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The agricultural sector remains the backbone of several emerging economies, including Kenya, where it contributes 34% to its gross domestic product (GDP). However, access to financing for agricultural activities appears to be very low compared to developed economies. Following this, governments in a number of countries have sought to introduce banking sector regulations to facilitate increased funding to the agricultural sector. Taking motivation of the interest rate capping regulations by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) in 2016, this paper examined the effect of these interest rate ceiling regulations on agri-lending in Kenya.

The paper employs random effects technique to estimate a panel data of 26 commercial banks in Kenya from 2014 to 2018 using the ratio of loans to agricultural sector to gross loans and the natural logarithm of loans to agricultural sector as proxies for agri-lending. Bank size, equity, asset quality, liquidity, revenue concentration and bank concentration are employed as control variables.

The results of the panel regression estimations show that the introduction of the interest cap resulted in increases in the proportion and growth in agri-lending compared with the pre-interest cap period. In addition, large banks and highly capitalised banks were found to be associated with lower agri-lending, with differences in the effects across pre-cap and post-cap periods.

From a policy perspective, the findings highlight the effectiveness of interest rate capping in meeting this objective and supports the calls for strengthening cooperation between the government and key stakeholders in the financial sector. This will allow for the effective enforcement of policies by the regulatory powers in a manner that guarantees sound and dynamic financial systems, particularly within the agricultural sector.

As far as the authors are aware, this the first paper to examine the effect of the interest rate cap regulation on agri-lending in Kenya.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the state of infrastructure development in Sub-Saharan Africa actually stimulates industrial sector productivity, using a panel data set of 17 countries spanning from 2003 to 2018.

The study used panel least square estimation technique to examine the relationship between the variables.

The result of the study indicates that the major factor that influences industrial sector productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa is their quantity and quality of telecommunication infrastructure. Analysis shows that the relatively low level of industrial sector productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa is largely due to their poor electricity and transport infrastructure and underutilization of water supply and sanitation infrastructure.

The government should partner with other developed countries of the world such as Germany, Japan, Sweden, Netherlands, Austria, Singapore, United States of America, United Kingdom, Switzerland and United Arab Emirates, which are the top ten countries in infrastructure ranking as currently released by the World Bank, to equally extend their quality infrastructure to their own country for enhanced industrialization.

The novelty of this research lies on the fact it is a cross-country study as against the few empirical studies that focused only on a single country. Also, the study made use of the four main indicators of infrastructure development in an economy, which are electricity infrastructure, transport infrastructure, telecommunication infrastructure and water supply and sanitation infrastructure, to examine its effect on industrial sector productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Determinants of credit growth in Saudi Arabia are investigated.

A panel approach is applied to macroeconomic and bank-level data spanning 2000 ‐15.

Bank lending is supported by strong bank balance sheet conditions (high capital ratio, and growth of NPL provisioning and deposits), and higher growth of both oil prices and non-oil private sector GDP. Lower bank concentration also helps, likely through greater competition, so does stronger institution. Consistent with the literature, lending by Islamic banks may be more responsive to economic activity. Lending remained robust in 2015 despite oil prices having declined, helped by strong bank balance sheets and as banks reduced their holdings of “excess liquidity”. To support bank lending in the period ahead, bank balance sheets need to remain strong. Fiscal adjustment and a reduced reliance on banks to finance the budget deficit would support credit provision to the private sector.

The paper is first to analyze in detail determinants of bank lending in Saudi Arabia applying a panel approach to bank level data, and draws critical policy implications.

Following the recent global financial crisis, US regulatory agencies issued laws to implement the Basel III accords to ensure the resiliency of the US banking sector. Theories predict that enhanced regulations may alter credit issuance of the regulated banks due to increased capital requirements, but the direction of changes might not be straightforward especially with respect to the agricultural loans. A decrease in credit availability from banks might pose a serious problem for farmers who rely on bank credit especially during economic recessions. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this study, the impact of Basel III regulatory framework implementation on agricultural lending in the USA is examined. Using panel data of FDIC-insured banks from 2008 to 2017, the agricultural loan volume and growth rates are examined for agricultural banks and all US banks.

The results show that agricultural loan growth rates have slowed down, but the amount of agricultural loan volume issuance still remained positive. More detailed examination finds that regulated agricultural banks have decreased both the agricultural loan volume and their loan exposure to the agricultural sector, showing a possible sign of credit crunch.

This study examines whether the implementation of the Basel III regulation has resulted in changes in agricultural loan issuance by US banks as predicted by the lending channel theory.

Among all of the world's continents, Asia is the most important continent and contributes 60% of world growth but facing the serving issue of high nonperforming loans (NPLs). Therefore, the current study aims to capture the effect of credit risk management and bank-specific factors on South Asian commercial banks' financial performance (FP). The credit risk measures used in this study were NPLs and capital adequacy ratio (CAR), while cost-efficiency ratio (CER), average lending rate (ALR) and liquidity ratio (LR) were used as bank-specific factors. On the other hand, return on equity (ROE) and return on the asset (ROA) were taken as a measure of FP.

Secondary data were collected from 19 commercial banks (10 commercial banks from Pakistan and 9 commercial banks from India) in the country for a period of 10 years from 2009 to 2018. The generalized method of moment (GMM) is used for the coefficient estimation to overcome the effects of some endogenous variables.

The results indicated that NPLs, CER and LR have significantly negatively related to FP (ROA and ROE), while CAR and ALR have significantly positively related to the FP of the Asian commercial banks.

The current study result recommends that policymakers of Asian countries should create a strong financial environment by implementing that monetary policy that stimulates interest rates in this way that automatically helps to lower down the high ratio of NPLs (tied monitoring system). Liquidity position should be well maintained so that even in a high competition environment, the commercial is able to survive in that environment.

The present paper contributes to the prevailing literature that this is a comparison study between developed and developing countries of Asia that is a unique comparison because the study targets only one region and then on the basis of income, the results of this study are compared. Moreover, the contribution of the study is to include some accounting-based measures and market-based measures of the FP of commercial banks at a time.

The purpose of this paper is to examine monetary policies and bank lending in the emerging economies of Sub-Sahara Africa.

The dynamic system-generalized method of moments (GMM) that overcomes issues of unobserved period and country-specific effects, as well as potential endogeneity of explanatory variables, is applied in the estimation exercise. The study uses the data for 80 banks across 20 Sub-Saharan African countries from 2010 to 2019.

The findings show that expansionary monetary policy such as an increase in money supply stimulates bank lending, while contractionary monetary policies like increase in the monetary policy rates by the central banks lead to credit contraction, albeit a weak effect due to possible underdevelopment of financial markets, institutional constraints, bank concentration and other rigidities in the system characteristic of developing countries that undermine the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission. Capital adequacy ratio and size of economic activities are other variables that significantly influence bank lending channels.

Sub-Sahara Africa countries can enhance the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission on bank lending through the effective use of the transmission mechanism of changes in money supply and monetary policy rate.

While greater empirical attention has been devoted to the nexus between monetary policies and macroeconomic variables in country-specific studies, the connection between monetary policies and bank lending at an extensive regional or cross-country level is still scanty. For Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a palpable lack of empirical evidence on this. This study, therefore, seeks to fill this gap in a region where the impact of monetary policies on credit intermediation is crucial to the economic diversification efforts of the governments of Sub-Sahara Africa.

The purpose of this study is to analyze commercial bank-level data to examine a credit channel of the monetary policy transmission mechanism in emerging economies, such as South Africa from BRICS countries. Among the important questions that central banks, economists and policymakers have raised in this area are: Do bank characteristics and macroeconomic variables influence credit supply in South Africa? Do bank characteristics and macroeconomic variables interact to influence credit supply in South Africa?

Static panel data with pooled OLS, a random effect model and the fixed-effect model are used for data analysis. Using a sample of 50 commercial banks from South Africa over 10 years from 2009 to 2018. The statistical software Stata is utilized for data analysis.

The conclusion of this study shows that in South Africa, the loan amount has a strong and positive macroeconomic variable inflation effect. The outcomes of the study also revealed that in South Africa, there is a strong but negative association between interaction macroeconomic variables inflation and bank characteristic liquidity ratio on the loan amount.

The authors contribute to the existing literature by identifying the key determinants of monetary policy transmission channels through credit in South Africa and, furthermore, through a country-level data analysis and disaggregation at the commercial bank level, as well as economic conditions.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether regulations can prevent financial crises based on the case of Sweden in the 20th century. The evolution of banking regulation relies heavily on learning across borders as well as responding to recent and remembered crises. Sweden went from being an open economy with a highly protected national banking system with several banking crises under the Classical regime, through the Statist regime with no crises followed by abrupt liberalisation in the 1980s as the country changed to a more market-based regime. This study examines the regulatory responses to crises in each of these periods to assess how, and whether, an often backward-looking regulatory framework can address forward-looking risks.

This study is a qualitative study using a historical method. The authors use archival material, official publications and statistical data as well as secondary literature to succinctly analyse crises and regulatory responses in different regulatory regimes in the 20th century. The theoretical framework builds on three macro- and microeconomic policy regimes, the Classical, the Statist and the Market regime.

The authors find that regulations can play a decisive role in alleviating a banking crisis, but the relationship between regulations and economic development is complex, and regulations alone cannot prevent a crisis.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study of banking regulations in Sweden and how these change in response to crises with the aim of improving the role of banks in financial intermediation and financial stability. This study contributes to a body of literature on financial crises with a long-term perspective and an assessment of regulations as a policy response.

The study aims to empirically examine the relationship between monetary policy and economic growth, as well as to explore the long-run and the short-run effect of monetary policy on the economic growth of a developing country (Bangladesh) and a developed country (the United Kingdom).

Depending on data availability, the study employed secondary data covering the period of 1980–2019. The augmented Dickey–Fuller test and the Phillips–Perron test were used for the stationarity test. Further, the F-bounds test was run to justify the long-run relationship between monetary policy and economic growth. Thereafter, long-run coefficients were revealed from the auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and short-run coefficients from the error correction model. Furthermore, the vector error correction model (VECM) Granger causality approach was employed to demonstrate the causality of studied variables. Lastly, different diagnostics tests ensured the robustness of the models.

F-bounds test outcomes suggest that monetary policy has a long-run relationship with economic growth in both countries. Long-run coefficients revealed that money supply has a positive long-run impact on economic growth in both countries. Unlike the UK, the exchange rate exhibits an adverse effect on the economic growth of Bangladesh. The bank rate seems to promote economic growth for the UK. Findings also depict that increase in lending interest rates hurts the economic growth for both countries. Besides, the short-run coefficients portray random effects at different lags in both cases. Lastly, causality among studied variables is revealed using the VECM Granger causality approach.

The novelty of this study lies in consideration of both developing and developed countries in the same study.

The study aims to identify the impact of monetary policy tools on the performance of banks in India, and this could be an excellent suggestion to the regulators in framing the favourable interest rates which would meet the macroeconomic objectives of the Indian economy.

The design adopted in this study is descriptive and analytical research. Correlation and regression analysis is used to determine the relationship between bank rate (BR) and the performance of public sector banks in India. The sample chosen for this study is the public sector banks actively performing in India.

The performance is measured by taking three factors, and they are deposits, loans and advances (L&A) and total asset value of the banks. All three factors have shown an impact of BR on them during the five years. L&A affected the least amongst the three factors, but the other two were significantly impacted by the change in BR by the Reserve Bank of India. So, there should be a favourable fluctuation in the BR which will bring flexibility in the banking system, and they can perform well in the economy and the central bank also can concentrate on the macro-economic situation in the country.

This paper helps in giving suggestions to the Central bank, researchers, financial institutions to look into the financial performance and monetary policy rates and the central bank also can concentrate on the macro-economic situation in the country.