Internal and external determinants of Iraqi bank profitability

This study aims to investigate the effect of macroeconomic factors on Palestine and Amman Stock Exchange returns. Also, the study handles the political events in the area and their impact on Palestine and Amman stock markets returns. This study applied the macro-econometric model based on Arbitrage Pricing Theory. In addition, the most important political events are selected, and their effect was tested using the event study methodology. The results show that the consumer price index, gross domestic product, and exchange rate have a significant impact on stock index returns, but industrial production index and balance of trade have no significant effect. In addition, the results reveal that the political events have a significant effect on Palestine and Amman stock markets returns. For instance, at Palestine Stock Exchange, seven out of eleven events had a significant impact on the Palestinian general index returns. Regarding the Amman Stock Exchange, there were nine out of eleven events, which had a significant impact on the Jordanian general index returns. The main results show that the macroeconomic factors and political events have a significant impact on the Palestine and Amman stock market returns. Both Palestine and Amman Stock Markets are inefficient and the markets do not absorb uncertain information and noisy events.

This investigation studies the impact of mutual fund herding on the returns achieved by contrarian strategy from 1990 to 2015 in the Chinese stock market. The relationship between the profit gained by the contrarian strategy and the macroeconomic environment is also examined. First, the returns of the contrarian strategy in China’s stock market are found to be significant. Second, most loser stocks with a high degree of mutual fund herding outperform loser stocks with a low degree of mutual fund herding, revealing that the profitability of an investment portfolio depends on the degree of mutual fund herding. Third, investors should buy loser stocks with a high degree of herding and sell winner stocks with a low degree of herding during a two-year formation period, over which zero-cost contrarian strategies yield the significantly highest return. Finally, the payoff of contrarian strategies is positively related to the herding effect and negatively related to macroeconomic variables.

The current paper aims to investigate the effect of the capital structure on the profitability of a panel of eighteen Iraqi listed banks from 2009 to 2018. Furthermore, the unbalanced panel data approach (fixed effect and random effect) is utilized to explore the influence of capital structure on banks’ profitability. This study’s findings point out that the banks’ performance in terms of return on assets has a significant positive association with equity to assets ratio, liabilities to assets ratio, and bank size. On the other hand, long-term debt to assets ratio, short-term debt to assets ratio, and total debt to assets ratio showed a significant negative effect on banks’ performance. This study highlights new facts for an enhanced understanding of the capital structure and its association with banks’ performance in developing economies like Iraq. This study is considered one of the earliest studies of its types by determining the Iraqi banks’ optimal structure and examining capital structure’s impact on their performance. Nevertheless, the study contributes significantly to theoretical literature, policymakers, and industry so that conventional Iraqi banks can boost their performance.