Financial Issues in Emerging Economies: Special Issue Including Selected Papers from II International Conference on Economics and Finance, 2019, Bengaluru, India: Volume 36

There has been an increase in the number of multinational banks (MNBs) in India and Nigeria. While the literature is replete with analysis of multinational banking in developed countries, not much is known about the drivers of multinational banking in developing countries. This chapter uses the linear probability estimation technique and a sample of 57 Indian and Nigerian banks to investigate firm-level determinants of bank internationalization, as well as inter-bank variations in the number of foreign branches/subsidiaries. The empirical results suggest that the decision by banks from India and Nigeria to internationalize is influenced by firm-level characteristics such as after-tax profit, capital adequacy ratio (CAR), total assets (TA or bank size), volume of customer deposits (CD) and the number of domestic branches. A bank’s decision to establish a given number of foreign branches and subsidiaries depends on variables such as CAR, CD and TA. Based on the empirical results, the chapter proposes some hypotheses about bank internationalization in developing countries.

This study gauges the profitability and performance of Indian commercial banks under the technology advancements. In this study, the authors identified three domains that give advantage to banks due to technology incorporation, that is, increased sales revenue, reduced operating expenses, and increased employee productivity. The authors assess the effect of these domains on banks’ profitability and performance. This study is conducted for the period between the years 2003 and 2018 across 34 public and private banks for empirical analysis. The authors examined the impact of investment in technology on the profitability using panel data analysis and evaluated the long-term effect of technology investment using the vector error correction model. This study found that there is a mixed effect of technology spend on the profitability and performance of Indian banks, where private sector banks are more aggressive in technology investment as compared to the public sector banks. This study recommends an optimal technology-related strategy to gain improved productivity for the banking business, that is, planned technology reserves, customer awareness campaigns about technology-enabled products, and robust employee–customer motivation policy.

This chapter examines the long-run and short-run spillover effects of US quantitative easing (QE) on the money market in India. The study adopts the autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing co-integration approach for monthly data from September 2008 to May 2019 to investigate the spillover impact. The results reveal that a 10% rise in US QE led to a 25 bps softening of the weighted average call rate and a 2–5 bps hardening of the Treasury Bill. This impact was beyond the active participation by the Reserve Bank of India on the policy rate and liquidity in the system during the QE episodes. It suggests that the Indian money market is susceptible to US QE.

This chapter assesses the volatility spillover from US monetary policy consequent upon the onset of three episodes primarily engineered by the US Fed, namely quantitative easing 1, taper tantrum and balance sheet normalization (BSN) to select emerging market economies (Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa and Turkey) considering around six months pre- and post-occurrence of these events. AR(k)-GARCH (p,q) framework has been used to assess the spillover effect influencing the return of the financial assets and trekking to their volatility segregated as news and persistence effect across markets and economies under study. The authors find that at the overall level, news impact significantly enhanced volatility of bond and currency markets, however, less impact was observed owing to the onset of BSN announcement as markets had factored the news through the well-articulated forward guidance of the Fed.

This chapter aims at examining financial distress issue by designing a comprehensive model to explain and predict financial distress in Egypt. This comprehensive model incorporates accounting ratios, market-based ratios and macroeconomic ratios. The sample of the existing research includes all the listed firms in two main sectors: basic resources and chemicals. Using logistic regression model, the results showed that adding market ratios and macroeconomic ratios enhances the predictability of the model and accounting information are not sufficient to explain financial distress.

The attraction of public private partnerships (PPPs) for governments is that the on-ground fructification of infrastructure projects is far higher than the traditional implementation route through public sector or departmental undertakings. Besides, time overruns are also considerably reduced. However, empirical evidence does not clearly establish that PPPs are cost efficient. This coupled with the risk intensity has impacted the long run flow of private capital to infrastructure PPPs and it therefore calls for a more scientific approach to management of profitability related risks. Appropriate management control systems (MCS) could be the answer, provided they can favorably impact profitability. Aggregating data from road, ports, airports, urban infrastructure, railways and power PPP ventures implemented in India, this chapter attempts to study the relationship between MCS and returns to sponsors through regression analysis. The study concludes that multiple MCS have a significant relationship with sponsors’ profitability.

American depository receipts (ADRs) listed on the New York Stock Exchange during the 1990s and 2000s are compared to determine how well they performed versus the US index and respective regional indexes utilizing three-year holding period excess returns. Results suggest that ADRs listed in the 2000s perform better than those in the 1990s. Also, seasoned equity offerings performed better than initial public offerings. Regression analysis indicated the best predictors of ADR performance are the returns of the respective regional index where the ADR-listing firm is headquartered, the date of issue (2000s vs 1990s), and whether the ADR was from an emerging economy.

Economic security is one of the crucial dimensions of the welfare state. High-income individuals are able to purchase private insurance, but a large portion of the individuals remains uninsured. The authors have tried to rationalize the problem of the study over the reason why people remain uninsured. Hence, the purpose of the study is to identify an insurance model that can cover the risk of the heterogeneous segments. The study is qualitative in nature and applies a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP). Based on seven criteria, process is applied to arrive at an alternative model among basic models of insurance, namely, conventional private insurance, mutual, and social insurance. Since social insurance has emerged with the highest score of 41% in the study, it is implied that social insurance works best in a situation where the market is full of private information and moral hazard. The findings reaffirm that government intervention is required in an insurance market to provide coverage to both covariate and idiosyncratic risks. The findings are especially relevant in the context of emerging markets where a sizeable poor population goes uninsured. The study contributes to the literature by proposing alternative insurance to address the problem of insuring the voluntarily uninsured.

Indian Companies Act (2013) and revised clause 49 of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) provides for a major overhaul of corporate governance norms to be adopted by firms in India. Some of the key provisions of the act pertain to board subcommittees. Given this background, the chapter seeks to analyze the role of overall board composition and board subcommittees (audit, nomination and remuneration and risk management committee) on firm performance. In addition, the relationship between ownership and firm performance is analyzed. The study documents that large listed companies in India that have constituted a nomination and remuneration committee have had positive influence on firm performance as measured by Tobin’s Q (TQ). Board subcommittees’ (i.e., audit, nomination and remuneration and risk management committee) independence is positively associated with firm performance as measured by TQ. Overall, the board size is positively associated with firm performance. However, in the presence of a nomination and remuneration committee, board size is negatively associated with firm performance. This study offers insights for policymakers interested in analyzing corporate governance practices in terms of board subcommittees as evidenced from a developing economy such as India.

Behavioral finance literature has long claimed that internet stock message boards can move markets. In this chapter, the authors study more than 2,000 internet board messages posted across finance message boards in India (Chittorgarh, etc.) for 110 companies that went for initial public offering (IPO) in the last one year. This study has multi-fold objectives. First, the authors try to identify the factors which lead to a discussion on an IPO stock in the message board. Second, the authors identify the factors which differentiate a widely discussed stock from the less discussed one. Next, the authors apply advanced machine learning technique to identify the topics which are discussed in the message board through automatic topic modeling. The methodology used includes a logistic regression model for identifying firm characteristics which leads to a probability of getting stakeholders’ attention and hence more discussion. The authors also use advanced topic modeling techniques to identify topics of discussion on the message boards through machine learning. The authors find that larger sized firms, younger firms, firms with low leverage, and non-manufacturing firms get discussed more and the topics of discussion relate to their financial statements, trading strategies, stock behavior, and performance.

Corporate governance plays a decisive role in the financial performance of a firm. While the majority of the firms in China and India are owned and managed by its promoters, the present study attempts to examine the impact of ownership structure and board characteristics on firm value for these two economies. The study employs panel data methodology with industry and time fixed effects on a sample of 1,042 firms listed in National Stock Exchange of India and 450 firms listed in Shanghai Stock Exchange of China. The study finds promoter ownerships to positively impact a firm’s value creation process, while institutional investors exert a negative influence. Although CEO duality enhances firm value in China, the results show otherwise for Indian firms. Additionally, while board independence is positively correlated to firm value in India, it has a negative effect on firms in China. Finally, the study finds that larger board size contributes favorably toward better decision making.