Cyclicality of bank credit growth: Conventional vs Islamic banks in the GCC

Using a panel of 104 banks from the six Gulf Council Countries, we investigate the cyclicality of credit growth with regard to the discrepancies between Islamic banks and conventional banks. We found that Islamic banks are pro-cyclical and have higher credit growth compared to conventional banks. Indeed, the Profit and Loss Sharing (PLS) mechanism helps Islamic banks not to curb their credit growth during adverse economic conditions. We tested the role of the growth rate of market sentiment and found that positive market sentiment leads to higher bank credit growth. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of several bank-specific variables on bank credit growth and discuss to what extent diversification and the investment portfolio reshape the credit growth process.     

Do Islamic Banks Employ Less Earnings Management?

In this article, we examine whether Islamic banks are less likely to manage their earnings than non‐Islamic banks and how Islamic banks’ unique corporate governance system, especially Shari'ah Supervisory Boards, impacts earnings management behaviors within Islamic banks. Using a sample of Islamic banks and their matched non‐Islamic banks in 15 countries, we find that, first, Islamic banks are less likely to conduct earnings management as measured by both earnings loss avoidance and abnormal loan loss provisions. Second, there are no significantly different earnings management behaviors between Islamic banks with and without Shari'ah Supervisory Boards. Third, several Shari'ah Supervisory Board characteristics, such as size and the presence of members from Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions, are important determinants of the earnings management of Islamic banks who have Shari'ah Supervisory Boards.     

Cost and profit efficiency of conventional and Islamic banks in GCC countries

Using stochastic frontier approach, this paper investigates the cost and profit efficiency levels of 71 commercial banks in Gulf cooperation council countries over the period 1999–2007. This study also conducts a comparative analysis of the efficiency across countries and between conventional and Islamic banks. Moreover, we examine the bank-specific variables that may explain the sources of inefficiency. The empirical results indicate that banks in the Gulf region are relatively more efficient at generating profits than at controlling costs. We also find that in terms of both cost and profit efficiency levels, the conventional banks on average are more efficient than Islamic banks. Furthermore, we observe a positive correlation of cost and profit efficiency with bank capitalization and profitability, and a negative one with operation cost. Higher loan activity increases the profit efficiency of banks, but it has a negative impact on cost efficiency.     

Structural changes,competition and bank stability in Malaysia’s dual banking system

This paper assesses Malaysia’s competition landscape and its risk implications subsequent to conventional banking consolidation and Islamic banking penetration in the aftermath of the 1997/1998 Asian financial crisis. Employing a panel sample of conventional and Islamic commercial banks, it arrives at the following conclusions. First, the consolidation exercise, which has led to a significant reduction in the number of domestic commercial banks, has not stifled banking competition. Second, the paper provides empirical support for the competition-stability relationship, particularly for the conventional banking sector. Islamic banking sector risk appears to be neutral to market competition or market power, although there is limited evidence that it increases with overall market concentration. Finally, the analysis uncovers the risk-increasing effect of the Islamic banking market structure on the conventional banking sector. By contrast, conventional banking market concentration tends to reduce the credit risk of Islamic banks.     

Efficiency in Islamic and conventional banking: an international comparison

The paper investigates the efficiency of a sample of Islamic and conventional banks in 10 countries that operate Islamic banking for the period 1996–2002, using an output distance function approach. We obtain measures of efficiency after allowing for environmental influences such as country macroeconomic conditions, accessibility of banking services and bank type. While these factors are assumed to directly influence the shape of the technology, we assume that country dummies and bank size directly influence technical inefficiency. The parameter estimates highlight that during the sample period, Islamic banking appears to be associated with higher input usage. Furthermore, by allowing for bank size and international differences in the underlying inefficiency distributions, we are also able to demonstrate statistically significant differences in inefficiency related to these factors even after controlling for specific environmental characteristics and Islamic banking. Thus, for example, our results suggest that Sudan and Yemen have relatively higher inefficiency while Bahrain and Bangladesh have lower estimated inefficiency. Except for Sudan, where banks exhibits relatively strong returns to scale, most sample banks exhibit very slight returns to scale, although Islamic banks are found to have moderately higher returns to scale than conventional banks. While this suggests that Islamic banks may benefit from increased scale, we would emphasize that our results suggest that identifying and overcoming the factors that cause Islamic banks to have relatively low potential outputs for given input usage levels will be the key challenge for Islamic banking in the coming decades.     

ISLAMIC BANKING AND FINANCE: RECENT EMPIRICAL LITERATURE AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

This paper examines the recent empirical literature in Islamic banking and finance, highlights the main findings and provides a guide for future research. Early studies focus on the efficiency, production technology and general performance features of Islamic versus conventional banks, whereas more recent work looks at profit‐sharing and loss‐bearing behaviour, competition, risks as well as other dimensions such as small business lending and financial inclusion. Apart from key exceptions, the empirical literature suggests no major differences between Islamic and conventional banks in terms of their efficiency, competition and risk features (although small Islamic banks are found to be less risky than their conventional counterparts). There is some evidence that Islamic finance aids inclusion and financial sector development. Results from the empirical finance literature, dominated by studies that focus on the risk/return features of mutual funds, finds that Islamic funds perform as well, if not better, than conventional funds – there is little evidence that they perform worse than standard industry benchmarks.     

Favoring the small and the plenty: Islamic banking for MSMEs

While MSMEs form the backbone of many countries, most of them suffer from limited access to finance. We extend the literature by examining whether Islamic banks, compared to their conventional peers, favor more the MSMEs credit market segment in Turkey. We do this by considering various aspects of the lending behavior towards MSMEs (total lending, foreign currency lending, loan commitments, loan quality, and revenues) across different MSMEs size categories (micro, small and medium-sized firms). Our results show that once we control for bank-specific characteristics, we find that Islamic banks are more engaged with MSME financing and generate more revenues from servicing MSMEs. Concerning the quality of the MSME lending portfolio, no distinguishable patterns were observed between Islamic and conventional banks.     

市场势力对银行效率影响分析——来自我国商业银行的经验数据

运用我国14家上市和50家未上市商业银行2000~2009年的数据探讨商业银行市场势力对效率的影响。分别测量我国商业银行的市场势力、成本效率以及利润效率,结果发现与未上市商业银行相比,上市商业银行具有较高的市场势力和利润效率以及较低的成本效率。同时分别建立线性模型和非线性模型分析市场势力对效率的影响,结果发现在我国特殊金融环境下,商业银行市场势力与成本效率或利润效率之间均为线性关系;提高商业银行的市场势力,会导致其成本效率显著下降和利润效率显著提升;在所有显著的变量中,信用风险对成本效率和利润效率的影响都是最大的。     

What factor contributes to productivity growth of Chinese city banks: The role of regional difference

This study pays more attentions to investigate the performance of Chinese city banks, which can make up the blanks large banks left in the financing market, further improving local economic development. The study modifies the profit productivity indicator of Juo et al. (2015) under the short-run assumption to measure the profit productivity and its components. Our study finds that there exists a significant difference among banks by regions, and the eastern regional city banks have a best profit efficiency, but decline more than the others. The decomposed component, price effect, plays a most important role to explain the profit productivity change.     

Financial stability of Islamic banking and the global financial crisis: Evidence from the Gulf Cooperation Council

Using a sample of 76 banks from the Gulf Cooperation Council region, we use accounting- as well as market-based measures of financial stability to examine whether Islamic banks outperformed conventional banks in the time of financial shocks during the period 2000–2013. We find that the difference between the two banking types was initially not significant during the GFC. However, when the financial shock spread to the real economy during the later phases of the crisis, Islamic banks suffered a significantly higher level of financial instability than conventional banks. This result holds true for large banks but not for small Islamic banks. Small Islamic banks demonstrated a relatively better handling of the economic downturn than large Islamic banks, supporting the argument that Islamic banks are more stable when they operate at a small scale but lose this stability when they increase their scale of operations. Hence, while Islamic banks may have escaped the consequences of highly volatile financial instruments, they were not spared from a major shock in the real economic sectors.     

Explicit expressions to counterparty credit exposures for Forward and European Option

With the fast development of over the counter (OTC) derivatives market, counterparty credit risk (CCR) has become one of the main risks that can even affect the survival of banks. As a result, it is essential to measure and manage CCR exposures. Giant financial institutions apply numerical methods such as the Monte Carlo to calculate exposures. However, the numerical methods usually cost a significant amount of time, and some advanced algorithms like distributed and parallel processing are usually used to accelerate the calculation. Nevertheless, for small banks, they cannot afford the calculation cost. In order to make small banks manage CCR more efficiently, this paper puts forward analytic models to measure CCR exposures and derives the explicit expressions to exposures for Forward contract and European Option, which are represented in the OTC market. The explicit expressions to credit exposures for Forward contract are derived under the assumption that the underlying market risk factors follow Geometric Brown Motion. For European Option case, the problem turns to be difficult since the analytic formula involves double-definite integral of Gaussian function that cannot be simplified into elementary functions. An approximating normal distribution function with integrability is proposed, then the analytic approximations of European Call Option’s credit exposures and maximum errors are presented.     

What makes Islamic banks different? A multivariate approach

Using data from 8615 banks (including 123 Islamic banks) in 124 developed and developing countries for the period between 2006 and 2012, we examine the financial characteristics that distinguish between conventional and Islamic banks. As banks’ financial characteristics are multi-faceted concepts, our indicators are constructed using principal component analysis. We find that Islamic banks are more capitalized, more liquid and more profitable, but have more volatile earnings compared to US and European banks. However, similarities in terms of liquidity and earnings volatility are more noticeable when the sample is limited to banks operating in countries where both systems coexist. Finally, we find that higher capital makes the returns of Islamic banks more volatile, while higher liquidity decreases the profitability of conventional banks.     

中国银行业绩高增长背后的风险因素分析

本文首先用一个简单的垄断竞争模型分析了各种因素对银行业绩的影响,然后用面板回归分析模 型对具有代表性的14家银行进行了回归分析,揭示了银行利润与各种因素的关系。分析表明,规模扩张和利差是中国银行利润增长决定因素,不良贷款率和存贷比对银行利润有负面作用,但利率、法定准备金率等变量与利润的关系与静态理论的预测相反,表明货币政策操作往往是顺周期的,对货币政策的滞后效应估计不足,需要加强对经济周期规律性研究,提高货币政策的前瞻性。本文还分析了当前经济增长结构性减速、利率市场化给银行带来的可能影响,从道德风险、国内外利差和汇率波动角度分析了银行和宏观经济面临的风险。     

我国商业银行资本充足率的影响因素研究

本文以我国A股上市的6家商业银行2015~2018年的财务年度数据为研究样本,实证分析商业银行资本充足率的影响因素。结果表明:权益、贷款、利润、不良贷款率四个方面的增速都可促进资本充足率增速的提升;利润增速及不良贷款率增速与资本充足率增速呈现相反态势。各大商业银行可利用股票的增值发行、长期次级债券的发行,或通过整改完善自身资产结构、调节资产组合、避免不良贷款出现以及提升应对市场风险的能力等举措提升自身资本充足率。     

Corporate social responsibility and Islamic banks: a systematic literature review

Although CSR is an extensively studied topic, a systematic, comprehensive and diverse review in the domain of CSR and Islamic banking is missing. This paper intends to present a broad review of this domain. Through a state-of-the-art review, we have divided the paper into different sections, the first two are general i.e. CSR measurement, it deals with measuring methods of CSR in Islamic banking, and CSR theories, it gives a brief overview of theories referred in under-review studies. While, the other three sections are separated according to the nature of studies i.e. CSR narrative under the Islamic paradigm, CSR disclosure by Islamic banks, and CSR exposition in Islamic banks. At the end of each section, we have included a ‘commentary’ to discuss and summarize major points, highlight trends and issues, provide insights into limitations and suggest future research directions.

     

Diversity in the regulation of Islamic Financial Institutions

More than 200 Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs) are reported to have total combined assets in excess of US$ 200 billion with an annual growth rate estimated between 10 and 15%. The regulatory regime governing IFIs varies across countries. International organizations have been established to set standards that would strengthen and eventually harmonize prudential regulations as they apply to IFIs. The paper contributes to the discussion on the nature of the prudential standards to be developed. It clarifies risks IFIs are exposed to and the type of regulation that would help to manage them. It considers that the industry is still evolving with an anticipated convergence of the practice of Islamic financial intermediation with its conceptual foundations. Accordingly, the paper contrasts the risks and regulation that would be needed in the case of Islamic financial intermediation operating according to core principles and current practice. Implications for approaches to capital adequacy, licensing requirements and reliance on market discipline are outlined. The paper suggests an organization of the industry that would allow it to develop in compliance with its principles and prudent risk management and to facilitate its regulation.     

非标准资产业务监管加重了民营企业融资难吗?

为了整治金融机构监管套利、空转套利和关联套利等系列金融“乱象”,监管部门陆续出台了一系列措施,督促银行表外资产回表、非标资产转标。将非标业务监管政策的出台视为一次准自然实验,以2015年作为非标业务监管的起始年,采用倾向得分匹配双重差分法(PSM-DID)检验非标业务监管对民营企业融资困境的影响。研究结果显示,商业银行非标资产业务监管在一定程度上加大了民营企业的融资困境,且其冲击力度存在异质性,利润现金含量较低、采取激进型战略的民营企业,受到非标业务监管冲击的力度更大。进一步实证的结果显示,民营企业融资额与银行非标业务额之间存在倒U型的非线性关系。所得到的政策启示是,在制定宏观经济调控政策时,应预判监管政策产生的负向冲击力度,避免政策工具之间的冲突效应。     

A new approach to estimating a profit frontier using the censored stochastic frontier model

The translog profit functional form is widely used to study technical efficiency for banks. Although this functional form is known as being flexible, it is not applicable to those banks incurring economic losses. The recently developed approach, i.e., the censored stochastic frontier model (CSFM), by Tsay et al. (2013) appears to be superior to existing approaches, since CSFM does not need to transform negative profit into positive profit before taking the natural logarithm. The transformation with respect to the profit variable tends to bias the parameter estimates of the profit frontier and the subsequent profit efficiency measure. We show that the parameter estimates of CSFM have the desirable statistical properties. Moreover, empirical results reveal that the mean profit efficiency of CSFM is more robust than those models using transformed profits across the sub-periods 1991–1998 and 1999–2009.     

Market integration between conventional and Islamic stock prices

The paper assesses the market integration between conventional and Islamic stock prices from the long- and short-run perspectives for France, Indonesia, the UK and the US from September 8, 2008 to September 6, 2013 using various econometric approaches. The results show long-run relationships for all countries, except for the UK where there is no cointegration between conventional and Islamic stock prices. These findings suggest that the Islamic finance industry in the considered economies (except the UK) does not seem to be compliant to Islamic law's maxims, which hinders portfolio managers and market participants to benefit from the opportunities of international diversification and hedging effectiveness. From the correlation perspective, there is evidence of weak linkages between the Indonesian market and the developed markets for both conventional and Islamic stock prices, thus suggesting that investors can diversify their portfolios at the international level to minimize risk. However, there is high connection between the developed markets for both conventional and Islamic indexes. In addition, for each economy, the Islamic index is found to be strongly linked with its conventional counterpart. The structural change analysis reveals common break dates for several cross correlations, thus reflecting the similar time-paths of the interactions between markets. The presence of breaks in the inter-market linkages has important implications for international investors as regards portfolio diversification benefits and for financial policy makers regarding contagion risks and market policies.     

Technology Gap and Managerial Efficiency: A Comparison between Islamic and Conventional Banks in MENA

Journal of Productivity Analysis - In this paper, we compare the technology gap and managerial efficiency between Islamic banks and conventional banks in 15 MENA countries. Using unbalanced panel...