Banking consolidation is a global trend, but in Taiwan, after the failure of the Second Financial Reform, it does not have a clear policy for bank mergers. This paper investigates whether mergers influence the cost efficiency of banks in Taiwan, and our results suggest that the government should...

Microfinance promises to trim down poverty. To achieve this noble objective microfinance institutions (MFIs) have to become steady profitable because donor constancy is not a given. Thus important question is: what factors drive the financial sustainability of MFIs? Using data on 217 MFIs in 101...

This study is an attempt to develop a conceptual decision dynamics model in order to analyze the relationship between cost control and corporate governance. The model discusses why it is important to uphold the shareholders' interests and minimize the destructive events that usually occur in...

Illiquidity is at the core of the various currency and banking/financial crises of the 1990s. In the wake of the Asian crisis of 1997/98 the term ìsystemic liquidityî has been coined to refer to adequate arrangements and practices which permit efficient liquidity management and which provide a...

Falling government and donor funding, which has traditionally supported microfinance, is followed by an expansion of financially self-sustainable Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). This development has raised the concern as to whether the social goals of traditional microfinance would be equally...

The cross-country empirical literature on the finance-growth relationship has debated three propositions. These are (i) Financial deepening has a strong impact on the growth process (ii) Measures of financial “activity” rather than the “size” of the sector plays a more significant role...

In the last few years, there has been an extensive debate as to whether ownership matters for bank performance in less developed countries. This paper investigates whether privately-owned banks outperform state-owned banks and whether foreign ownership enhances bank performance. Based on a range...

In many small developing countries, the benefits of capital market development are not realized, as banks dominate and stock markets struggle to establish a firm footing in the economy, remaining relatively illiquid and volatile. This paper examines the determinants of stock market volatility in...

Since the process of economic reform began in China, the Chinese banking system has grown impressively. The aim of this paper is therefore to examine the differences in operational efficiency between China's state-owned commercial banks (SCBs) and shareholding commercial banks using pooled...

The present study pertains to unravelling the internal (bank specific) and external (macroeconomic) determinants of nonperforming loans in Mauritius using annual report data from a panel of 10 existing banks and macroeconomic data for the period 2000 to 2012. The model used in the present...