Is the MENA banking sector competitive?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the competitive conditions and revenue drivers of commercial banks in the MENA region in the context of Panzar–Rosse model. It is the first study of its kind that examines a large sample of MENA banks for an extensive period (1999–2012) during an era of political and economic unrest and transformation that includes the the global financial crisis (2007–2009). Panel data analysis using fixed effects was employed in order to examine whether the competitive conditions in MENA banks is explained by monopoly, monopolistic competition or perfect competition. Findings show that MENA banks operate under monopolistic competition, and bank-specific variables show a positive impact on revenue. These findings indicate that policymakers should relax capital adequacy requirements to guarantee the stability of the financial system. They also raise a concern that commercial banks in the MENA economies tend to concentrate on traditional lending activities, where their competitive position may be eroded in the long run by the decreasing state role of Islamic banks and by mergers that are not empirically justified for MENA banks during this period

Foreign Capital Inflows and Stock Market Development in Turkey

17th Annual Conference on Finance and Accounting -- 42517 -- Prague, CZECH REPUBLICWOS: 000416113500007Cross-country capital flows have increased substantially due to accelerating globalization as of 1990s, and these increases have important economic implications for all the countries. This study investigates the causal relationship among foreign capital inflows including foreign direct investment, foreign portfolio flows, remittances, and stock market development in Turkey during the period January 1992-December 2015 using Hacker and Hatemi-J (Appl Econ 38 (13): 1489-1500, 2006) bootstrap causality test. We found that there was unidirectional causality from foreign direct investment inflows to stock market development and unidirectional causality from stock market development to foreign portfolio investments

The drivers of dividend policies in Europe

the chapter studies which dividend policies theories drive the distribution of dividends for listed companies traded on the main European markets. Many drivers of companies' dividend policies are still present while the agency cost theory does not explain European dividend policy. In this chapter, they provide evidence that pecking order theory, signalling theory and bird-in-the-hand theory complementarily explain dividends' payments

Roles played by financial development in economic growth: application of the flexible regression model

Banking development, Economic growth, Stock market development, Flexible nonlinear estimation, E44, G10, O16, O50,