Capital Regulation and Market Competition in the MENA Region: Policy Implications for Banking Sector Stability During COVID-19 Pandemic

This article investigates the impact of capital requirements and market competition on the stability of financial institutions in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. We test the hypothesis that capital requirements significantly affect the risk behaviour of both Islamic and conventional banks in the MENA region. We also investigate the moderating effect of market power and concentration on the relationship between capital regulation and bank risk. We find that capital ratio has a strong positive impact on conventional banks’ credit risk, whereas this effect is insignificant in the sample of Islamic banks. Our analysis indicates that, for the conventional banking sector, the increase in the capitalization level is negatively linked to bank credit risk only when banks’ level of market power is high. Regarding the Islamic banks’ behaviour, we find that the relationship between capital and credit risk is weakly moderated by banking competition. This means that Islamic banks are less sensitive to the market’s competitive conditions in the MENA countries, as they still apply their theoretical models, based on prohibition of interest. Our findings inform regulatory authorities concerned with improving the banking sector’s financial stability in the MENA region to strengthen their policies and force banks to better align with regulatory capital requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic.