This study departs from existing work on board gender diversity (BGD) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting by analyzing and explaining the mechanism by which gender-diverse boards in politically embedded firms (PEFs) affect firms’ CSR reporting choices in a unique institutional setting of Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2018. The following main results are obtained. First, having female directors and executives with political connections (PCs) on corporate boards improves the CSR reporting of firms. Firms with PCs have a greater possibility to issue CSR reports than their non-connected counterparts. Second, firms that have both gender diversity and PCs on their boards of directors are more likely to engage in CSR reporting. There is an indication that the presence of PCs on boards can strengthen the effect of female directors on firms’ CSR reporting. Third, the presence of female directors on corporate boards has a stronger relationship with CSR reporting in PEFs than in non-PEFs. The study concludes that both BGD and PCs on corporate boards positively influence the diffusion of CSR-related practices in the Chinese business environment.

The study explores the causal relationship between monetary policy effectiveness and financial inclusion in developed and under-developed countries. Structural Vector Auto-regressive techniques have been inducted to explore the relationship between monetary policy effectiveness and financial inclusion. The study covers the secondary data of 10 developed and 30 underdeveloped countries throughout 2004–2018. It is concluded that monetary policy effectiveness and financial inclusion do not have a contemporaneous impact on each other. Nevertheless, the reduced-form Vector Auto-regressive witness the reverse causality between financial inclusion and monetary policy effectiveness in developed countries. Thus, effective monetary policy enhances financial inclusion in a country, and a higher degree of financial inclusion lowers the inflation rate and makes monetary policy effective. One way causality from monetary policy effectiveness to financial inclusion can be observed in under-developed countries. Using the Structural Vector auto-regressive technique and financial inclusion index composed of three-dimension to examine the relationship of monetary policy effectiveness and financial inclusion in developed and developing countries is considered the study’s significant contribution.

This research study aims to investigate the potential inner factors of the lending rate in the commercial banking sector of Pakistan. For this purpose, seven bank-specific explanatory variables (capital adequacy, management efficiency, liquidity, asset quality, investment to asset, loan to asset and deposit to asset ratios) were selected to determine their impact on lending behavior. Panel data techniques were emplyed on secondary data collected from the annual financial reports from a sample of ninteen major commercial banks over a period of 2007 to 2014. For the purpose of analysis, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and panel data techniques for regression analysis such as the fixed effect regression models were considered after conforming to the Hausman specification (1978) test. The findings of this study revealed that only four out of seven explanatory variables (ratio of investment to total assets, deposit to asset, loan to asset and liquidity ratio) have a significant relationship with lending rate. Two of the significant determinants (liquidity ratio and investment to asset ratio) are positively correlated while the remaining two significant explanatory variables (loan to asset ratio and deposit to asset ratio) are found negatively correlated with lending rate. The findings of the study are applicable to the banking sector of Pakistan. The current study ignored the use of macro factors like GDP and inflation, etc. which could be used in future research. ANALYSIS OF SOME INNER FACTORS AFFECTING THE LENDING RATE AND COMMERCIAL BANK BEHAVIOR (An Empirical 112"e-Finanse" 2016, vol. 12 / nr 4 Zulfiqar Ali, Zahid Bashir, Muhammad Usman Arshad, Ahmed Ghazali, Muhammad Asif, Fahad Najeeb Khan Analysis of some inner factors affecting the lending rate and commercial bank behavior

This study examines the efficiency level of public, private, and foreign banks in Pakistan during 2014-2017 in order to identify the most efficient type of banks on the basis of ownership. The study uses data envelopment analysis methodology.Findings indicate that the efficiency of private and public banks is satisfactory, but they are not fully efficient and there is a scope for improvement in the performance of these banks. The private and public sector banks are equally efficient. Results further show that foreign banks are very efficient and can be used as a benchmark for public and private banks in Pakistan.

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This study explores the mediating role of e-satisfaction during the pandemic on the relationship between e-service quality and e-loyalty of banking customers in Pakistan. The data were collected from 442 customers of online banking services in Pakistan during the Covid-19 pandemic, following a survey-based study. Baron and Kenny (J Personal Soc Psychol, 51(6):1173, 1986) and Preacher and Hayes (Behav Res Methods, 40(3):879-891, 2008) mediation technique which utilizes the bootstrapping method has been used to explore mediation. The findings show that e-service quality has a significant positive effect on the e-loyalty of the customers of online banking services. Relationships between e-service quality and e-loyalty of online banking customers in Pakistan are significantly and fully mediated by their online satisfaction in unusual situations. This study would help the bankers to implement more effective marketing strategies to retain their customers and attract potential customers, particularly during non-normal situations like the Covid-19 pandemic. It will help them identify the areas of e-services that need improvement to enhance the satisfaction and loyalty of the customers. The bootstrap method for mediation along with Baron and Kenny (J Personal Soc Psychol, 51(6):1173, 1986) leads to using a more sophisticated methodological technique to explore the mediation. The Oliver Expectancy-Disconfirmation Paradigm (EDP) in electronic banking setup during non-normal situations like the Covid-19 pandemic also served as a unique contribution to this study. Application of Baron and Kenny (J Personal Soc Psychol, 51(6):1173, 1986) mediation along with Preacher and Hayes (Behav Res Methods, 40(3):879-891, 2008) leads to more robust findings for the study in non-normal situations like the Covid-19 pandemic. The study findings add scientific value as they are applicable to the banking sector in particular in non-normal situations like the Covid-19 pandemic and the overall service sector in general. Further, as two different methods of mediation have been employed and this makes the study more rigorous and scientific.

PurposeThis study aims to explore the firm's specific, opacity and economy-specific variables to explain the variation in South Asian market returns and indicate that how the difference in adoption of accounting standards refers to the effect of the movement in stock returns.Design/methodology/approachFollowing the scope of the study, factor analysis, fixed effect, Driscoll and Kraay standard errors (DKSE) and Panel Corrected standard error (PCSE) models have been inducted to determine the influence of firm-specific, opacity and economy-specific variables on stock returns. The sample of study comprises 1,885 firms from five countries located in the South Asia region with the period 2005–2018. To ensure the reliability of data, firm-specific data have been collected from DataStream International, while an international country risk guide was used to compile the data for economy-specific variables.FindingsThis study concluded that firm-specific variables showed a consistent and significant association with stock return except for beta, accrual and momentum while earning aggressiveness was the only factor in opacity measure to capture the variation in stock return. The implementation of international accounting standards seemed to be significant and proves to be helpful to enhance the quality of accounting information.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations of this study comprised the estimation error by avoiding the firm's observations with negative equity in case of earning opacity and majority (more than 50%) of the observation belongs to a single market as India out of final sample which leads to having biasedness in findings.Practical implicationsThis study helps the investors to consider the firms with smaller market capitalization and lower book to market ratio and avoid the momentum strategy under firm specific factors. Moreover, earning aggressiveness under opacity domain capture the variation in stock return and must be considered while investing funds.Originality/valueThe influence of adoption of international accounting standards along with firm and economy specific variable in South Asian Equity Markets return was the major contribution. Moreover, the inclusion of DKSE and PCSE models to examine the relevance of the financial and economic informational environment was also considered as a part of major contribution of this study.