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The main objective of this study is to analyze the mediating role of intellectual capital in the relationship between diversification, financial stability, and efficiency of the banking sector in Ethiopia.

Secondary data for this study was obtained from audited financial statements of 17 Ethiopian commercial banks for a decade starting in 2013. A descriptive and explanatory research design with a quantitative research approach was employed. The seemingly unrelated Hierarchical regression analysis is used to estimate diversification’s effect on banks' financial stability and efficiency, considering the interaction between diversification and intellectual capital as a mediating variable.

The Mediation analysis reveals that asset diversification improves the financial stability of commercial banks when mediated by intellectual efficiency. Investment diversification negatively impacts risk-adjusted return on asset and Z score. Intellectual capital significantly enhances commercial banks' efficiency and financial stability in Ethiopia and mediates the relationship between geographic diversification, financial stability, and efficiency. The mediation analysis also indicates that intellectual capital significantly mediates the relationship between income diversification and efficiency.

This study highlights the importance of intellectual capital and promotes its strategic allocation by management and regulatory bodies to enhance the financial stability and operational effectiveness of the banking industry in Ethiopia.

To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this study is one of the rare attempts to investigate the mediating role of intellectual capital on the nexus between diversification, financial stability, and efficiency of commercial banks in Ethiopia.

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.

This study aims to investigate whether various types of risks faced by the publicly listed commercial banks of India and Bangladesh are driven by market power and provides comparative insights from both economies.

By using the adjusted Lerner index to gauge bank market power and applying the generalised methods of moments (GMM) regression approach, the research delved into the relationship between bank market power and three distinct facets of risk across a sample of 26 publicly listed commercial banks in India and 22 listed banks in Bangladesh spanning from 2011 to 2022.

The results indicate that for Bangladesh, both “competition fragility” and “competition stability” viewpoints coexist simultaneously across all risk types, supporting a nonlinear relationship between market power and risk. However, in the Indian context, a nonlinear association exists only in the case of credit risk, while the relationship with insolvency risk is linear, substantiating the “competition fragility view”. Apart from market power and bank-specific variables, GDP growth rate has emerged as a prominent driver across all risk categories in both countries.

The filtration of banks is a limitation that might have influenced the outcomes. This study recommends that the Reserve Bank of India encourages further bank consolidation. Along the same line, Bangladesh Bank should closely oversee the growing competitive landscape. Furthermore, the regulators must monitor the elevated levels of non-performing loans to reduce credit risk so as to bolster the stability of their respective banking sectors.

This comparative study is the first attempt to analyse the market power and risk relationship and includes a novel bank-specific variable, i.e. technology, apart from other established variables.

The purpose of the present study is to test the effect of financial development and environmental degradation on the control of corruption.

This study used a dynamic approach known as system GMM to analyze annual data from 90 developed and developing countries over 24 years, from 1996 to 2020.

The present study shows a significantly negative relationship between financial development and control of corruption and a significantly positive relationship between environmental degradation and control of corruption. The result suggests that improvement in financial development may reduce control of corruption; however, reduction in environmental degradation may reduce control of corruption. The results are consistent across both developed and developing countries.

The study’s findings have significant implications for financial institutions, governmental policy departments and environmental regulatory agencies. The policy outcomes are closely linked to the economic prosperity of countries. In general, developing countries can implement strategies to promote financial development and environmental regulations, even though they may temporarily tolerate corrupt activities. Conversely, developed nations may have differing implications from developing countries.

This study is different from the past literature as none of the studies have been conducted previously focusing on developed and developing countries’ financial development, environmental degradation and control of corruption.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the implementation of digital banking services (mobile applications) by globally systemically important banks (G-SIBs) affects banks’ performance in the USA and Europe from 2005 to 2022.

The study employs advanced econometric methods to analyze the link between deposits and banking performance, utilizing linear regressions and multivariate Bayesian regressions.

Our results indicate that customer deposits positively impact a bank’s performance after the introduction of the mobile application feature of check deposits, whereas social risk negatively impacts banking financial performance. These findings support the hypothesis that technology implementation improves the profitability and growth of traditional banks.

While findings are robust econometrically in linear and Bayesian regressions, variables reflecting the digitalization of banks remain limited. For instance, the number of mobile users or the volume of digital transactions per bank since the implementation of the mobile app is not available.

In a rapidly growing technology and constantly changing customers behaviors, this research has practical implications from bankers’ perspective to continue the technological innovation efforts and from regulators’ perspective to strengthen requirements for the digital banking services.

We provide empirical evidence that including a banking app for smartphones’ users for remote banking services benefit the financial performance of banks. However, the social risk remains significant for banks in terms of customers' satisfaction, data privacy and cybersecurity.

This paper employs an innovative approach to create a mobile app “discriminatory” factor and examine the relationship between deposits and banks’ performance before and after the introduction of a mobile app for too-big-to-fail banks in Europe and the USA. Additionally, we consider the social risk component of the ESG score, as a bank’s decision to implement mobile applications and technology for its customers potentially affects social risks associated with customer satisfaction and technology usability.

The purpose of this article is to determine the regional economic factors and bank characteristics that significantly contribute to changes in bank liquidity. We also seek to identify regions that may be most susceptible to liquidity tightening.

For this article we use data on deposits from commercial banks, Federal Reserve survey data and indicators of regional and agricultural economic conditions. We specify a panel regression with fixed effects to model how liquidity at agricultural banks has changed and to identify the most significant drivers.

Our results suggest that small banks and banks with branch networks located in areas more concentrated in agricultural production bear the greatest risk of reduced liquidity.

Prior to the pandemic and more recently, lower deposit growth, combined with strong demand for agricultural loans, has led to reductions in liquidity at agricultural banks. Lower liquidity could reduce credit availability for farm borrowers and increase risks for banks that must rely on alternative sources of funding to meet loan demand.

Previous research has shown that exogenous shocks from other economic sectors, such as energy, can significantly affect bank liquidity, but research is limited on how agricultural bank liquidity is affected by downturns in the agricultural economy and other regional economic factors. Another contribution is this paper’s analysis of regional disparities in bank liquidity.

The purpose of microcredit is to offer small loans to people who are not covered by traditional financial channels. It can facilitate entrepreneurship, boosting local socio-economic development and improving environmental and political factors.

This paper aims to analyse microcredit in Italy, focusing on a project based in Rione Sanità, Naples. Rione Sanità is one of the poorest areas of Southern Italy, displaying high rates of criminality and unemployment, especially among youth, women, migrants and the vulnerable. The district is renowned for its fine and ancient handicrafts, food, trade and historical heritage – potential drivers for boosting tourism in the area. Qualitative methodologies were used to collect primary data through field visits and interviews with project bankers, local businesses, artisans, associations and religious representatives, project volunteers, as well as participation at local meetings. These data were corroborated by budget analysis based on the project's accounting.

The study shows encouraging results for the project and policy prospects. Despite the tiny starting numbers, there emerges a significant potential for microcredit to spread in the district, as in Southern Italy, providing an effective strategy to combat unemployment, usury and criminality, yielding community development and favoring broad societal challenges.

With this evidence, the paper attempts to shed some light and verify the potential of microfinance projects as a driver of sustainable development and ethical finance in poor areas of developed countries.

The objective of this research is to determine the influence of solvency and liquidity on the profitability [return on assets (ROA)] of Tunisian banks from Q2-2020 to Q3-2022 by considering asset quality as a moderating variable.

This study uses data on liquidity, solvency, ROA and asset quality for 12 banks. It also considers bank size, gross domestic product (GDP) growth and inflation as control variables. The methodology is based on panel data with generalized least squares (GLS) estimation to assess the moderate influence of the asset quality on solvency, liquidity and ROA. Also, the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation is used as a robustness test.

The results of the GLS model estimation indicated a negatively significant moderating correlation between the liquidity and the solvency. The data from the GMM model indicate that the liquidity variable predicted by the liquidity has a positively significant influence on a bank's ROA as well as for the solvency variable, which is predicted by the capital capacity. Therefore, we conclude that these two variables had a positively significant impact on the ROA.

The studies have many implications for banks and their management in addition to the industry regulators. The results of this study will enable political decision-makers to determine the banks' profits based on their liquidity and solvency.

This analysis provides financial explanations and recommendations for stakeholders in Tunisian banks. Furthermore, these banks must also be able to maintain their liquidity and solvency to ensure their profits in times of COVID-19.

The current study immerses in the realm of bank mergers among prominent PSBs in India, focusing on the financial performance of six recently merged PSBs entities. Amidst the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on economies, the study aims to uncover the efficiency of these PSBs in navigating this unprecedented crisis.

The evaluation encompasses panel data on an annual basis spanning from 2020 to 2023. To assess the overall efficiency of merged PSBs, the advanced statistical technique like one-step system generalized method of moments has been applied to estimate its efficiency.

The study findings affirm that PSB mergers have bolstered financial metrics and efficiency. Enhanced return on equity (ROA) and net profit margin (NPM) signify improved profitability and efficiency. The consolidation also facilitates better asset management and utilization. Moreover, merged entities benefit from economies of scale, cost efficiencies, risk diversification, technological investments, and overall performance improvements.

The study's policy suggestions stress ongoing consolidation efforts to boost banking sector resilience, advocating for improved efficiency, governance, and asset quality management. These steps are crucial for successful bank mergers and fostering a robust, competitive banking landscape in India.

This study is a novel attempt to analyze Indian bank profitability and efficiency post PSB mergers amid COVID-19 pandemic. In a developing country like India, especially in PSBs has experienced significant structural changes over the previous 7 years just before pandemic, such a study necessitates a prompt empirical investigation.

Whether environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors are a curse or a blessing in the run for performance is still a burning issue. This is all the more true for banks, as their call for action in ESG dimensions clashes with evidence of scandals. As a more aligned to reality view, we propose to regard the mistreatment of ESG issues, both theoretically and empirically, as an undesirable output of banks' everyday activity. Empirically, we question whether 128 leading banks worldwide neglected the minimisation of ESG controversies (ESGC) in pursuing traditional productive efficiency, over the timespan 2011–2021.

To our end, we use oriented distance functions according to the nonparametric efficiency approach of data envelopment analysis (DEA). This framework accounts for undesirable outputs.

Being inefficient in the ESGC domain is not a necessary evil to achieve productive efficiency. Instead, incurring in higher ESGC negatively affects productive efficiency, by causing future decrease of reputation and performance.

We propose a new paradigm of banks’ activity and related efficiency evaluation. In so doing, we favour a real dimension of banks’ engagement in ESG concerns.