Microfinance: A bibliometric exploration of the knowledge landscape.

Microfinance has gained significant attention as a social innovation, offering flexible and low-cost financial services to households who are otherwise excluded from formal financial services. Over the years, numerous research works have expanded the knowledge base of microfinance. Applying bibliometrics, we summarise findings from 1599 articles published between 1987 and 2022. Our performance analysis reveals insights into the research trend, including its geographical distribution, the theories under examination, and the most influential publications. More importantly, the knowledge foundation and thematic analysis categorize microfinance research into three broad themes, viz. impact of microfinance, management of microfinance and performance and efficiency of microfinance. Furthermore, we trace the evolution of various research topics and forecast future trends using periodical average publication years over time. This study, therefore, serves as a valuable reference in microfinance research both for new researchers and seasoned academics, as well as policymakers, providing insights into research trends, seminal works, and future directions.

CEO duality and firm performance during the 2020 coronavirus outbreak.

Stewardship theory suggests that CEO duality can provide strong leadership and facilitate the development and coordination of firm strategy. These benefits should affect firm risk and financial performance, particularly when the firm has high information-gathering costs. We use the 2020 coronavirus outbreak as a natural experiment to determine whether CEO duality is beneficial during crisis periods. We find that in 2020, S&P 1500 firms with CEO duality exhibit smaller increases in default probability risk than firms with non-duality in the presence of high information costs. Firms with CEO duality experience a smaller decrease in profitability when information costs are high. We also find that firms with CEO duality offer cumulative abnormal returns significantly higher than those of other firms. CEO duality is more valuable in firms with higher information costs. Our results indicate that CEO duality is valuable during crisis periods, particularly when information costs are high. These results are consistent with stewardship theory and indicate that the concentration of power from CEO duality is beneficial during crisis periods.

Weathering the COVID-19 storm: The case of community banks.

We examine the immediate impact of COVID-19 on the performance of FDIC chartered banks. Our experimental design analyses the performance of community banks and large banks before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Community banks significantly outperform large banks in several key measures in the first three-quarters of COVID-19. Findings are consistent with the view that the advantages of solid customer relationships and a greater understanding of local businesses are invaluable during periods of high externalities. This result is more pronounced for community banks located in metropolitan areas. We also find that the pandemic's adverse effects on bank performance are minimized in states with higher quality healthcare facilities, as measured by our healthcare index. In addition, the performance of community banks varies across geographical regions during this pandemic period. Finally, our study expands the understanding of how community banks' performance and risk-taking change during a pandemic.

Does the Covid-19 pandemic affect faith-based investments? Evidence from global sectoral indices.

In this paper, we aim to investigate the influence of the Covid-19 on the behavior of the S&P 1200 Shariah and non-Shariah sectoral indices over the period from 1st October 2010 to 29th October 2020. We contribute to the global literature by examining the financial impact of the Covid-19 on the Shariah and non-Shariah sectoral indices. We find that the S&P 1200 Shariah Communication, consumer staples, financials, healthcare, industrials, IT, materials, and utility sectors earn higher average returns than their counterpart sectoral indices during the Covid-19 period. The study reports that on average, the volatility of the Shariah indices is less than their counterpart indices. Moreover, we further document that on average the S&P Shariah sectoral indices offer a higher return with low risk even during the Covid-19 global pandemic. We suggest that ethical investments are the best alternatives to retail, institutional, and foreign investors.

Deep learning-based exchange rate prediction during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study proposes an ensemble deep learning approach that integrates Bagging Ridge (BR) regression with Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) neural networks used as base regressors to become a Bi-LSTM BR approach. Bi-LSTM BR was used to predict the exchange rates of 21 currencies against the USD during the pre-COVID-19 and COVID-19 periods. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed model, we compared the prediction performance with several more traditional machine learning algorithms, such as the regression tree, support vector regression, and random forest regression, and deep learning-based algorithms such as LSTM and Bi-LSTM. Our proposed ensemble deep learning approach outperformed the compared models in forecasting exchange rates in terms of prediction error. However, the performance of the model significantly varied during non-COVID-19 and COVID-19 periods across currencies, indicating the essential role of prediction models in periods of highly volatile foreign currency markets. By providing an improved prediction performance and identifying the most seriously affected currencies, this study is beneficial for foreign exchange traders and other stakeholders in that it offers opportunities for potential trading profitability and for reducing the impact of increased currency risk during the pandemic.

Vulnerability of financial markets in India: The contagious effect of COVID-19.

This study aims to examine the impact of COVID-19 on financial markets, using emerging market data. Specifically, panel data regression is applied on 3200 observations for daily market returns during lockdown in India. The event study methodology is adopted to show abnormal returns registered in the lockdown period. A contrasting breakdown effect of COVID-19 on various Indian industries has been observed through sectoral analysis. The study also provides empirical evidence for lockdown measures taken by the government on stock market returns and post lockdown impact of COVID-19 on daily market returns for over 6550 observations.

Are safe haven assets really safe during the 2008 global financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic?

This study evaluates the safe-haven role of twelve assets against the US stock market during the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results show that silver and the Islamic stock index were safe havens during the 2008 GFC, and the Islamic stock index and Tether have been safe havens during COVID-19. We observe that the Islamic stock index and Tether have emerged as strong new safe havens. However, our supplementary analysis reveals that gold and Bitcoin still exhibit safe-haven behavior during severe market downturns. Overall, our findings suggest that safe-haven assets may vary over time.