Market structure, institutional quality and bank capital ratios: evidence from developing countries
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Date
2021
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Emerald Publishing Limited
Abstract
This paper investigates the role of market structure and institutional quality in determining bank
capital ratios in developing economies. The generalized methods of moment technique is used to control for
auto-correlation and endogeneity in a sample of 79 publicly listed commercial banks. The study period is
between 2000 and 2016. Results show that market structure (proxied with bank competition) as well as institutional quality (regulatory quality) lowers bank capital in the sampled banks. This suggests that banks operating in less
competitive markets with good regulatory quality do not need to engage in excessive risk-taking activities that
would necessitate holding increased level of capital. Furthermore, the interaction of competition and regulatory
quality reinforces the main findings, suggesting the importance of the two variables in determining bank
capital ratio. Research has limitation in that the study investigated publicly listed commercial banks, the findings may not be applicable to non-listed banks. Taking into cognizance the developing nature of the banking system in Africa, the
findings from this study imply that the maintenance of an improved regulatory quality in an environment
where healthy competition exists would encourage banks to hold capital ratios appropriate for their level of
banking activities, that is, the banks would not engage in excessive risk-taking activities.
Description
Keywords
Bank capital, Competition, Concentration, Endogeneity, Regulatory quality, Africa