This section describes the determining factors of bank profitability, which is divided into internal and external factors 3.1 Data and methodology This study extracts cross-country bank-level data from the income statements and balance sheets of 730 banks drawn from the commercially available (and widely used) BankScope database (Table II). The period of the study, 1989-2008, is chosen to omit the effect of the world financial crisis. The sample reduced from 730 to 686 banks. This is related to the unavailability of data for some countries, and other countries have only Islamic banks (Iran and Sudan); the number of countries included is 52 out of 57 because of the aforementioned constraints. Also, mainstream banks with Islamic windows and converted banks (converted period) are excluded from our sample. To be noted that this study used different sources such as banks websites and data from central banks to make sure that our sample is made of pure conventional banks because BankScope database is not comprehensive on its classification. For instance, it classifies some Islamic banks as conventional banks and vice versa and does not indicate if a bank is converted from conventional banking to Islamic banking. A linear equation is used to perform the regression analysis. The model used for this analysis is represented by equation (1): The two-way fixed-effects (FE) model has been chosen because the Hausman test shows that the FE (cross-section and time) model is consistent. Further, our sample is not random and contains almost all the conventional banks in the countries of the study. Heteroscedasticity is not present in our sample based on white test, and the data cleaned from outliers. In addition, Durbin–Watson’s results indicated that multicollinearity is not significant. 3.2 Measures of bank profitability In this study, two measures of performance are used: ROA and NIM. ROA is defined as profit after tax to total assets and shows the profit earned per dollar of assets. For this study, NIM is defined as the net interest revenue income over earning assets and measures interest spread for conventional banks. 3.3 Determinants of bank profitability External factors are further divided into title loans UT variables encompassing macroeconomic factors, oil...
Read More