Information asymmetry, credit risk, and profitability in Islamic and conventional banks

The thesis empirically investigates and compares some of the main aspects of Islamic and conventional banks during four periods: the pre-financial crisis, financial crisis, post-financial crisis and entire sample periods (2002-2015). Specifically, it investigates and compares the information asymmetry, credit risk and profitability in Islamic and conventional banks. For the information asymmetry investigation, a total sample of 211 Islamic and conventional publicly listed banks from Asia, Europe and Africa is used over the period 2002-2015. Quarterly data is retrieved from Datastream for the sample. However, for credit risk and profitability investigations, annual data for 225 Islamic and conventional banks are extracted from Datastream for the periods from 2002 to 2015 from Asia, Europe and Africa. The study aims to: (i) investigate and compare the degree of information asymmetry in Islamic and conventional banks for the pre-financial crisis, crisis, post-crisis and full sample periods; (ii) investigate and compare the degree of credit risk in Islamic and conventional banks for the pre-financial crisis, crisis, post-crisis and full sample periods; and (iii) investigate and compare the degree of profitability in Islamic and conventional banks for the pre-financial crisis, crisis, post-crisis and full sample periods. The empirical investigations provide important results in the three areas. First, the results show a significant difference in the information asymmetry level between Islamic and conventional banks for the crisis, post-crisis, and full sample periods. In fact, Islamic banks showed significantly lower information asymmetry levels than their counterparts in all information asymmetry proxy measures (i.e. Bid-Ask Spread, Share Turnover ratio and Stock Price Synchronicity SYNCH). These findings are robust with the intangibility ratio as a proxy of information asymmetry for all four periods (including the pre-crisis period). To the best of the author’s knowledge, such results are presented for the first time, and will add to the Islamic banking literature. Second, mixed results were found for the credit risk levels in Islamic and conventional banking credit risk for the four periods when Z-score and non-performing loans are used as credit risk proxy measures. However, the robustness check shows that there are no significant differences between Islamic and conventional banks in their credit risk for all of the different periods used in the study. This suggests that despite the different nature of both banks, their credit risk for the study periods do not statistically differ. These results contradict some prior studies conducted in the same area. Nevertheless, using only publicly listed banks, this thesis covers a longer period than other studies and investigates credit risk in four periods while using a combination of different control variables. Third, the results show that the profitability of Islamic banks is lower than conventional banks for the crisis, post-crisis and full sample period when using return-on-asset and return-on-equity as profitability measures. However, there are no significant differences between Islamic and conventional banks’ profitability during the pre-crisis period. These results are robust. Nevertheless, they affirm some prior studies’ findings and contradict others. This thesis uses up-to-date data for a longer period and investigates the profitability of publicly listed Islamic and conventional banks four different periods. Its findings add to the Islamic banking literature