This paper examined the impact of liquidity, leverage, and total assets size of the bank on profitability. This study employed bank scope data of all 28 commercial banks operating in Nepal during the period of 2010/11 -2016/17. Altogether, the168 observations were used in the study. Three ordinary-least-squares models were applied to analyze the impact of liquidity, leverage, and the total size on the bank's profitability. The first regression model reveals that the higher loan to deposit ratio (low level of liquidity) was observed to have the negative effect on the bank's ROA, ROE, and NIM; however, ROE and NIM were statistically insignificant. The result of the second regression model shows that higher equity to assets ratio (lower leverage) positively affected two profitability measures, ROA and NIM, and was statistically significant-but was negatively related to ROE and statistically insignificant. The result of the final regression model reveals that the higher bank size appeared favorable to the Nepalese commercial banks and was found to have positive effects on all three profitability measures: ROA, ROE, and NIM. The results of the study could help bankers and policymakers to take an effective action in order to improve banks' profitability.

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This study investigates the effect of capital structure on the social and financial performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs), which have a double bottom line objective of outreach and financial sustainability. Generalized method of moments (GMM) and instrumental variable (IV) estimation were used on the panel data set of 46 non-banking finance companies (NBFCs)-MFIs from 2013–2014 to 2018–2019. NBFC-MFIs are formed after the transformation of NGO-MFIs to access market-based sources of funds to increase their outreach. The results show that Indian MFIs are highly leveraged and have bidirectional causality between capital structure and financial and social performance variables. The study found a positive and significant relationship between capital structure and social and financial dimensions of the NBFC-MFIs. It shows that NBFC-MFIs can maintain the dual objectives even after transformation. The study contributes to the scarce literature by emphasizing the role of capital structure on the performance of MFIs, which are playing an essential role in financial inclusion.

The purpose of this study is to assess the state of competition in Nepalese banking over the period from 2010 to 2019. This study employs panel data and a non-structural Panzar-Rosse model to measure the degree of competition in the Nepalese banking industry. The first reduced-form equation is applied to gauge competition, and the second model is used to test the long-run equilibrium in the banking market. The finding reveals that the Nepalese banking market is equilibrium in the long-run. It implies that the factor prices do not affect ROA in the long-run. The result of the H-statistic shows that the Nepalese banking system is operating under the state of perfect competition and is shifted from monopolistic competition to perfect competition. The reduced-form model reveals that the interest income is positive and significantly affected by factor prices. Similarly, the macroeconomic variable GDP growth is positively related to interest income. On the contrary, the bank's specific factors risk and the number of bank branches are inversely associated with the regressand. The outcomes of the study may be advantageous to the policymakers, especially to Nepal Rastra Bank to implement monetary policy and M&A policy for the stability and growth of the financial system of Nepal.

This study examined the impact of the debt ratio, total assets, and earnings growth rate on banks’ WACC. This study employed bank scope data of twenty-eight commercial banks during the single period of 2018. Altogether, there were 28 observations were made in the study. The ordinary least squares model was used to analyze the data. The results indicated that two predictor variables debt ratio and total assets significantly affected the bank’s WACC. But the predictor variable earnings growth rate did not significantly affect banks’ WACC. The results of this study could help bankers and policymakers to take effective action to reduce banks’ WACC.