The impact of bank capital, liquidity and funding liquidity on sustainable bank lending: Evidence from MENA region

Abstract

This research analyzes the impact of bank capital, liquidity and funding liquidity on sustainable bank lending in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. An unbalanced panel dataset covering 55 banks using ESG scoring criteria from 2010–2020 was employed for this purpose. Results indicate that higher capital and liquidity ratios hinder the MENA banking sector’s ability to improve its sustainable lending capacity. Funding liquidity has a positive and significant effect on sustainable bank lending growth, which suggests that funding liquidity raises sustainable bank lending capacity. Furthermore, the impact of funding liquidity on sustainable bank lending growth remains positive and statistically significant to all capital ratios. It implies that bank capital improves the relationship between funding liquidity and banks’ capacity to issue loans in the MENA region. Finally, the results of too-big-to-fail banks indicate that bank lending growth is positively affected by higher capital ratios. Hence, it may help them to increase their capacity to issue sustainable bank loans in the market. Overall the results are robust to principal component analysis and other estimation techniques like bootstrapped-based bias correction fixed effects.