• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권9호
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• pp.105-115
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• 2020

The study empirically examines the effects of loan portfolio diversification on bank risk and return in the nascent banking market of Vietnam. Loan portfolio diversification is captured through the Hirschman-Herfindahl index and the Shannon Entropy with sectoral exposures. We access each bank's financial reports to collect the required data, especially the breakdown of sectoral loan portfolios, thus constituting a unique dataset. To compute bank return, we use the traditional accounting indicators, including return-on-assets, return-on-equity, and net-interest margin. For bank risk, we utilize the loan-loss provisions and non-performing loans relative to gross customer loans. Using a sample of 30 commercial banks over the period from 2008 to 2019 and the system generalized method of moments estimator for the dynamic panel, we indicate the downsides of portfolio diversification. Concretely, we observe that all diversification measures exhibit significantly negative signs in all regressions across different bank return proxies. At the same time, the estimates display the significant and positive impact of diversification on the non-performing loan ratio. Hence, sectoral loan portfolio diversification significantly hampers bank performance in both aspects of lower return and higher credit risk. The results are robust across a rich set of bank performance and portfolio diversification measures.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권7호
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• pp.519-529
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• 2020

Livelihood capitals have a clear influence on livelihood development. As for the livelihood results, it has been pointed out in the analysis of the poor households that the ability of people to escape poverty depends especially on the access to livelihood capitals. This study aims to analyze the impacts of livelihood capital on poverty among mountain people who depend on forests through human capital, social capital, natural capital, physical capital and financial capital. This research employs the model of binary regression function. Independent variables x1, x2, …, xn are targets of livelihood strategy, vulnerability context, and livelihood capitals. These variables were selected to be included in the original model with dependent variable Y as poor and non-poor households. This study surveys households living in upland areas, near forests, and households of ethnic minorities. The results show that,out of the poor household rate, nearly 4% are newly-poor households or those falling back into poverty. Therefore, the government needs to pay more attention to this disadvantaged group and implements policies such as education and training policies, credit support policies, policies to support forest development, and payment for forest environmental services in the context of emerging countries like Vietnam.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권10호
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• pp.239-247
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• 2021

Central Bank authorities should carefully manage inflation rate uncertainties to achieve economic growth and development not only in the short-run but also in the long-run. Since inflation is a key macroeconomic variable, an increased understanding about its behavior is undoubtedly important. Thus, paper employs unit root with breakpoints to examine the mean reverting behavior of inflation rate in the Philippines using monthly data from 2002 to 2020. Empirically, the unit root breakpoint innovational and additive outlier tests favor the stationarity or mean reverting behavior of inflation in the Philippines. Also, results of standard unit root tests, ADF, PP, GLS-Dickey-Fuller, KPSS and NP, provide strong evidence of mean reverting processes. The mean reverting behavior of inflation rate reveals that the monetary policy using inflation targeting framework has succeeded in reducing chronic inflation persistence in the Philippines. Thus, this research supports inflation targeting policy that aims to maintain general price level stability for the Philippine economy's long-term growth and development prospects. The findings of this research remain important for the central bankers for not only providing them better understanding about the behavior of inflation rate, but also helping them formulate and implement policy reforms related to money, credit and banking.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권9호
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• pp.177-187
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• 2021

The purpose of the research to evaluate the efficiency and productivity growth rate of some Vietnamese commercial banks in the period 2008-2020. Using input and output selection theory, the author selected 2 models, estimating the efficiency for model 1 and estimating the yield change for both the models. We have built a model to estimate the efficiency and calculate as well as decompose the productivity growth of Vietnamese commercial banks during the period of active mergers and acquisitions activities in the banking system. Based on the results of the efficiency estimation, TFP shows during mergers and acquisitions, efficiency fluctuates but in an inverted U-shape (increasing from 2008-2011 but decreasing from 2013 to 2020). The estimated results of the impact assessment model show that FDI reduces the efficiency of banks. Productivity analysis shows that 6 out of 23 banks in the study period had positive TFP growth (tfpch > 1) due to technical progress and management efficiency. The findings of this study suggest that Vietnam's commercial banking system has many opportunities to improve operational efficiency in many aspects. In which, there are opportunities to increase credit, improve governance as well as improve the technology level of each bank. In addition, along with traditional products such as deposits and loans, diversification with a wide range of products and services is an important factor to enhance customer experience and demand in commercial banks.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.841-850
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• 2021

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between bank capital, efficiency, and risk in Islamic banks. We use data from 129 Islamic banks in the world, retrieved from various data sources. We retrieved specific banking data from Moody's Analytics BankFocus and Thomson Reuters Eikon, while data at the country level was obtained from the World Bank website. This study uses various estimates both Pooled OLS (Ordinary Least Square) and Random Effect (RE). However, to overcome the issue of serial correlation which could cause bias in the results of the study, we used fixed-effect (FE) cluster estimates. The research results confirm the previous findings that bank capital positively affects bank stability (natural logarithm of Z-Score) and negatively affects credit risk (loan loss provision to total liabilities). The findings also show that efficiency has the same effect. The interaction test of bank capital and efficiency shows that efficiency encourages banks to reduce risk, including when bank capital is relatively lower. This finding is expected to have implications for the authorities to boost bank efficiency in addition to establishing several regulations related to capital. The efficiency implemented by the bank will encourage banks to act prudently so that the bank can maintain its performance through risk mitigation.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.1-14
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• 2022

The implications of bank-specific risks and macroeconomic risks on the growth, profitability, and stability of Islamic and conventional banks are examined and compared in this article. The study also investigates whether corporate governance mitigates the effects of both bank-specific and macroeconomic risks on Islamic and conventional banks' development, profitability, and stability. For the period 2007-2019, we examined a panel data set of 22 banks in Pakistan, including both Islamic and conventional banks. We discovered considerable evidence that both bank-specific risks and macroeconomic risks have negative effects on the growth, profitability, and stability of Pakistani banks using a dynamic panel data estimator, the two-step Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) approach. Furthermore, the findings show that bank-specific and macroeconomic risks have different consequences in both types of banking. The impacts of liquidity risk, operational risk, capital risk, inflation risk, and exchange rate risk are higher for Islamic banks than for conventional banks. Conventional banks, on the other hand, are more vulnerable to credit risk and interest rate risk. Finally, the findings show that good corporate governance reduces the negative consequences of both categories of risks on bank development, profitability, and stability. This is true for Islamic and conventional banks alike.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권9호
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• pp.229-239
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• 2020

This paper examines the impact of gender on access to debt finance among Vietnamese enterprises. The paper investigates data and variables retrieved from the World Bank Enterprise Survey dataset using five Probit models. The regression results suggest that there exist more unfavourable debt financing conditions for women-led firms (WLF), measured as a lower probability of having loan applications fully approved. Firm's age, working sector, and perception of access to finance as a difficulty are found to have explanatory power on the discrimination. More importantly, the perception of debt finance as a difficulty or firms' level of confidence significantly explains the variance of the dependent variable of probability of loan approval, or gender effect would be more pronounced if the firm already has a low level of confidence. The paper also contributes in testing for the gender effect on Vietnamese enterprises from different sectors and scale, unlike other prior research papers focusing on specific sectors and/or small and medium enterprises only. The findings are highly useful for Vietnamese credit institutions to set out a specific business policy to attract more WLFs and help promoting gender equality in the working environment, especially in debt financing, which is often neglected in existing regulation and policy frameworks.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권9호
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• pp.179-189
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• 2020

The paper empirically examines the bank-specific determinants of loan growth in the Vietnamese banking system for the period from 2007 to 2019. We approach the CAMELS framework and employ the dynamic panel regression to determine the effects of each CAMELS factor on bank lending. To ensure the robustness of results, we also use alternative definitions of the variables and different specifications with and without full sets of CAMELS components. With these settings, we display multiple important results. (i) We find that a large capital buffer tends to boost bank lending expansion faster. (ii) High asset quality might positively contribute to high loan growth; in other words, banks subject to high credit risk are discouraged from making loans. (iii) Less efficiently managed banks are more likely to adopt an aggressive lending strategy, highlighting the moral hazard incentives of Vietnamese banks. (iv) More profitable banks with excellent competitive advantages could expand their lending activities to a larger extent. (v) Liquidity is positively related to the loan growth of banks. (vi) Perceived interest rate risk tends to suppress loan growth since interest-rate-sensitive banks might be concerned about the adverse effects of unpredictable adverse changes in interest rates in the future.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권2호
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• pp.643-655
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• 2021

This study investigated the effect of the Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM) microfinancing on the economic, social, and household empowerment of women borrowers in Malaysia. The study used a quantitative approach based on primary data. For this study, the participants comprised 384 AIM borrowers from Terengganu, Kelantan, and Pahang in the east coast region of Malaysia. Purposive stratified random sampling was used as well as the Krejcie and Morgan method to count the number of samples. Descriptive statistics and the Women Empowerment Index (WEI) were used in the analysis. The study findings reveal that AIM microfinancing affects the economic, social, and household empowerment of women borrowers in Malaysia. However, in comparing the three categories, women enjoyed more freedom in social and household decision-making than in economic decision-making. The present study recommends policies for the successful and effective operation of microfinance programs by providing the necessary guidelines for the control of AIM loan for women borrowers; increasing income-generating activities, sufficient access of credit, and proper education for the borrowers; and giving economic freedom of choice with necessary skill training policymaking options for the government and NGOs with the aim to improve the total household income and empowerment of the microcredit borrowers in Malaysia.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권8호
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• pp.421-431
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• 2021

This study investigates the empirical linkages between ASEAN countries' institutional quality and financial inclusion using country data from 2008-2019. In this paper, six governance indicators from the World Governance index are used to measure the impact of institutions on financial inclusion. The PCA method's financial inclusion index is constructed from 3 indicators: penetration, access, and usage: penetration, access, and usage with six indices respectively as the number of ATMs per 1000 km², the number of bank branches per 1000 km², the number of ATMs per 100,000 people and the number of bank branches for 100,000 adults, the ratio of credit to private to GDP, and the ratio of deposit to private to GDP. Regression analysis with the Generalized Moments method shows the positive impact of institutions and other control variables like GDP per capita, inflation, bank concentration, and human development index on financial inclusion. Therefore, this study recommends that the government and policymakers in countries pursue the financial inclusion agenda to pay attention to the financial and economic indicators and institutional factors. This is because many savers, borrowers, and investors may not be protected when financial contracts are enforced or breaches occur in an environment where economic, legal, judicial, and political institutions are weak, such as in ASEAN countries.