Cristian Barra and Nazzareno Ruggiero
Using data for a set of 32 Sub-Saharan countries over the years 2000, 2005 and 2010, the paper investigates the effects of domestic governmental stability upon emigration and…
Abstract
Purpose
Using data for a set of 32 Sub-Saharan countries over the years 2000, 2005 and 2010, the paper investigates the effects of domestic governmental stability upon emigration and assesses whether education and gender shape the relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts instrumental variable (IV) Poisson regressions and two-stage least squares (2SLS) as robustness tests.
Findings
The paper suggests that increased governmental stability has a larger impact on the emigration of high-skilled individuals. Nevertheless, once emigrants are partitioned according to both education and gender, the authors find evidence of a larger impact of stability on the emigration of highly educated females.
Research limitations/implications
The empirical findings may lack generalizability because of the chosen research approach. Then, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.
Practical implications
The paper includes implications that can be drawn for both the growth and the development of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Originality/value
This paper fulfills an identified need to study how both education and gender shape the relationship between domestic governmental stability and emigration.
Details
Keywords
Cristian Barra and Nazzareno Ruggiero
Using bank-level data over the 1994–2015 period, the authors aim to investigate the role of bank-specific factors on credit risk in Italy by considering two different groups of…
Abstract
Purpose
Using bank-level data over the 1994–2015 period, the authors aim to investigate the role of bank-specific factors on credit risk in Italy by considering two different groups of banks, namely, cooperative and non-cooperative (commercial and popular), in different local markets.
Design/methodology/approach
Relying on highly territorially disaggregated data at labour market areas’ level, the authors estimate the impact of the role of bank-specific factors on credit risk in Italy from the estimation of a fixed-effect estimator. Non-performing loans to total loans has been used as a proxy of credit risk; the bank-specific factors are as follows: growth of loans, reflecting credit policy; log of total assets, controlling for banks’ size; loans to total assets, reflecting the volume of credit market; equity to total assets, capturing the solvency of banks and reflecting their capital strength; return on assets, reflecting the profitability of banks; deposits to loans, reflecting the intermediation cost; cost of total assets, reflecting the banks’ efficiency or volume of intermediation cost.
Findings
The empirical findings suggest that regulatory credit policy, capitalisation, volume of credit and volume of intermediation costs are the main bank-specific factors affecting non-performing loans. Nevertheless, the present analysis suggests that the behaviour of cooperative banks’ behaviour seems to be in line with that of commercial rather than popular banks, casting doubts about the feasibility of their credit policies. It turns out that recent reforms involving popular and cooperative banks represent the first step toward the enhancement of the stability and efficiency of the Italian banking system. While the present study’s benchmark results are not particularly affected by the degree of competition in the banking sector and by banks’ size, it shows that both cooperative and non-cooperative banks have undertaken more prudent credit policies after the advent of the financial crisis and the introduction of the Basel regulation.
Originality/value
The relationship between bank-specific factors and credit risk has been analysed using a rich sample of cooperative, commercial and popular banks in Italy over the 1994–2015 period. The authors rely on labour market areas being sub-regional geographical areas where the bulk of the labour force lives and works. The contribution is motivated by the financial distress experienced after the 2008 financial crisis, which has significantly hit the Italian banking system and cooperative banks in particular.