in Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey from 2010 to 2021.

To achieve the authors’ objective, the authors apply Baron and Kenny's three-link model, tested with fixed and random effects regression models.

The results reveal that the development of fintech decreases banks' financial stability, whereas it promotes banks' involvement in CSR strategies. Furthermore, the findings indicate that fintech plays a moderating role in the relationship between CSR and financial stability. It positively moderates the impact of CSR on financial stability. The robustness analysis highlights the mutual reinforcement of fintech and CSR dimensions in improving the financial stability of banks. Thus, by fostering community and product responsibility, fintech could enhance the financial stability of banks.

Finally, the authors recommend that banks focus more on developing technological and environmentally friendly financial products.

This study contributes significantly by providing valuable insights for managers and policymakers seeking to improve banks' financial stability through the simultaneous adoption of new financial technology products and the strong commitment to CSR practices.

This study investigates the role of market concentration and efficiency in banking system stability during the COVID-19 pandemic. We empirically test the hypothesis that market concentration and efficiency are significant determinants of bank performance and stability during the time of crises, using a sample of 575 banks in 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

The main sources of bank data are the BankScope and BankFocus (Bureau van Dijk) databases, World Bank development indicators, and official websites of banks in MENA countries. This study combined descriptive and analytical approaches. We utilize a panel dataset and adopt panel data econometric techniques such as fixed/random effects and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator.

The results reveal that market concentration negatively affects bank profitability, whereas improved efficiency further enhances bank performance and contributes to the banking sector’s overall stability. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that during the COVID-19 pandemic, bank stability strongly depended on the level of market concentration, but not on bank efficiency. However, more efficient banks are more profitable and stable if the banking institutions are Islamic. Similarly, Islamic banks with the same level of efficiency demonstrated better overall financial performance during the pandemic than their conventional peers did.

The main limitation is related to the period of COVID-19 pandemic that was covered in this paper (2020–2021). Therefore, further investigation of the COVID-19 effects on bank profitability and risk will require an extended period of the pandemic crisis, including 2022.

This study provides information that will enable bank managers and policymakers in MENA countries to assess the growing impact of market concentration and efficiency on the banking sector stability. It also helps them in formulating suitable strategies to mitigate the adverse consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our recommendations are useful guides for policymakers and regulators in countries where Islamic and conventional banking systems co-exist and compete, based on different business models and risk management practices.

The authors contribute to the banking stability literature by investigating the role of market concentration and efficiency as the main determinants of bank performance and stability during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is the first to analyze banking sector stability in the MENA region, using both individual and risk-adjusted aggregated performance measures.

This study investigates the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance of the banking sector from the prospective of emerging countries.

This study obtained balance sheet and income statement data for 173 banks in 20 emerging countries from the Bankscope database from 2005–2018. The CSR-related data were taken from the Thomson Reuters ASSET4 database. Moreover, macroeconomic controls such as GDP per capita, inflation, and financial development are attained from the GFDD. The series of institutional quality indices (Political Stability, Rule of Law, Control of Corruption, Government Effectiveness, and Regulatory Quality) is obtained from the WGI. At the same time, national culture and bank regulation are attained from Hofstede Insights and Barth et al. (2013). We used the panel fixed-effects model in our baseline estimations, while 2SLS and GMM were applied to control for endogeneity.

The finding shows that CSR activities significantly improve bank performance, but the effect varies across the bank. Only environmentally friendly activities have shown a significant positive relationship with banking performance for CSR dimensions. However, the social and government dimensions did not significantly affect bank performance. Moreover, a sound institutional and regulatory environment and national norms play an important role in the nexus of CSR activities and bank performance.

This study provides empirical evidence that sheds light on CSR and bank performance in an emerging market context.