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Average bank net interest margins vary widely across Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, net interest margins of Omani banks are significantly higher. The resultant low level of financial intermediation implies reduced investment and economic growth. Understanding the reason for these high and persistent spreads is important to develop a policy for improving effectiveness of the banking system. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Net interest margins of Arab GCC banks during the period 1999-2012 are examined using the balanced panel regression model with bank specific, financial/market structure specific and macroeconomic factors as determinants. The method used for estimation used is the estimated generalized least squares (EGLS) method with both fixed effects and random effects.

Bank-specific variables, which explain net interest margins in GCC, are bank capitalization ratios, loan ratios and overhead expenses. Spread of banking sector (as measured by ratio of total bank credit to GDP) is positive and highly significant, implying that along with the expansion of the banking sector in GCC economies, interest margins of banks also improved. Omani banks were able to increase interest margins by aggressively marketing high yield personal and credit card loans, and, zero interest paying deposit products. The study also finds a negative relationship between concentration and net interest margin, and attempts to explain this finding which is at variance with other country studies using the price leadership model of oligopoly.

The standard, accepted econometric model of net interest margins which has been used in earlier studies is unable to explain the high net interest margins of banks in Oman although it is able to explain interest margins in other GCC countries. There is a need to develop non econometric models. More work is needed on the implications of NIM spreads for how they affect an economy.

The study shows that as the banking sector spreads in the economy, individual banks have more opportunities to market their products while at the same time maintaining interest margins. Bank managements should note this point and look for opportunities to expand.

There is no evidence of any empirical studies which focused on net interest margins in the GCC countries. This study attempts to fill in this gap with a view to nudge policy makers to look at the issue of high interest margins and its detrimental impact on economic growth and development in the Gulf region. The paper is useful for policy makers to understand and rectify the problem of excessive interest spreads which is hurting the financial intermediation process.

The purpose of this paper is investigate the impact of financial reforms, financial liberalization and banking regulation and supervision policies on net interest margins by using the BankScope database of 76 economies.

The micro-panel data of more than 1,300 banks of 76 developed and developing economies over the period 2001-2005 have been used to investigate the relationships of financial reform, financial liberalization, banking supervision and regulation with net interest margins by using dynamic two-step system of generalized method of moments.

The empirical results provided the evidence that financial reform have a negative and statistically significant impact on bank interest margins. Specifically, it is important to note that in a weakly regulated and supervised environment, financial liberalization has a negative and insignificant impact on net interest margins. The findings of this paper also explain that the huge entrance of banks, the removal of interest rate controls, strong banking regulation and supervision and effective liberalization policies have reduced net interest margins in sample countries.

The originality of this research into the existing literature is the inclusion of some recently introduced determinants such as index of financial liberalization (with range 0-3 meaning fully repressed to fully liberalize) and banking regulation and supervision, bank age and the share of foreign and government banks. This paper applies large micro-data to explore the relationship of financial reform, financial liberalization and banking regulation and supervision on net interest margins. This paper also tries to explore the relationship of different levels of liberalization and banking supervision with net interest margins in detail.

This study investigates the reasons behind the very high net interest margins in the Greek banking industry compared to the euro-area, focussing on the association between bank competition and recapitalisations.

The author conducts a dynamic panel analysis covering the period from the early 2000s to 2021, that controls for possible endogeneity and treats for heterogeneity. The author also employs local projections impulse response functions that control for structural changes in Greek banking.

The author finds that low bank competition has contributed to high net interest margins in Greece. Interestingly, the impact of recapitalisations conditional to low bank competition has had a significant further impact on increasing net interest margins, which is a noteworthy case due to several Greek bank recapitalisations in the last ten years. The author’s findings are supported by local projections impulse response functions.

To mitigate distortions in bank competition, the author argues to accelerate steps toward the direction of the banking union and a common bank regulation framework in the euro-area.

There is abundant literature analyzing the determinants of banks’ profitability through its main component: the net interest margin. Some of these determinants are suggested by seminal theoretical models and subsequent expansions. Others are ad-hoc selections. Up to now, there are no studies assessing these models from a Bayesian model uncertainty perspective. This paper aims to analyze this issue for the EU-15 countries for the period 2008-2014, which mainly corresponds to the Great Recession years.

It follows a Bayesian variable selection approach to analyze, in a first step, which variables of those suggested by the literature are actually good predictors of banks’ net interest margin. In a second step, using a model selection approach, the authors select the model with the best fit. Finally, the paper provides inference and quantifies the economic impact of the variables selected as good candidates.

The results widely support the validity of the determinants proposed by the seminal models, with only minor discrepancies, reinforcing their capacity to explain net interest margin disparities also during the recent period of restructuring of the banking industry.

The paper is, to the best of the knowledge, the first one following a Bayesian variable selection approach in this field of the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact on bank risk of portfolio diversification between traditional margin income and fee‐based income for banks operating in Australia.

Considering several performance variables, this analysis compares the benefits of diversification across different bank types relative to margin income and fee income. Further, regression analysis considers bank risk and revenue concentration.

This paper documents that fee‐based income is riskier than margin income but offers diversification benefits to bank shareholders. While improving bank risk‐return tradeoff, these benefits are of second order importance compared to the large negative impact of poor asset quality on shareholder returns.

These results have implications for all stakeholders in Australian banks. The results suggest that shareholders of banks will benefit from increased bank exposure to non‐interest income via diversification. From a regulatory perspective, diversification reduces the possibility of systemic risk, but caution must be offered with respect to banks pursuing absolute returns rather than monitoring risk‐return trade‐offs, and so exploiting the benefits of the implied guarantee offered by “too big to fail” However, shareholders should also monitor bank exposure to non interest income to ensure that they do not become over‐exposed to the point where the volatility effect outweighs the diversification benefits.

The results of this study suggest that Australian regulators should consider requiring increased disclosure of the composition of bank non‐interest income. Such disclosure would aid in understanding the changing nature of banking in Australia. Given the recent sub‐prime crisis in the USA and the role played by fee based income sourced from securitization, increased disclosure of the nature of bank non interest income is now of global importance. This disclosure is particularly germane within the context of the implementation of Basle II, with its increased emphasis upon market discipline, given that Stiroh found increased disclosure in this area is accompanied by improved market pricing for risk.

This paper examines the effect of financial (banking) freedom and market power on bank net interest margins (NIM).

The study uses data from 11 sub-Saharan African countries over the period, 2006-2012, and the system generalized method of moments to assess how financial freedom affects the relationship between market power and bank NIM.

The authors find that both financial freedom and market power have positive relationships with bank NIM. However, there is some indication that the impact of market power on bank margins is sensitive to the level of financial freedom prevailing in an economy. It appears that as competition intensifies, margins of banks in freer countries are likely to reduce faster than those in areas with more restrictions.

Competition policies could be guided by the insight on how financial freedom moderates the effect of market power on bank margins.

This study provides new empirical evidence on how the level of financial freedom affects bank margins and the market power-bank margins relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationship between non-interest income (NII) and net interest margin (NIM) in the Vietnamese banking system between 2006 and 2015. Thereafter, the impact of NII on risk-adjusted returns is also examined.

Various analysis techniques are used to achieve the research objectives.

The findings show a negative two-way link between NII and NIM, thus supporting the subsidisation hypothesis. Furthermore, NII is found to have a negative impact on risk-adjusted returns. When observing this relationship in sub-samples, the findings indicate that the negative impact of NII on risk-adjusted returns still holds in the first subsample (2006-2011). The coefficient of NII becomes positive but not significant for the subsequent period (2012-2015). In addition, the Spearman rank-order correlations of returns on assets and NII for both sub-samples are negative. Together, the author concludes that there are no diversification benefits in the Vietnamese banking system.

The evidence suggests a trade-off between non-interest activities and traditional lending ones. In addition, the findings demonstrate that the Vietnamese banks may use NIIs to expand leverage and herd by coordinating NII strategy during the economic downturns. Thus, the banking system may be exposed to a greater risk. The research has implications for bank supervisors, policy-makers and bank managers.

This study is the first attempt to investigate the interrelationships between net NII and NIM in the Vietnamese banking system.

This study investigates the determinants of net interest margin (NIM) and tests the decoupling hypothesis in Turkey's Islamic and conventional banks.

This study has employed a panel quantile model (PQM) to assess the net interest margin (NIM) and test the decoupling hypothesis in the dual banking system of Turkey.

The empirical results show that the impact of equity is positive for both Islamic and conventional banks but relatively more robust for Islamic banks. Moreover, it is observed that return on assets has a positive association with NIM in both types of banking systems. Interestingly, the impact increases from lower to higher quantiles, but a higher acceleration rate is observed for Islamic banks. The study also finds that, as bank stability increases, NIM decreases for both groups of banks but more stably for Islamic banks, resulting in lower margins than conventional banks. Thus, the paper confirms the decoupling hypothesis and suggests that, to increase profit margins, Islamic banks need to increase assets and equity.

The paper confirms the decoupling hypothesis and suggests that to increase profit margin, Islamic banks need to increase assets and equity.

Since both equity and assets contribute positively to interest margins, policymakers in the industry need to increase the size of equity and assets to get maximum returns.

This is one of the first studies to investigate NIM's determinants and test the decoupling hypothesis in the Turkish dual banking system using a non-parametric MCMC panel quantile regression (QRM) model.

The distinctive feature of Islamic financial intermediation is its foundation on profit-and-loss sharing which reinforces solidarity and fraternity between partners. Thus, the bank margin and its determinants may differ between Islamic and conventional banks (CBs). The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess the main factors that explain the bank margin in a panel of Islamic and CBs operating in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This study will permit to identify the common and the specific determinants of the intermediation margins in dual banking systems.

The authors use a dynamic panel approach. The empirical analysis is carried out for a sample of 50 Islamic banks (IBs) and 126 CBs from 14 MENA countries.

The results reveal that net profit margins of IBs may be explained for the most part by risk aversion, inefficiency, diversification and economic conditions. With regard to CBs, their margins depend positively on market concentration and risk aversion and negatively on specialization, diversification, inefficiency and liquidity.

The significant impact of the degree of diversification on margins suggests that any policy analysis of the pricing behavior of banks should rely on its whole output. The high levels of margins in Islamic and CBs based in the MENA region may represent an obstacle to these countries to pursue their development process. Thus, policy makers in these countries should consolidate the role of capital markets and nonbanking financial institutions to provide alternative sources of funding and stimulate more competition.

The positive relationship between concentration and net interest margins requires that policy makers should create competitive conditions if they want to lower the social cost of financial intermediation. The creation of competitive conditions may be achieved through encouraging the establishment of new domestic banks or the penetration of foreign banks.

The present study aims to contribute to the existing literature on the determinants of bank margins in three ways. First, the authors identify the factors that most explain bank margins for both conventional and IBs. The majority of previous studies examine the determinants of the profitability or the overall performance of banks and in particular conventional ones. Second, this paper employs two generalized method of moments (GMM) approaches introduced by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Arellano and Bond (1991). It differs from Hutapea and Kasri (2010) who employed the co-integration technique to examine the long-run relationship between Islamic and CB margins and their determinants in Indonesia. Third, unlike previous studies focusing on MENA region that use a small number of countries and a short sample period, the period of study covers 16 years from 1999 to 2014 and a large sample of countries (14 countries). This paper differs from Lee and Isa (2017) who applied the dynamic two-step GMM estimator technique introduced by Arellano and Bond (1991) to study the determinants of intermediation margins of Islamic and CBs located in Malaysia.

The purpose of this study is to try to answer whether the banking system in Oman is fair for both depositors and entrepreneurs.

The interest margin decomposition is based on the methodology proposed in Randall (1998). The income statement of banks defines profits before taxes (P) as interest income (II), plus non-interest income (NII), minus interest expense (IP), minus operating costs (OC) and minus provision for loan losses (Prov). After rearranging this identity, the net interest revenue can be expressed as follows: II – IP = OC + Prov + P – NII. The above expression decomposes the margin into the following cost and profit components: reserve requirement costs, operational costs, loan loss provision costs, profitability and non-interest income (with a negative sign).

A trend analysis of commercial banks’ interest rate spreads in Oman exposes the following facts: First, the implicit interest margin is relatively small (in the neighborhood of 1 percentage point); second, profits constitute a substantial proportion of the margin; third, the share of operating costs in the margin has been broadly constant over time; fourth, reserve requirement costs have been reduced following the decline of the reserve requirement ratio; and fifth, the weighted average interest rate on deposits base is lower than the rate of inflation.

This work is original.