Economic growth is one of the ultimate goals of any economic system. This article examines the question whether in 16 transition economies from Central and South Eastern Europe the banking sector influences economic growth. The empirical investigation was carried out using a generalised method of moments (GMM) dynamic panel method. We measure the development in the banking sector using the bank credit to the private sector, interest rates, and ratio of quasi money (RQM). The research results show that credit to the private sector and interest margin (IM) are negatively related to the economic growth, while RQM is positively related to economic growth.

This study analyses the linkages between macroeconomic and bank-specific determinants of non-performing loans (NPLs) and their impact on macroeconomic performance in the Baltic States using two complementary approaches. First, we examine the macroeconomic and bank-specific determinants of NPLs for a panel of 27 banks from the Baltics using annual data for the period 2005-2014. The most important macroeconomic factors are GDP growth, inflation and domestic credit to the private sector. As for the bank-specific determinants, we found that the equity to total assets ratio, return on assets, the return on equity and the growth of gross loans were of importance. Second, we investigate the feedback between NPLs and its macroeconomic determinants. The results suggest that the real economy responds to NPLs and that there are strong feedback effects from macroeconomic conditions such as domestic credit to private sector, GDP growth, unemployment and inflation to NPLs. ARTICLE HISTORY

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of bankspecific and macroeconomic determinants of all non-performing loans (NPLs) to enterprises and households in the Republic of Macedonia. The analysis is performed for the whole banking sector for the period 2003Q4 to 2014Q4, by applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Modelling Approach (ARDL), the co-integration model implementing quarterly time series. The results of the research indicate that the profitability of banks, the growth of loans to enterprises and to households respectively, as well as the growth of GDP, all have a negative impact, while banks' solvency and unemployment have a positive impact on the rise of non-performing loans in both models. In addition, regarding enterprises, we found that the exchange rate has a positive and statistically significant impact on the level of NPLs, while inflation has a negative and statistically significant impact on the increase in non-performing loans to households. The main contribution of this paper is that the results obtained by econometric analysis may be used for forecasting non-performing loans several years in the future, as well as for stress-testing both the entire banking system and the individual banks operating in the Republic of Macedonia.

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