In this article, we analyze the key factors that determine the net interest margin (NIM) of EU commercial banks in the current economic environment. We examine a large number of annual data samples of 252 commercial banks in EU member states from 2015 to 2020. During this period, most countries experienced extremely low or even negative interest rates. In this article we test three hypotheses. First, commercial banks committed to providing financial products and services show the highest net interest margin (NIM). Second, the net interest margin of small commercial banks has dropped significantly under conditions of negative interest rate. Third, the net interest margin of Western European countries has dropped significantly under conditions of negative interest rate. Similar to other studies, we have obtained the positive-concave relationship between interest rates and NIM, and the regression coefficients of other bank-related variables and macroeconomic variables have also achieved similar results. Compared with other studies, we innovatively consider the impact of countries with different economic levels on the net present value of commercial banks. Finally, we comprehensively regress the results and conclude what development strategies commercial banks should use in the current economic...

This paper investigates the impact of income inequality on grand total crime, larceny and violent crime by using the dynamic panel data of 20 cities and counties in Taiwan during 1998 to 2010. The empirical results show that income inequality has a significant positive impact on grand total crime, larceny and violent crime, but unemployment rate and the proportion of the population between 15 and 64 years old both have no significant influence on three kinds of crimes. Moreover the effect of the other explanatory variables is significant on at least one kind of crimes. The empirical results also support that the criminal expected utility theory, social anomic, disorganization, conflict and strain theories are helpful to explain the criminal behavior of Taiwan.

No / This paper examines how risk-taking is affected by non-compliance with a ‘comply or explain’ based system of corporate governance. Using System Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) estimates to control for various types of endogeneity, the results of this study show that non-compliance with the UK Corporate Governance Code is positively associated with total, systematic, and idiosyncratic risk. However, profitability moderates the impact of non-compliance on firms' risk-taking. The findings of this study further reveal that the impact of non-compliance with various provisions of the UK Corporate Governance Code is not uniform. That is, non-compliance with board independence provisions is associated with higher risk-taking. However, non-compliance with committees' chair independence is associated with lower risk-taking. These findings have implications for investors, policy makers, and corporations regarding the usefulness of compliance with a prescribed code of corporate governance.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-08T14:44:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1952283 bytes, checksum: 5a9f80c58d2a69a976645012d5d1ff8e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-02-14 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / This paper aims to explain the theme of public spending and its relationship with economic growth, bringing a literature review national, international and an analysis of the influence of certain expenditures by function on economic growth in municipalities from Paraiba. Such expenses would be with: Assistance and Social Welfare, Health and Sanitation, Education and Culture, Public Safety, Housing and Urban Development, Legislative, Administration and Planning. For this analysis, we used panel data from a sample of 212 of the 223 municipalities from Paraíba between 2000 and 2008, a dynamic approach by Generalized Method of Moments-System (System-GMM) proposed by Arellano and Bond (1991), Arellano and Bover (1995) and developed by Blundell and Bond (1998). And as a theoretical model, we adopted an extension of the production function of Barro (1990). The proxy for the stock of physical capital is the consumption of electricity for industrial and commercial city of Paraiba, whereas the stock of human capital was created by counting the number of people with eight years of study, plus the flow of conclusive primary education by municipality and also the number of people aged 12 or more of study, along with the flow conclusive school each year by the municipality from Paraíba. To achieve the proposed objective, the study tried to find out what is the relationship between public spending and economic growth of municipalities from Paraíba. Overall, the results corroborate the literature, the point at which government spending influence the product formation and public investment in physical capital and human capital can raise the productivity of the economy. The results show that only the capital human measured by elementary school, was also relevant for the growth of municipalities from Paraíba and the impact is greater than this physical capital. Spending on Public Safety, Welfare and Pension Plan, Planning and Administration and bear no relation to the product. Legislative expenses had the highest elasticity product, while spending on Education and Culture, Health and Sanitation, and Housing and Urban Development have low elasticity products, thus influencing modest economic growth. / O presente trabalho tem o intuito de explanar o tema dos gastos públicos e sua relação com o crescimento econômico, trazendo uma revisão da literatura nacional, da internacional e uma análise da influência de algumas despesas por função sobre o crescimento econômico nos municípios paraibanos. Tais despesas seriam com: Assistência e Previdência Social, Saúde e Saneamento, Educação e Cultura, Segurança Pública, Urbanismo e Habitação, Legislativo, Administração e Planejamento. Para essa análise, foram utilizados dados em painel de uma amostra de 212 dos 223 municípios paraibanos no período de 2000 a 2008, em uma abordagem dinâmica por Método dos Momentos Generalizado-Sistema (System-GMM), proposto por Arellano e Bond (1991), Arellano e Bover (1995) e desenvolvido por Blundell e Bond (1998). E como modelo teórico, adotou-se uma extensão da função de produção de Barro (1990). A proxy utilizada para o estoque de capital físico é o consumo de energia elétrica industrial e comercial por município paraibano; já o estoque de capital humano foi criado a partir da contagem do número de pessoas com 8 anos de estudo, somado ao fluxo de concludentes do ensino fundamental por município, também, o número de pessoas com 12 anos ou mais de estudo, somado ao fluxo de concludentes do ensino médio a cada ano, por município paraibano. Para a consecução do objetivo proposto, no presente trabalho tentou-se encontrar para os municípios paraibanos, qual a relação entre as despesas públicas e o seu crescimento econômico (PIB per capita municipal). Em termos gerais, os resultados corroboram com a literatura, no ponto em que os gastos públicos influenciam na formação do produto, e investimentos públicos em Capital Físico e Capital Humano podem elevar a produtividade da economia. Os resultados mostram que, apenas o Capital Humano, medido pelo ensino fundamental, se mostrou relevante para o crescimento dos municípios paraibanos e que o impacto deste é maior do que o Capital Físico. Os gastos com Segurança Pública, Assistência e Previdência, e Administração e Planejamento não apresentam relação com o produto. As despesas com Legislativo apresentaram a maior elasticidade-produto, enquanto que os gastos com Educação e Cultura, Saúde e Saneamento, e Habitação e Urbanismo têm baixa elasticidade-produto, influenciando de forma modesta o crescimento econômico.

La littérature sur la relation entre le développement financier et la croissance est très vaste et ancienne. Selon la théorie économique, le développement de l'intermédiation est favorable à la croissance économique car l'activité des banques accroît la mobilisation de l'épargne, améliore l'efficacité de l'allocation des ressources, et stimule l'innovation technologique. Cependant, certaines expériences de politiques visant à libéraliser les systèmes financiers des contraintes qui les empêchent de se développer et de contribuer à la croissance, se sont soldées par des échecs, ce qui a conduit à jeter un certain doute sur la généralité de la relation entre développement financier et développement économique. Ce doute a persisté avec les nombreuses études appliquées. Si la plupart des études (y compris les plus récentes) ont pu mettre en lumière, conformément aux prédictions théoriques, une relation positive entre le développement financier et la croissance (par exemple, Levine, Loayza et Beck, 2000), d'autres études (Andersen et Tarp (2003) par exemple) ont suggéré que la relation entre le développement financier pourrait être moins générale que ne le pense la littérature traditionnelle et ont souligné notamment que les résultats des études économétriques varient en fonction de l'échantillon et de la période considérée.<br />Dans cette thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés aux raisons pouvant expliquer les résultats ambigus des études appliquées sur le lien entre le développement financier et la croissance. En premier lieu, nous considérons que le développement financier risque d'être simultanément une source d'instabilité financière de telle sorte que l'effet bénéfique du développement financier sur la croissance soit amoindri ; il nous paraît donc indispensable de prendre en compte ce lien entre le développement financier et l'instabilité financière pour pouvoir véritablement apprécier la contribution du développement financier à la croissance. En second lieu, nous considérons l'existence d'effets de seuil dans la relation entre le développement financier et la croissance. En effet, il se peut qu'il existe un seuil minimum de développement économique en dessous duquel le développement financier n'a pas d'impact significatif sur la croissance, principalement à cause de la faiblesse de l'épargne et de la rentabilité des investissements. Par ailleurs, étant donné que la littérature économique s'est beaucoup consacrée à la relation entre le développement financier et la croissance, et très peu à la relation entre le développement financier et la réduction de la pauvreté, nous nous sommes également intéressés à l'impact spécifique que le développement financier peut avoir sur la réduction de la pauvreté au-delà de son effet indirect qui passe par la croissance.<br />L'analyse économétrique effectuée sur un panel de pays en développement avec des données quinquennales sur la période 1966-2000 nous a permis de mettre en évidence une relation positive entre le niveau de développement financier et celui de l'instabilité financière ; en particulier, l'instabilité du niveau de développement financier et l'occurrence de crises bancaires s'accroissent avec le développement du système financier. Les résultats montrent également que l'instabilité financière a un effet négatif sur la croissance économique et qu'elle réduit l'impact favorable du développement financier sur la croissance sans toutefois l'annuler. Par ailleurs, il ressort de notre analyse que pour les pays dont le niveau de PIB par tête est inférieur à un seuil de 2560 dollars, le développement financier ne semble pas avoir d'impact significatif sur la croissance. L'existence des effets de seuil et la prise en compte de l'instabilité financière dans la relation entre le développement financier et la croissance constituent des hypothèses complémentaires permettant d'expliquer les résultats ambigus des études appliquées sur le lien entre le développement financier et la croissance. Enfin, notre analyse montre également qu'en plus de son effet à travers la croissance, le développement financier favorise la réduction de la pauvreté principalement grâce à l'effet de conduit du capital de McKinnon (1973), l'accès aux dépôts profitent plus aux pauvres que l'accès aux crédits.

This paper discusses capital structure theories, with special attention to partial-adjustment model. Strategic waiting theory of IPO firms and its relation to market timing theory are also discussed. Two empirical tests related to capital structure theory are included. First one is a test on the relation between a firm’s strategic waiting behavior in IPO market and its stock return. Second one is on the relation of a firm’s strategic waiting behavior in IPO market and its subsequent capital structure decision.

Air pollution (in terms of PM2.5) is severe in developing countries, and the rapid population growth accompanied by urbanization may limit their potential economic development. This paper aims to investigate if urbanization and economic freedom cause higher levels of PM2.5 in developing countries. By measuring the potential effect of economic freedom on PM2.5 with the Ease of Doing Business-score by the World Bank, a new measure is introduced to the research on socioeconomic factors’ influence on air pollution. It is done by running both fixed effects- and system GMM regressions on a panel consisting of 63 low- and lower-middle-income economies between 2010-2017. The results indicate that PM2.5 is insensitive to changes in both variables and that urbanization’s effect on PM2.5 depends on the level of economic freedom and vice versa. However, both estimators may suffer from bias, and thus, the real relationship of urbanization and economic freedom on PM2.5 remains uncertain.

The significant change of the banking business models is easily observable in the current banking industry. Banks are forced to find additional source of income besides the one from traditional activities and thus the non-interest income is growing in importance. One of the reasons behind is that the banks need to recover from severe impacts of financial crisis in 2008-2010 and they want to adapt to the environment of low interest rates which has been occurring in the market since 2011. In this thesis, we analyze the presence of direct effect of non-interest income (proxied by fee income) on banks' performance using data of 220 commercial and investment banks from U.S. and EU-28 countries over the period of 2007-2014. Using System Generalized Methods of Moment, the direct effect was not detected. However, we conclude that economy with low inflation rate and growing gross domestic product improves the banks' profitability, as well as high capitalization and operating and credit quality efficiency. Furthermore, we found out that the volatility of the non-interest income has increased earlier than the crisis in 2008-2010 and it has been achieving almost continuous level till 2011 when it started decreasing again. Thus the hypothesis about relationship between volatility and financial crisis was rejected.

This thesis deals with both theoretical and practical aspects of banking fee and commission income in the European Union. Since fee income represents the largest part of non-interest income earned by banks, it remains a major challenge for bank management to set and maintain an appropriate fee policy. Nevertheless, solving for the optimal fee structure has not yet been accomplished either on a theoretical level, or in actual practice. In the thesis, we analyse fee income in EU banking sectors. Our results show that the Czech banking sector was not abnormally dependent on fee income compared to other EU countries in the period 2007-2012. As a result, we argue that the high profitability of Czech banks cannot be attributed to abnormal banking fees and commission income, but rather other factors should be considered. Moreover, we study the determinants of fee income share in individual banks and discuss the impact of market concentration on the magnitude of banking fees. We conclude that banks facing higher competition tend to expand more aggressively into non- traditional activities and therefore they report higher fee income shares. We also study the relationship between banking fees and banks' performance. The results are mixed depending on applied profitability measure, but in general, banks with...

This thesis is interested in relative performance of highly criticized Czech credit unions. Theoretical part comments on their historical development, makes international comparison and shows possible development of legislation. We created two unique datasets to assess financial performance of Czech credit unions in subsequent empirical part. The first one contains Czech credit unions' and commercial banks' data. The second one is established to make a comparison of Czech credit unions with cooperative banks operating elsewhere in the EU. Both are based on annual data between 2007 and 2012 period. System GMM method is employed as main instrument of our empirical analysis and alternative panel data methods are used as supplementary techniques. We focused our analysis on comparison of relative profitability and stability measures of Czech credit unions. The results revealed their poor performance in the given time period. According to our estimates, they resembled rather small commercial banks than cooperative ones. The negative relationship between Czech credit unions' stability measure (Z-score) and their asset size is especially striking. Moreover, Z- score of Czech credit unions decreased sharply in 2012. Such development was observed neither in case of Czech commercial banks nor in other...