Capital, risk and profitability of WAEMU banks: Does bank ownership matter?

Désiré Kanga, Victor Murinde and Issouf Soumaré

Journal of Banking & Finance, 2020, vol. 114, issue C

Abstract: We investigate the simultaneous relationship among bank capital, risk and profitability, but also considering bank ownership and the emergence of Pan-African cross-border banks. We specify a simultaneous equation model and estimate it using hand-collected bank level data from all West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) countries for 2000–2014. We split the countries into lower middle-income (LMICs) and low-income (LICs) according to the World Bank classification. We uncover evidence that the sensitivity of bank profitability to an increase in capital ratio seems to be somewhat higher in LMICs (+0.10) than in LICs (+0.05). Moreover, we find that bank capital positions tend to comove positively with the business cycle in LICs, mimicking a key postulate of Basel III. After differentiating between cross-border Pan-African banks and foreign banks from outside the continent, we find that the overall effect of bank ownership on risk depends on the origin of banks (French versus Pan-African). These findings are robust to alternative estimation techniques and the use of competing measures of risk and profitability.

Keywords: WAEMU banks; Bank capital; Bank risk; Bank profitability; Basel accords; Pan-African cross-border banks; Bank ownership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 G28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:114:y:2020:i:c:s0378426620300819

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2020.105814

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