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This study aims to examine the effect of private (PRST) and public (PUST) sector-led financial sector transparencies on bank interest margins (BIM) termed as social cost of financial intermediation in different institutional quality setups.

This study uses a two-step dynamic generalized method of moments panel data and bootstrapped quantile models with 91 economies between 2004 and 2016. Data is sourced from World Development Indicator and Global Development Finance databases.

The results show that under strong and weak political and financial regulatory institutional setups, the reducing effect of PRST on BIM are observed and reported while the full sample reports no significant nexus between PRST and PUST on BIM. Furthermore, under political institutional quality sample, economies with strong corruption control and regulatory quality are able to reinforce the dampening effect of PRST on BIM while under the same political institutional quality sample, economies with weak rule of law are able to heighten the reducing effect of PRST on BIM. Moreover, under financial regulator institutional quality sample, economies with strong overall weighted and unweighted, chief executive officer and policy dependent central banks are able to intensify the diminishing effect of PRST on BIM while under the same financial regulator institutional quality sample, economies with weak limits on lending are able to amplify the reducing effect of PRST on BIM. However, PUST is reported to propel lower levels BIM in the bootstrap models, especially in strong institutional economies.

These findings imply that policymakers may rely on PRST to reduce BIM, especially under financial regulatory institutional quality. Additionally, economies must be careful on their reliance on PRST because the effectiveness of PRST to tame high BIM is dependent on the strength of political and financial regulatory institutions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study presents first time international evidence on the effect of private and public sector-led financial transparency on BIM in strong and weak political and financial regulatory institution economies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how austerity has impacted to date upon European Union (EU) financial reporting developments and how this might influence future reforms. It considers how a critical juncture in EU financial reporting might be recognized and factors which might prevent or delay such a juncture being realized.

The paper uses the theoretical conceptualization of the territorializing, mediating, adjudicating and subjectivizing roles of accounting (Miller and Power, 2013), linked to document analysis and interviews with members of the relevant policy communities. In technical terms, austerity makes accounting subject to greater demands for consistency and uniformity. In political terms, accounting is implicated in increasing external fiscal surveillance of sovereign states.

The authors have shown how the Miller-Power framework illuminates these developments. The territorializing role of accounting in sovereign states creates an environment which facilitates the mediating, adjudicating and subjectivizing roles. Austerity promotes re-territorializing, yet also creates incentives for governments to hide risks and guarantees: the comparability of financial reports and national accounts may be achieved only at a rhetorical level. Evidence for a critical juncture would be termination of national traditions of financial reporting, greater harmonization of accounting across tiers of government, weakening of the linkages to private sector accounting, and stronger alignment of government financial reporting with statistical accounting.

The paper provides a theoretically based analysis of how austerity influences government financial reporting and statistical accounting and brings them into closer contact. This analysis is located within broader tensions between technocracy and democracy that are institutionalized in EU fiscal surveillance.

Trust in financial institutions has been eroded through the collapse of mortgage-related securities, with confidence further denuded through well publicized cases of rogue traders and rate fixing cases, such as with the Lehman brothers, the Libor rate-fixing scandals, and the hypo real estate breakdown. In response to these events, governments have introduced a range of distinct policy initiatives designed to restore trust in this sector. Thus, the question arises: are these regulations and control mechanisms sufficient in isolation, or are there other elements that this sector needs to pay attention to in efforts to build and sustain customers’ trust? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

There is a compelling agenda for both financial organizations and academics to understand better organizational trust in this context especially the role and impact of regulatory mechanisms in its development and repair. The paper therefore examines the special facets of the financial services sector in comparison to other sectors, such as manufacturing, to consider whether trust is fundamentally different in this context than others, and thus address how far there are special challenges concerning trust and the banking industry. The paper analyses, by using a meta-analytical design, 93 studies (N=38,631), of which 20 empirically investigate organizational trust in the financial sector with a combined N of 11,224 respondents.

The paper shows that the banking sector is heavily affected by two distinct forces: first, customers’ perception of an organization's level of compliance and conformity with laws and regulations is a necessity for banks’ sociopolitical legitimization, and second it is also related to how non-compliance is dealt with. Importantly, this meta-analysis indicates that regulation is just one of a suite of devices that organizations need to deploy in their efforts to restore trust. The paper identified two further elements of significance: customers require direct evidence, derived either from their own or others’ satisfaction with the goods or services provided, and customers do take note of the external endorsement of the firm, especially in Asia, where customers place huge emphasis on the firm's reputation.

First, meta-analysis is inherently reliant on the earlier studies and therefore retains their weaknesses. Some of the relationships included self-report variables collected at the same point in time and therefore may be inflated by common method bias. Second, due to the focus and because of the limited number of studies in this sector, and a paucity of attention on some key topics, such as perceptions of regulation, second-order sampling error may also be a limitation. Third, some relationships were not investigated frequently enough in studies to enable us to include them in the review, such as cooperation, opportunistic behaviour or quality. Finally, despite calls for trust scholars to include propensity to trust measures within their studies, many of these studies do not include this measure and therefore it is more difficult to identify and control individual difference factors.

The results show the merit of multi-strand trust development strategies. There is a striking paucity of financial institutions, which have examined how far their trust deficit may be related to their internal culture, and whether recent corporate corruption could be the product of bonuses and the internal short-term individualized reward systems. The analysis reveals that although external regulations and controls are an effective and powerful devise for organizational trust, over the last two periods of significant crisis, their impact appears to be warning; Yet reassuring customers of their expectations of the other party's future behaviour is central to trust. Alternative remedies need to be considered, such as the establishment of a more effective regulator, or board of governors who oversee and assure compliance. Monitoring and surveillance offer a further external means of reducing the possibility of future misbehaviours. However, as the analysis indicates, other strands are required to build trust, including greater attention by firms on customers’ direct experiences, which in turn would enhance the third part endorsement of their competence and goodwill intentions of organizations.

Significantly, the results indicate the potentially partial erosion of credence factors, and thus confidence, in this sector over the last 20 years, during what has been a period of repeated exposure to trust breaches. The paper shows that single strand solutions, such as improvements to customer communication, are no longer sufficient, nor, more importantly, do they have the same impact. Instead, the paper shows the necessity to utilize more effectively and target attention towards three distinct antecedents: external regulations and their enforcement; third party and expert endorsements, and therefore external reputations; and customer satisfaction in terms of the effective delivery of customer expectations.

Organizational trust has been shown as critical in positively affecting and repairing broken relationships through uncertainty reduction and confidence enhancement. In the past, different meta-analyses of trust have been undertaken, but this, to the authors knowledge, is the first meta-analytic study measuring trust on an organizational level in the context of the financial services sector and its regulatory environment. This meta-analysis indicates that regulation is just one of a suite of devices that organizations need to deploy in their efforts to restore trust. The paper identified two further elements: customers require direct evidence, and do take note of the external endorsement of the firm.

This study examines the impact of intellectual capital efficiency and corporate governance mechanisms on the annual report readability of Oman's financial sector companies.

The study uses a sample of 150 firm-year observations of listed financial sector companies in the Muscat Securities Market, Oman, from 2014 to 2018. Flesch Reading ease and Flesch Kinkaid Index are used as proxies for annual report readability. As part of sensitivity analysis, the study also uses the natural logarithm of annual report pages as alternative readability measures. The investigation is conducted using random effects regression analysis and supported with system GMM estimation for robustness.

The findings of this study demonstrate a decrease in intellectual capital efficiency associated with better readability of annual reports for the financial sector firms. Alternatively, banks report a positive association of intellectual capital efficiency with the Flesch Reading ease score of the annual report. The structural capital and capital employed efficiency are also found to be negatively associated with annual report readability. Corporate governance mechanisms such as dispersed ownership and audit committee size also result in easy-to-read annual reports that support agency theory.

The research was conducted for financial firms of Oman, and thereby the findings can be generalized to the financial sector of countries with similar settings, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

The policy implications arising from this study suggest a strengthening of the intellectual capital efficiency and corporate governance mechanisms to improve the readability of the firms and thereby increase investor confidence.

This paper's uniqueness is in the model used to investigate the impact of intellectual capital efficiency and corporate governance mechanisms on the annual report readability of an emerging market.

This paper aims to investigate the determinants that contribute to the financial stability and banking sector of Palestinian banks listed on the Palestine Stock Exchange (PEX) by using yearly data for the years 2012–2022.

Pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) and two-stage least squares (2SLS) were used to identify the variables and factors affecting the financial stability and banking sector of Palestinian banks. The study’s data were collected from the banks listed on PEX and from the yearly reports posted on the Palestine Monetary Authority’s (PMA) webpage over the years from 2012–2022. According to this research’s analysis, SMEs loans and capital sufficiency have a statistically significant positive impact on the stability of Palestinian banks. Unobserved heterogeneity, simultaneity and dynamic endogeneity are taken into account when using the 2SLS regression approach to adjust for the study endogeneity factor.

The study’s findings show that some factors and determinants might have both good and negative effects on financial stability and banking sector. Loans to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) and enough capital are two characteristics that statistically have a major favourable impact on the stability of Palestinian banks since they help the banks withstand deficits. A further potential discovery relates to the favourable effects of financial inclusion (FI) and digital financial services (DFS) on the stability of banks.

This research has faced some limitations, such as the lack of a defined index from the regulatory organizations, this research is based on information from bank annual accounts. It has mostly relied on self-developed or World Bank indexes. Furthermore, the research solely used information from the supply side (banks); demand-side data were not taken into consideration.

This paper has managerial implications for stability of banking sector. The Palestine Monetary Authority, as the central bank, must increase the percentage of bank loans directed to small and medium-sized companies and oblige bank management to adhere to adequate capital standards, which contributes to strengthening the Palestinian banking sector and increasing its profits. The study findings advise banks that are enjoying financial stability to speed up the pace of FI and DFSs because most of these reliable banks have relatively low FI ratios. PMA is responsible for preserving the stability of the financial system. PMA, decision makers and banks management must retain adequate liquidity in their institutions and raise client collateral expectations to raise credit conditions.

This paper adds some contributions to the literature. To adjust for discrepancies between various types of banks, the authors concentrate on conventional and Islamic banks, which enables us to use a homogenous data set as opposed to depending on dichotomous variables. The authors used Z-scores, which have recently been used in research, to measure stability and FI at the level of specific institutions. This research contributes in some key aspects that no prior research has addressed. Conventional banks are different from Islamic banks, and a number of issues might impact their stability. To evaluate the connection between FI and DFSs, it is important to consider the actions of bank regulators.

The present study aims to comprehensively examine the impact of the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) takeover of Credit Suisse on the banking and financial services sector in the Indian stock market. To fully comprehend the impact of the event, the study separately investigates the response of private sector banks, public sector banks, overall banking companies and financial services companies to the takeover of the second-largest financial institution in Switzerland.

The study employs event study methodology, using the market model, to analyze the event's impact on Indian banking and financial services sector stocks. The data consists of daily closing prices of companies included in the Nifty Private Bank Index, Nifty PSU Bank Index, Nifty Bank Index and Nifty Financial Services Index from the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Furthermore, cross-sectional regression analysis has been conducted to explore the factors that drive abnormal returns.

The empirical findings of the study suggest the event had a heterogeneous impact on the stock prices of Indian banks and financial services companies. While public sector banks experienced a significant negative impact on select days within the event window, the overall Indian banking sector and financial services companies also witnessed notable declines. In contrast, Indian private sector banks were relatively resilient, exhibiting minimal effects. However, the cumulative effect is found to be insignificant for all four categories across different event windows. The study also observed that the cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) were significantly influenced by certain variables during different event windows.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, the present study is the earliest attempt that investigates the impact of the UBS takeover of Credit Suisse on the Indian banking and financial services sector using event study methodology and cross-sectional regression model.

This study tests whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance is a predictor of the financial sector's financial stability (FS), with the moderation of a sustainability committee.

The sample covers financial sector firms included in the Thomson Reuters Eikon database. The analyses are based on 8,840 firm-year observations for the years between 2002 and 2019 and the country-firm-year fixed-effects (FE) regression analysis is executed.

The results reveal that CSR initiatives contribute to the financial sector's FS as a whole and the sector's three individual sub-sectors. This proven significant association holds for all sub-sectors, namely insurance, banking, and investment banking. Moreover, the moderation analysis reveals the prominent role of a sustainability committee in bridging CSR performance (CSRP) with FS.

The findings highlight that meeting societies' expectations pays back in the form of greater FS in the financial sector.

The findings suggest that CSR engagement helps the financial sector firms manage their risks and alleviates exposure to insolvency. This is because CSR performance promotes firms' accountability and transparency toward stakeholders. The results help motivate managers to pursue CSR goals more seriously to ensure FS. The moderation analysis implies that sustainability committees develop policies and practices to integrate the non-financial and financial goals of the firm.

Although prior studies have examined the link between CSR and financial performance (FP) in the financial sector, those studies have largely ignored FS in terms of risk-adjusted performance. Besides, prior studies have exclusively focused on the banking sector, but the authors concentrate on the banking, insurance, and investment banking sectors.

This paper aims to provide a longitudinal analysis of influences on China’s financial sector’s sustainability reporting practices, examines “green finance” disclosures and undertakes subsector comparisons. The state’s impact on the quantity and quality of reporting practices is analyzed.

Content analysis is used to examine the volumes, frequency and content of sustainability disclosures by China’s financial institutions. Survival analysis is used to identify factors significant in firms’ initiation of these disclosures. In total, 308 firm-year observations on disclosures are examined for 2007–2016.

China’s financial sector’s sustainability reporting pieces of evidence an “emerging stage” (2007–2009), “developing stage” (2010) and “greening stage” (2011–2016). The roles of institutional theory and regulatory pressure in explaining Chinese financial firms’ reporting behaviours are supported.

This study has several limitations. Firstly, given data restrictions, use of a relatively small sample size. Secondly, it examines different categories of disclosures made by financial firms, not more detailed content. Thirdly, is the potential overlap in disclosure themes under the classification scheme.

China’s financial sector’s adoption of sustainability reporting has been institutionalized, mainly in its banking subsector, consistent with general regulatory pressures.

“Greening the finance system” is examined in China’s context, as the country transforms from a resource and pollution-intensive to a green economy.

The financial sector is normally excluded from in-depth qualitative research. This study examines China’s financial sector’s responses to recent governmental pressures on green finance disclosures.

Public information disclosure is a manifestation of transparency and contributes to governance-by-disclosure. Also, better financial reporting can improve the credibility and integrity of public finances and contribute to a better management of public resources. A survey was carried out in Cyprus of users’ of public financial reports concerning an expectation gap about the types of information included in such reports (information needs expectation gap) as well as the quality of such information (information quality satisfaction gap). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Two focus groups of users and preparers of public financial reports were used to construct the questionnaire. Users of such reports, who belonged to all three categories of public sector financial reporting identified by IPSASB, were surveyed. The quantitative data obtained was analysed using SPSS and quadrant analysis to answer the research questions posed.

Data from 101 respondents confirmed that each of the information needs identified in the IPSASB Consultation Paper (2008) was rated as being a significant information need. Data analysis also showed that both types of expectation gap exist, especially as far as local authority and semi-public organisations are concerned.

The response rate in the self-administered survey was admittedly rather low but it was not unexpected mainly due to the survey’s very specialised nature and the tendency by people in Cyprus not to critique public bodies.

Deficient financial public sector reporting means the auditor general is not able to adequately express an opinion on public spending at the local government level. This, in turn, means taxpayers do not get the quality of services they pay for. At the same time, the lack of information transparency means corrupt practices are not eradicated. One answer to the problem would be legislating the content of public financial reports.

The lack of governance-by-public exposure means that services to the local community cost a lot more, due to corruption and inefficiency. In addition, it contributes to lowering market confidence and eventually contributes to financial crisis at the national level.

The survey conducted was the first of its kind in Cyprus to investigate financial public sector reporting and document both manifestations of the expectation gap. In addition, information needs identified in the IPSASB Consultation Paper (2008) was rated as significantly needed and this is the first time it has been done in Eurozone member state and in a country facing a financial crisis.