Changjun Zheng

Shareholder Protection, Creditor Rights and Bank Dividend Policies

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of legal protection of bank minority shareholders (noncontrolling shareholders) and bank creditors (e.g. depositors or debt-holders) on bank dividend payout policies using a panel data set of 5,918 banks from 52 countries over the period 1998-2007, after controlling for country-level deposit insurance coverage and bank- and country-level regulatory pressures. Design/methodology/approach - – Tobit panel regression models are used to examine the impact of legal protection of shareholders and creditors on bank dividend payout amounts. And, logit panel regression models are used to examine the impact of legal protection of shareholders and creditors on banks’ likelihood to pay dividends. Findings - – The authors support the outcome hypothesis by finding that banks pay higher amount of dividends and, are more likely to pay dividends in strong minority shareholder protection countries. However, the authors reject the substitute hypothesis by finding that banks pay higher dividends and are more likely to pay dividends in weak creditor rights countries, and banks do not substitute weak creditor rights with lower dividend payout amounts. Contrary, the authors support the literature which argues the importance of creditor rights for capital market development because one possible reason for low dividend payouts in strong creditor rights countries could be that the banks retain more profits for extending more loans. Practical implications - – By finding that creditor rights index has a negative relation with bank dividend policies in contrast to its positive relation with nonfinancial firms’ dividend policies, the authors support the literature which argues that managers of banks give less importance to factors such as current degree of financial leverage, the contractual constraints such as dividend restrictions in debt contracts, and the financing considerations such as the cost of raising external funds, while deciding about the dividend payments. The authors also suggest to keep financial and nonfinancial firms separate, to better understand the dividend puzzle. Originality/value - – Extant literature recognizes that legal institutions such as shareholder protection and creditor rights affect corporate firms’ dividend policies significantly but largely excludes banking sector. This paper, by examining the relations between legal protection of shareholders and creditors and bank dividend policies, fills this research gap.

Do market competition and development indicators matter for banks’ risk, capital, and efficiency relationship?

This study investigates the effect of market competition and development indicators on bank risk-taking behavior, capital regulation, and efficiency of banks in Asian emerging economies in light of their recent financial liberalization. Using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) for measuring cost and profit inefficiency and regressed simultaneous equations by following the approach of generalized methods of the moment (GMM) the study covers a sample of 191 banks for the period between 2000 and 2014 in three Asian emerging economies such as Bangladesh, China, and India. The robust empirical results of GMM panel estimator reveal three core findings: first, intense competition of Asian banks has a positive association with risk-taking but has a negative correlation with regulatory capital and inefficiency. Second, it provides evidence that in economic progression, sample banks having a strong tendency of taking the risk. But no significant relationship found between GDP growth and capital, and GDP growth and inefficiency. This paper thus provides compelling insights to the policy makers and bank managers in setting appropriate strategy for a financial institution in the region.

Banks’ capital regulation and risk: Does bank vary in size? Empirical evidence from Bangladesh

This paper primarily examines both causality effect of banks’ capital regulation and risk-taking behavior based on generalized methods of moment (GMM) for a dynamic unbalanced panel observation of 32 commercial banks in Bangladesh over the period 2000–2014. The empirical findings of this study suggest that capital regulation has a significant effect on risk-taking behavior, and excessive risks impede the growth of capital ratio as well as the stability. Moreover, from bank-level data, size does not uniformly affect the quantity of capital and risk. Large banks have poor capital ratio and higher inclination to risk than small size counterpart. Small size banks are well managed in capital ratio and risk-taking that glitter their stability through the periods. Besides these effects, corporate governance notably influenced banks to reduce credit risk and enhance stability. Finally, this paper provides some implications for the think tanks and stakeholders of the country.