Financial stability and liquidity: evidence from conventional and Islamic banks in the GCC region

This thesis examines the determinants of banks’ financial stability in countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In particular, we estimate empirical models using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to test four hypotheses concerning the determinants of financial stability of conventional and Islamic banks. Our results are as follows: (i) Bank liquidity has a positive effect on its financial stability; and an increase in bank liquidity causes conventional banks in the GCC region to be more financially stable than their Islamic counterparts; (ii) Bank income diversity has a positive effect on its financial stability; (iii) Islamic banks on average are less financially stable than commercial banks; and (iv) The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) had no impact on banks’ financial stability in the GCC region. This study contributes to the academic literature in many different ways. Empirical research into bank financial stability and its determinants in the GCC region appears to be relatively scarce. Therefore, this study contributes to the banking literature by being the first to investigate the impacts of liquidity, income diversity, bank type and the GFC on banks’ financial stability in the GCC region.