Several democracies, such as Italy, Spain, France, the United Kingdom and the United States, have observed relatively higher number of deaths from COVID-19, raising the concern about the effectiveness of democratic political institutions in dealing with the public health crisis the scale of...

In this paper, we examine the stock markets' response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using daily COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths and stock market returns data from 64 countries over the period January 22, 2020 to April 17, 2020, we find that stock markets responded negatively to the growth in...

Uncertainty about government economic policies (GEPU) leads economic agents to act cautiously. In this paper, we postulate that such GEPU leads banks to hoard higher amount of liquid assets as a precautionary motive. Using bank-level data from 21 countries over the period 1998-2018, we find that...

This paper examines whether the risk-taking behavior of foreign affiliates of multinational banks is more influenced by the national culture of their parent banks' home country or the national culture of foreign affiliates' host country. The study uses a dataset of 292 foreign affiliates (i.e.,...

The theory of political benefits argues that politicians use state-owned banks for political purposes such as obtaining and maintaining political support. While the theory of social welfare goal argues that state-owned banks exist to counter market failures and finance socially important...

This paper examines the impact of political institutions on bank risk-taking behavior. Using an international sample of banks from 98 countries over the period 1998-2007, I document that sound political institutions stimulate higher bank risk-taking. This is consistent with the hypotheses that...

This paper is a contribution to ‘interest groups theory of financial development' based debate that trade- and capital-openness are helpful for financial development. We extend this debate by examining the impact of trade- and capital-openness on net interest margins (rents), gross loan ratios...

Using news-based government economic policy uncertainty (EPU) index of Baker et al. (2016) and bank-level data from 17 countries over the period 1998-2012, we find that government economic policy uncertainty has significant positive association with interest rates on bank gross loans....

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic came as a rare, unprecedented event and governments around the globe scrambled with emergency actions including social distancing measures, public awareness programs, testing and quarantining policies, and income support packages. In this paper, we examine the...

Theory suggests that national culture influences bank risk-taking behavior directly by conditioning the decision-making of human participants. This study uses an international sample of banks from 75 countries and examines the direct effects of national culture on bank risk-taking behavior. We...