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The purpose of this paper is to analyze a variety of factors that can explain the differences in commercial bank efficiency among 17 countries in Latin America (LatAm).

In a first stage, data envelopment analysis (DEA) and conditional efficiency analysis techniques are used to assess the relative efficiency level of 409 banks for the 2014-2016 period. The conditional efficiency approach considers environmental variables (that are beyond the manager’s control), which could influence the shape and the level of the boundary of the attainable set. In the second stage, the resulting conditional efficiency scores are correlated with internal variables (those that are under the manager’s control), which might affect the distribution of the inefficiencies. For this purpose, an econometric approach developed by Simar and Wilson (2007) is used.

First stage scores reveal the heterogeneity of average efficiency within the region. Regarding the factors that may explain the differences in performance in the LatAm banking sector, the results allow us to state that certain internal variables such as bank size, the ratio of loans to total assets and the ratio of non-performing loans show the expected relationship to efficiency, in line with much of the previous literature.

This is the first time that conditional efficiency and Simar and Wilson (2007) approaches have been applied at the same time to analyse the LatAm banking industry.

Many prior tests of market efficiency, which occurred decades ago, were limited by data and did not employ methodology to correct for leptokurtosis in the stock return distribution. Furthermore, these studies did not test many aspects of conditional market efficiency. One aspect of a potential conditional violation of market efficiency is whether stock markets are efficient conditional on the level of stock return.

This paper uses quantile regressions to control for leptokurtosis in the stock return distribution and simultaneous quantile regressions to test whether markets are efficient conditional on the level of the market return. This paper uses market-level stock return data to bias against finding significant results in the efficiency tests. Furthermore, the author uses data from 1926 through 2018, providing the longest time period to date under which market efficiency is tested.

This paper presents evidence that the autoregressive coefficient decreases across return levels in stock market indices. The autoregressive coefficient is positive around highly negative returns and negative or insignificant around highly positive returns, which suggests that when stock returns are low they are more likely to continue lower, and when stock returns are high they are more likely to reverse. Results additionally suggest that market efficiency is not time-invariant and that stock markets have become more efficient over the sample period.

This paper extends the literature by finding evidence of a violation of weak-form market efficiency conditional on the level of stock returns. It further extends the literature by finding evidence that the stock market has become more efficient between 1926 and 2018.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether Islamic stock indexes outperform conventional stock indexes, in terms of informational efficiency and risk, during the recent financial instability period.

The paper uses a state space model combined with a standard GARCH(1,1) specification while taking into account structural breakpoints. The authors allow for efficiency and volatility spillovers to be time-varying and consider break dates to locate periods of financial instability.

Empirical results show that Islamic stock indexes are more volatile than their conventional counterparts and are not totally immune to the global financial crisis. As regards of the informational efficiency, the results show that the Islamic stock indexes are more efficient than the conventional stock indexes.

Resulting evidence of this paper has several implications for international investors who wish to invest in Islamic and/or conventional stock markets. Policy makers and even academics and Sharias researchers should as well take preventive measures in order to ensure the stability of Islamic stock markets during turmoil periods. Overall, prudent risk management and precocious financial practices are relevant and crucial for both Islamic and conventional financial markets.

The originality of this study is performed by the use of time-varying models for volatility spillovers and informational efficiency. It considers structural break dates that think about the dynamic effect of informational flows on stock markets. The study was developed in a global framework using international data. The global analysis allows avoiding country specific effects.

This paper aims to employ data envelopment analysis (DEA) models to evaluate the efficiency level and the change of efficiency of the hotel industry in major Chinese cities from 2001 to 2011. The study also aims to investigate the determinants of this efficiency.

The DEA models were used to calibrate the scores of technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency in each city, and the Malmquist productivity index was introduced to trace the efficiency change. Furthermore, the panel Tobit and linear regression models were applied to look into various factors contributing to efficiency scores.

The inefficiency of the hotel industry generally comes from the pure technical inefficiency. Moreover, the efficiency of the hotel industry has been considerably improved over the research period due to the change in technical efficiency. In addition, it was found that political hierarchy, degree of openness and level of tourism dependence help explain the cross-city differences in efficiency scores, whereas ownership structure dominantly contributes to the improvement of efficiency over time.

The benchmark analysis of efficiency is of great importance to cities with an unproductive hotel industry, as it helps them make critical adjustments towards the efficiency frontier.

This study represents one of the first studies to rigorously and systematically investigate the efficiency and efficiency change of the hotel industry in major Chinese cities and identify the possible factors explaining the efficiency score.

Driven by the dual-carbon target and the widespread digital transformation, leveraging digital technology (DT) to facilitate sustainable, green and high-quality development in heavy-polluting industries has emerged as a pivotal and timely research focus. However, existing studies diverge in their perspectives on whether DT’s impact on green innovation is synergistic or leads to a crowding-out effect. In pursuit of optimizing the synergy between DT and green innovation, this paper aims to investigate the mechanisms that can be harnessed to render DT a more constructive force in advancing green innovation.

Drawing from the theoretical framework of resource orchestration, the authors offer a comprehensive elucidation of how DT intricately influences the green innovation efficiency of enterprises. Given the intricate interplay within the synergistic relationship between DT and green innovation, the authors use the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method to explore diverse configurations of antecedent conditions leading to optimal solutions. This approach transcends conventional linear thinking to provide a more nuanced understanding of the complex dynamics involved.

The findings reveal that antecedent configurations fostering high green innovation efficiency actually differ across various stages. First, there are three distinct configuration patterns that can enhance the green technology research and development (R&D) efficiency of enterprises, namely, digitally driven resource integration (RI), digitally driven resource synergy (RSy) and high resource orchestration capability. Then, the authors also identify three configuration patterns that can bolster the high green achievement transfer efficiency of enterprises, including a digitally optimized resource portfolio, digitally driven RSy and efficient RI. The findings not only contribute to advancing the resource orchestration theory in the digital ecosystem but also provide empirical evidence and practical insights to support the sustainable development of green innovation.

The findings can offer valuable insights for enterprise managers, providing decision-making guidance on effectively harnessing the innovation-driven value of internal and external resources through resource restructuring, bundling and leveraging, whether with or without the support of DT.

The research findings contribute to heavy-polluting enterprises addressing the paradoxical tensions between digital transformation and resource constraints under environmental regulatory pressures. It aims to facilitate the simultaneous achievement of environmental and commercial success by enhancing their green innovation capabilities, ultimately leading to sustainability across profit and the environment.

Compared with previous literature, this research introduces a distinctive theoretical perspective, the resource orchestration view, to shed light on the paradoxical relationship on resource-occupancy between DT application and green innovation. It unveils the “black box” of how digitalization impacts green innovation efficiency from a more dynamic resource-based perspective. While most studies regard green innovation activities as a whole, this study delves into the impact of digitalization on green innovation within the distinct realms of green technology R&D and green achievement transfer, taking into account a two-stage value chain perspective. Finally, in contrast to previous literature that predominantly analyzes influence mechanisms through linear impact, the authors use configuration analysis to intricately unravel the complex influences arising from various combinatorial relationships of digitalization and resource orchestration behaviors on green innovation efficiency.

Assessment of African financial development dynamic convergences in money, credit, efficiency and size. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The empirical evidence is premised on 11 homogenous panels based on regions (Sub-Saharan and North Africa), income-levels (low, middle, lower-middle and upper-middle), legal-origins (English common-law and French civil-law) and religious dominations (Christianity and Islam). The paper examines convergence in financial intermediary dynamics of depth, efficiency, activity and size.

Findings suggest that countries with small-sized financial intermediary depth, efficiency, activity and size are catching-up countries with large-sized financial intermediary depth, efficiency, activity and size, respectively. The paper also provide the speeds of convergence and time necessary to achieve a full (100 percent) convergence.

The presence of strong links among African banking sectors may present little opportunity for portfolio diversification. The convergence patterns show positive steps toward regional integration. As a policy implication, African governments should not relent in structural and institutional reforms.

It is the first critical assessment of convergence in financial intermediary development dynamics in the African continent.

Using the small-business loan market, this paper aims to test whether a structural shift in access to borrowers’ financial information (i.e. credit ratings) improves market efficiency, thereby improving entrepreneurs’ access to external capital.

This research uses the National Survey of Small Business Finance in a conditional logistic regression framework to tease out the marginal propensity to grant lines of credit given the firm’s credit rating – treating both of the events, namely, line of credit and credit ratings, as endogenous variables. This methodology overcomes potential reverse causality issues.

The results show that information brokers have allowed small firms to break away from long-term monopolistic lending relationships, thus contributing to more informationally efficient markets. Small businesses benefit from better-informed lenders by having better access to capital. Also, women appear less likely to receive a line of credit even after adjusting for credit ratings.

This research highlights the importance of credit report awareness/monitoring by entrepreneurs, as the small-business credit rating grows rapidly. Relationship lending is not enough to reach optimal financing costs. These papers call for more regulated credit ratings industry to reduce potential moral hazards.

This paper tests whether bank lending relationships (soft information) still matter after accounting for credit ratings (hard information). Additionally, this study measures the extent to which information sharing by data services bureaus, a proxy for informational efficiency, has increased allocation efficiency in the small-business loan market.

The study examines the relationship between the consequential social cost of market power (i.e. welfare performance of banks) and cost efficiency using data covering the period 2009 to 2017 from the Ghanaian banking industry.

The study adopts the ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed effect (FE) panel regression and the quantile regression (QR) approaches to control for heterogeneity and provide increased room for policy relevance. The two-stage least squares instrumental variables (2SLS-IV) regression is used to ensure the robustness of the findings against the problem of possible reverse causality.

The results indicate a positive relationship between banks' welfare performance and cost efficiency, which suggests that greater cost efficiency hedges welfare losses. In other words, welfare gains and cost-efficient banks are not mutually exclusive. Also, the results show evidence that the sensitivity of welfare gain to cost efficiency depends on the knowledge of local market dynamics. Further, the findings from the QR estimation suggest that, but for welfare loss at low (Q.25) to the median (Q.50) quantiles, cost efficiency is a necessary and sufficient condition to hedge the welfare losses.

The results demonstrate that financial consumer protection cannot be achieved without cost efficiency in the presence of both foreign banks and high market knowledge. Therefore, our paper suggests an integrated cost efficiency policy approach that has the complementary effect of a robust information sharing mechanism and incentives to hedge against welfare losses in the banking sector of emerging economies. Moreover, if welfare gain is synonymous with cost-efficient banks, then the presence of a quiet life is typical of financial consumer protection.

This study provides insight into the importance of cost efficiency to the public policy of financial consumer protection in an era of foreign banks' dominance. From the review of prior literature, this paper is the first to apply the QR estimation technique to examine the effect of cost efficiency throughout the conditional distribution of bank welfare performance rather than just the conditional mean effect of cost efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test if the interaction between universities and spin-offs, as proxy of knowledge translation (KT), which is based in particular on negotiation, semantics and pragmatics, has a positive impact on spin-off performance – in terms of greater distance from the “valley of death” – and allows access to credit and financial instruments.

The authors adopt an appropriate nonparametric conditional efficiency approach for panel data. The authors provide a unique picture of the innovation environment in Italy using an original dataset. These data provide information regarding the intensity of interaction between universities and spin-offs along with financial balance datasheet of the spin-offs. The nonparametric approach is particularly suitable for nonlinear relationships typical for this type of data.

The results of the analysis confirm that the translation of knowledge, based on negotiation of interests, semantics of the text and pragmatism, favored by the interaction between universities and spin-offs, improves the productivity performance of the spin-off by allowing them to move away from the “valley of death”. Therefore, universities must pay particular attention to the way they work with spin-offs by making use of the translation of knowledge, based on semantics and pragmatism, in order to encourage an understanding of knowledge, sharing of interests among the partners and stakeholders of the spin-off, often belonging to different backgrounds. These are processes that favor the transfer and development of research outcomes to the market, improving the spin-off competitiveness of the territory and strengthening relations with universities and their stakeholders (banks and financial intermediaries, local and national politicians, institutions and the community at large).

Implications for research can be identified at policy and managerial level and refer to the effectiveness of the so called “Third Mission”, university entrepreneurship through the creation of profitable spin-offs which contribute to innovation, and to the socioeconomic development of the territory. In turn, spin-offs with good performances are more likely to have access to external financing to allow the growth of their business in the market. Further studies can investigate the organizational way of the universities that promote these virtuous results, distinguishing them by spin-off efficiency clusters.

For universities, the results make it possible to envisage organizational processes to support spin-offs that are important both for compliance with the regulations and for the Third Mission. Researchers, teachers and PhD academics have the opportunity to exploit the results of their innovative research on the market. Spin-offs and start-up founders should note that the results of scientific transfer can create value for the firm and the territory. Useful information also derives for banks and financial intermediaries that intend to improve the credit risk assessment of the spin-offs during the loan assessment phase.

The value of the work entails in offering a unique overview of university innovation, through an original dataset and a robust methodology. By adopting a different approach, the contribution of KT at national level was assessed, measuring the impact on the technical performance and on the probability of survival of the companies. Originality of the paper lies not only in the approach but also in the fact that this is the first attempt to use the KT as a key factor for the economic sustainability from a financial perspective of start-up companies.