Capital Adequacy Ratios, Efficiency and Governance: a Comparison Between Islamic and Western Banks

The profit and loss sharing principle that is peculiar to Islamic finance reformulates the allocation of risk between stakeholders. Since in Islamic banks depositors are closer to stockholders in terms of residual claiming on profits, the relationship between capitalization and efficiency should in principle be weaker than in their Western counterparts. Results, obtained by means of a stochastic cost frontier analysis on samples of European-15 and Islamic banks during the period 1996-2002, show that the ratio of equity to deposits negatively affects inefficiency in both types of banks, but this effect is considerably undersized in Islamic banks as compared to European ones. This supports the reluctance that has accompained the proposal of capital adequacy ratios for Islamic banks in accordance to Basel Agreements.