Bank regulation and efficiency: Evidence from transition countries

Given the nascent nature of banking sectors in transition countries and their unique institutional settings, this paper documents the effects of regulation on the efficiency of banks using system GMM and dynamic panel quantile regressions for 21 transition countries for the period 2002-2014. Within the system GMM estimation the paper finds bank activity restrictions to be the only regulation improving banking efficiency in these countries. However, the dynamic panel quantile results show that the regulation has different effects at different quantiles. This study provides important policy implications related to banking regulation in transition economies

The Impact of the Corporate Governance Code on Earnings Management - Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

This study investigates the impact of the 2002 Chinese Code of Corporate Governance for Listed Companies on earnings manipulations. We find that, in general, the 2002 CODE had a positive effect on curbing earnings management through the introduction of independent non-executive directors to the board of directors and the audit committee, and accounting/financial experts to the audit committee. Although such an impact was minimal when the firms were state-controlled, it became significant once they were privately controlled. Overall, we find regulatory reform on corporate governance plays an important role in deterring the use of earnings management

Energy-GDP relationship for oil-exporting countries: Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia

The purpose of this paper is to examine the causality issue between energy consumption and economic growth for three typical oil-exporting countries: Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We use two different test methods to test for causality, namely, the error correction model and Toda-Yamamoto (1995) procedure. The results based on both approaches consistently show a unidirectional long-run causality from economic growth to energy consumption for Iran and Kuwait and unidirectional strong causality from energy consumption to economic growth for Saudi Arabia. So, the results support the neutrality hypothesis of energy consumption with respect to economic growth for Iran and Kuwait and vice versa for Saudi Arabia. The findings have practical policy implications for decision makers in the area of macroeconomic planning, as energy conservation is a feasible policy with no damaging repercussions on economic growth for Iran and Kuwait. However, increased GDP requires enormous energy consumption in Saudi Arabia. So, it seems misleading to recommend the same policy for different oil-exporting countries. Copyright 2007 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.