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This paper aims to examine the distributional differences of Islamic bank financing responses to financing rate across bank-specific characteristics in dual banking system. The study also aims to provide understanding of how efficiently Islamic banks perform their roles as suppliers of capital for businesses and entrepreneurs.

The study uses panel regression methodology covering all Islamic banks in Malaysia. The study estimates the benchmark model for Islamic bank financing with respect to bank characteristics and monetary policy.

The evidence suggests that bank-specific characteristics are important in determining Islamic financing behaviour. The Islamic financing behaviour is consistent with conventional lending behaviour that the Islamic bank financing operates depending on the level of bank size, liquidity and capital. There is no significant difference between Islamic bank financing and conventional bank lending behaviour with respect to changes in monetary policy.

Many problems and challenges relating to Islamic financing instruments, financial markets and regulations must be addressed and resolved. In practice, it would be a good idea if Islamic banks move away from developing debt-based instruments and concentrate more efforts to develop profit and loss sharing instruments.

This research aims to determine to what extent corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions developed by bank entities in Spain improve the vulnerable customers' emotions and quality perception of the banking service. Consequently, this increases the quality of their relationship regarding satisfaction, trust and engagement.

Data from 734 vulnerable banking customers were analyzed through structural equations modeling (EQS 6.2) to test the relationships of the proposed variables.

Vulnerable customers' emotional disposition exerts a strong influence on their perceived service quality. The antecedent effect is concentrated primarily on the CSR towards the client, with a residual secondary weight on the CSR towards society. These positive service emotions are determinants of the outcome quality perceived by vulnerable customers, directly in terms of higher satisfaction and trust and indirectly through engagement.

This research contributes to understanding how financial service providers should adapt to the specific characteristics and needs of vulnerable clients by adopting a strategy of approach, personalization and humanization of the service that seems to move away from the actions implemented by the banking industry in recent years.

This study has adopted a theoretical and empirical perspective on the impact of CSR on service emotions and outcome quality of vulnerable banking customers. Moreover, banks can adopt a dual conception of CSR: a macro and external scope toward society and a micro and internal scope toward customers.

This paper aims to empirically assess the performance of Islamic banks (IBs) and conventional banks (CBs) in Qatar before and after the imposition of the economic blockade on Qatar and the significance of the blockade’s subsequent impact.

This study focuses only on the domestic commercial banks comprising four IBs and five CBs operating in Qatar. The banks’ financial reports are used as a secondary source to generate data. A study period from 2015 to 2019, separated into pre-blockade and post-blockade periods and comprising data on a semi-annual basis, was examined. Financial ratios and t-tests are used to compare bank performance and test the significance level of the blockade, respectively.

Generally, the findings show that IBs slightly outperformed CBs. Solvency ratios show strong capitalization (measured by capital adequacy ratio, CAR) and external fund (measured by equity multiplier ratio, EMR) reliance of the banks, despite minor fluctuations. Yet, only the CAR of CBs has been significantly affected by the blockade. Profitability (measured by return on assets, ROA and return on equity, ROE) of both bank groups grew unsteadily over the period, but IBs remained more efficient (measured by operating efficiency, OEOI) than CBs. Liquidity ratios indicate almost similar depositor fund utilization (measured by loans to deposit ratio, LDR) and credit offering (measured by loans to assets ratio, LAR) by the banks. All three metrics were weakly impacted. In terms of asset quality, bad loans (measured by non-performing loans ratio, NPL) and provisions (measured by loan loss provisions, LLP) surged moderately post-blockade. The blockade affected both groups’ asset quality.

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to comparatively examine the performance of Qatari IBs and CBs during the latest economic embargo and their exposure to the crisis.

Unique among European Union (EU) economic governance entities and multilateral banks, the European Investment Bank (EIB) possesses a dual nature, as an EU body and a bank. The EIB has been ever evolving to adapt to policy and market developments and to reflect the geo-economic landscape. In 2019, in association with the EU's Green Deal, the bank announced its metamorphosis into a “Climate Bank,” ending its fossil fuel lending after 2021. Additionaly, upon the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its attendant health and economy crisis, EU decision-makers have solicited the bank to support both urgent needs for tackling and countering the spread of the disease and the post-pandemic economic recovery. Nevertheless, devastated economic actors in need of assistance fall within many sectors, including some less green ones.

This article is grounded on agency theory for developing a generic stakeholder framework, which is then subsequently applied in investigating the EIB, in interaction with its main stakeholders.

This article investigates the EIB stakeholders in pursuing these two seemingly contradictory objectives of exclusively restricting its activity to green funding and expanding its action for achieving a broad impact in the real economy. By exploring this tension, the article argues that by prioritizing the post-COVID restart, the EIB risks to deviate from its strict green commitment.

The analysis of the EIB's divergent stakeholder stances demonstrates some ambivalence in future EIB activity in an effort to equipoise climate finance with a post-pandemic boost. The same ambivalence might equally occur with other major economic governance actors. The stakeholder framework developed and applied in the case of the EIB can be useful for studying also the stakeholder dynamics of other organizations.

The analysis demonstrates a tension between selective climate-related funding for “building back better” and the need for a wide broaching of countercyclical stimulus, with implications for economic and social actors alike.

The approach is novel, as it develops a new analytical framework for understanding stakeholder dynamics and tests it empirically on the EIB. This constitutes the first study of EIB stakeholder management.

This paper aims to analyse the stabilizing macroeconomic effects of economic policies during the COVID-19 crisis in Spain.

The contribution of the structural shocks that explain the behaviour of the main macroeconomic aggregates during 2020 are estimated, and the effects of economic policies are simulated using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model estimated for the Spanish economy.

The results highlight the importance of supply and demand shocks in explaining the COVID-19 crisis. The annual fall in gross domestic product (GDP) moderates at least by 7.6 points in the most intense period of the crisis, thanks to these stabilizing policies. Finally, the potential effects of Next Generation EU in the Spanish economy are estimated. Assuming that Spain may receive from the EU between 1.5 and 2.25 percentage points (pp) of GDP, activity could increase to between 2 and 3 pp in 2024.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the exercises and findings are original. All these results show the usefulness of a DSGE model, such as the estimated rational expectation model for Spain, as a practical tool for the applied economic analysis, the macroeconomic assessment of economic policies and the understanding of the Spanish economy.