Economic Notes最新文献

The coronavirus disease 2019 has severely affected the financially constrained small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In response, various countries employed several policies to support SMEs. Using rich firm-level data from 34 countries, we study the impact of the pandemic-led crisis on cash-strapped SMEs and the role of governments in offsetting losses. Our results suggest that (i) government support programmes target mostly financially constrained firms; (ii) firms adjustments to the pandemic are associated with the likelihood of government support; (iii) financially constrained firms are more likely to lay off workers; and (iv) financially constrained firms layoff more male employees than female employees.

We investigate the impact of abnormal credit expansion and contraction on the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (CGDP) of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) countries. We analyse abnormal credit from two dimensions: first, the impact of abnormal credit contraction on CGDP and, second, the impact of abnormal credit expansion on CGDP. Using data for 10 ECOWAS countries from 1993 to 2021, we find evidence that abnormal credit contraction reduces the CGDP of ECOWAS countries. We also find some evidence that abnormal credit expansion reduces the CGDP of ECOWAS countries. More specifically, a unit increase in abnormal credit contraction decreases CGDP by 0.99%, whereas a unit increase in abnormal credit expansion decreases CGDP by only 0.1%. The findings confirm that ‘too little’ or ‘too much’ credit does not improve growth per person in immature financial systems. We also observe that banking sector solvency and a strong legal system have a positive effect on the CGDP of ECOWAS countries, while banking sector efficiency has a negative effect on CGDP.

This study examines the determinants of cooperative banks' diversification proclivity, with consideration of the spatial dependence effect. The empirical analysis demonstrates that Italian cooperative banks operate as a network with significant spillover effects that should not be ignored. Indeed, local banks compete in the same market segment, and any shift in their diversification strategy has a cascading effect on neighbouring cooperative banks as a result of customer migration. Finally, we observe that an increase in bank market power results in a decline in local bank lending activity.

This study econometrically tests the ‘substitution’ versus ‘outcome’ hypotheses by examining the impact of board governance on the dividend payout policy in the Indian banking industry. The analysis is confined to the period from 2005 to 2018. The results reveal a significant positive influence of overall board quality on the magnitude of payouts, supporting the ‘outcome hypothesis’. At the disaggregated level, independent directors, female directors, chief executive officer duality, and board meetings significantly influence the dividend policy of Indian banks. Our further investigation of the board-dividend nexus at the ownership level shows that this complement relation is only visible in private banks (PBs). While the ‘substitution hypothesis’ holds in public sector banks (PSBs). The results suggest that good governed PBs use dividends as a complementary measure of monitoring mechanism. In contrast, governed boards of PSBs take conservative financial decisions and declare a low dividend. The findings are robust at disaggregate level, corroborating our main findings and additional analyses, including propensity score matching depicting that our conclusions are not beset by endogeneity or selection bias.