New Dynamics in Banking and Finance

Ownership density, which is one of the indicators of ownership structure, refers to the fact that the majority of the shares are held by one person or by a small number of people. As the share of the stockholder increases, the density of ownership increases, while the density of ownership decreases as the share ratio decreases.Studies examining the relationship between ownership density and profitability have found both positive and negative relationships between the two. The allegations of these studies generally center around the claim that the person or group holding the largest share makes effort to maximize self-interest, thanks to the control of power, and that indirectly this effort is reflected in the overall profitability of the company. Those who obtain the opposite results, on the other hand, claim that the person or persons who hold the majority shares protect their interests by changing profit distribution policies and that these changes indirectly have a negative effect on the general profitability of the minority shareholders and the company.

In this context, this study aims to determine the impact of ownership density on the profitability of 16 Turkish commercial banks operated uninterruptedly between the 2009 and 2019 period with a data set of 187 firm-year observations. Return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) are used as proxies for profitability, and the equity share of the largest shareholder is used as a proxy for ownership density. In addition, bank age and bank size are included in the analysis as control variables and domestic/foreign ownership as a dummy variable.

This paper empirically investigates the leading indicators of the 1994, 2000/2001, and 2009 Turkish financial crises by applying stepwise regression and probit and logit models to three sets of quarterly data. Empirical findings show that although there are a common set of leading indicators, including current account balance, domestic debt, exports, external debt, and real effective exchange rate, the three crises in Turkey are different in structure, and each has different characteristics with different leading indicators due to changes in the nature of the Turkish economy. Our findings indicate that at the current state of the Turkish economy, several fundamental macroeconomic variables, banking sector stability, and global economic developments are the main leading indicators for the crisis. Policymakers could minimize the risk of financial crises by imposing tighter regulations on banks to avoid default and credit risk, following liquidity levels in the markets, and closely following the stability of global economic indicators.

Influencer marketing is a new technique in the marketing field that makes it easy for many businesses to reach potential customers around the world that may not be accessible through traditional marketing techniques. By doing so, companies can gain a broader customer base and, as a result, increase their sales and revenues. In todays’ digital world, the number of individuals’ work as social media influencers on various platforms is constantly increasing.

With the help of the social learning theory, four major factors that make a particular influencer an effective source have been identified. This study tries to analyze the effects of these four factors—source credibility, source attractiveness, influencer-product fit, and meaning transfer—on both consumer attitude and consumer buying intention.

The results showed that source credibility, influencer-product fit, and meaning transfer positively impact consumer attitude and buying intentions. Source attractiveness has been found to have no effect on either consumer attitude or buying intentions. Consumer attitude has also been identified to mediate the relationships between source credibility, influencer-product fit, meaning transfer, and buying intentions.

This paper investigates the impact of political and economic policy uncertainties on the dividend policy of nonfinancial firms in Turkey. The study uses annual data from an unbalanced panel of 350 firms from 1998 to 2019. The results indicate that uncertainty related to economic and political policies negatively impacts cash dividends, implying that during the episodes of higher policy uncertainty, managers distribute lower dividends. A possible explanation is that uncertainty increases the cost of capital, which might cause unwillingness for firms to pay a dividend during these periods. Likewise, higher debt-to-equity ratio and capital expenditure were found to influence dividend payouts. These results are robust against the use of local and global measures of economic and political policy uncertainties.

This study aims to investigate the reasons and factors that affect the turnover of employees in educational institutions. The data were collected from 702 employees in 12 educational institutions. In the study, job satisfaction was identified as the main reason for the turnover. It is found that three factors influence job satisfaction, which leads to employees’ turnover: perceived organizational support, perceived coworker support, and dealing with job stress. The relations between job satisfaction and the other factors are found to be significant and positive. In addition, perceived organizational support has both direct and indirect effects on job satisfaction through the mediation of perceived coworker support.

The coronavirus pandemic still continues and has had negative impacts on all sectors of the world. Besides their aim to protect people’s health and reduce the spread of the virus, governments have been taking measures to keep financial stability and avoid bankruptcies and unemployment.

The aim of this study is to investigate the performance of the banking sectors of Northern and Southern Cyprus during the period of the pandemic. They are examined and compared through the CAMEL analysis based on capital adequacy, asset quality, management, earnings (profitability) and liquidity ratios, which were calculated quarterly for the period 2016–2020. It is found that the effects of the pandemic on banks differed for the two regions, depending on governmental measures and the roles of banks. The Northern banks generated more profits due to the postponements of credits; meanwhile, Southern banks’ interest income was recorded higher compared to their interest expenses. The asset quality of Southern banks weakened because of the high level of non-performing loans (NPLs) recorded after the 2013 crisis. But they are more liquid than those of the Northern banks with the help of European Union (EU) funds. This study gives a set of recommendations on how to improve the financial performance of banks.

The rationale for conducting this study is to examine traveller satisfaction as a mediator of the effects of motivations to travel based on reputation, visitor’s expectation and social media influence as a research gap in the tourism literature in Ghana. The data were collected from a sample of eight five-star hotels from Accra, Ghana, within a time period of 4 weeks. The data collection involved hotel managers and front desk employees in addition to local and international visitors. The relationships were tested using hierarchical multiple regression analysis where the entire hypothesis was significantly supported. The results suggested that visitors’ satisfaction has full mediation with the effects of tourists’ expectation, destination reputation, and social media with visitation intentions. The managerial implications of the results explored in future research are provided.

This paper investigates the time-frequency dependency of the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index (SSECI) and COVID-19 cases and deaths in China and around the world using the wavelet coherence approach. The findings indicate the following: (i) both domestic and global COVID-19 cases and death tolls have strong power for explaining the stock market index, and as expected, the effect of both domestic and global COVID-19 cases and death tolls on the stock market index is negative; (ii) we also captured a significant movement in the stock market index and the number of COVID-19 cases at different periods and different frequencies; the correlation between COVID-19 cases in China and the SSECI is stronger than the correlation between global COVID-19 cases and the SSECI.

The banking sector performs financial intermediation transactions in accordance with its basic function. Factors such as the diversification of financial products and rapid change in technology cause changes in the structure of the banking sector while also revealing the different types of risks. With regard to bank risk and profitability management, it is vital that capital structures are at such a level as to meet the risks. The adequacy and strength of the capital structures in banks are the basic conditions for the functioning of the system and the establishment of trust. Keeping this ratio at certain levels and ensuring continuity in this value is very important for banks to work effectively and efficiently.

The study aims to determine the long-term relationships of factors affecting the capital adequacy ratio (CAR) with the help of Westerlund and Edgerton (2007) LM Bootstrap panel cointegration test for commercial (deposit), development and investment and Islamic banking groups with the annual data for the 2010–2020 period in Turkish banking sector. As a result of the analysis of the three bank groups, it was determined that the total assets, liquidity adequacy ratio, and equity/total risk-weighted item ratios positively affected the capital adequacy ratio, and the market risk and nonperforming loan (NPL)/total cash loan ratios were statistically significantly affected. Furthermore, the coefficiency of the error correction term was negative and statistically significant, and the error correction mechanism was seen to be working. The most effective variable on capital adequacy was seen as the liquidity adequacy ratio.

Credit Rating Agencies (CRA’s) assess the potential payment of an issuer on a financial obligation, and credit rating (CR), as a symbolic indicator of CRA’s opinion, represents the creditworthiness of countries and financial organizations that recently has been affected by unexpected global COVID-19 health crises. To explore the ratings’ vulnerability to downgrades over the crisis, Fitch Rating System has been studied by logical analysis of data (LAD). The high percentage of the matched cases in training and test sets, shed light on the robust results of the explored patterns in the form of the decision trees. Despite these uncertainties, our best estimate clarifies that the coronavirus crisis had no adverse impact on “investment grades”; (AAA-BBB) till mid-year 2020 significantly, whereas “high yields”; (BBBM-BM) is threatened to be downgraded further as a Fitch comeback to the pandemic.

Interest rates play an important role in the monetary policy of countries. This paper examines the interaction between interest rates and macroeconomic factors. The aim of this study is to investigate the existence of a long-run relationship between interest rates and inflation rates to support the Canadian government’s monetary policy of inflation targeting. The obtained empirical results of the study from the time series analysis prove that the Canadian interest rates converge to their long-run equilibrium with 0.031 unit speed of monthly adjustment by the contribution of other Canadian macroeconomic factors. The findings showed that there is bilateral causality between interest rates and inflation rates. Moreover, inflation rates have the largest positive impact on the interest rates of Canada.