حسین باستان زاد

Development of e-banking has empirically modified the structure and characters of banks’ performance, efficiency, risk and challenges which have also been articulately recognized based on the international best practices. E-banking brazenly accelerates and restructures financial transactions via enhancing technology and expanding the banking services in comparison with conventional banking. Accordingly, online access to the banks’ products, financial statements, payment services and even credit scoring has considerably improved banks-customers relationships in the context of lending and borrowing practice, deposit composition, investment opportunities, trade finance options as well as account management diversification. The impact of recent e-banking developments is statistically evaluated for Iran’s banking network via Dynamic Panel Data approach. The findings highlight that the ratio of ATMs and Electronic Cards transactions to banks' assets negatively-significantly influence the profitability due to higher substitution ratio with the other payment instruments and maintenance cost. The ratio of online branch transactions to the banks' assets negatively-insignificantly affects the profitability owing to the rapid increase in the NPLs and loan/loss expenses which has consequently shrunk Shared Revenues over the past 10 years. SWIFT-branches have positively-significantly enhanced the banks internal-secured cash flow while contemporaneously improves fund efficiency, banks’ services fees, and ultimately profit margin.

Financial statements of nineteen mature banks have been patronized to examine the impact of macroeconomic indicators and bank-specific determinants on the NPLs ratio through Quantile and Panel Data regression approaches. The impact of macroeconomic indicators on credit risk is statistically estimated for banking network via two directions. First, different quantiles are econometrically calculated, assessed and compared during 2007-12. Second, the Panel Data estimation is utilized in the same way to verify the outcomes of quanitle regression and to check the robustness. Results indicate that the impact of real money supply on the banks’ NPLs in 25%, 50%, and 75% of data is positive and significant in line with empirical evidence. The coefficients of the other variables (including the ratio of individual banks’ performing loans to total deposits, individual banks’ performing loans to total loans ratio, as well as GDP would be positively significant as well. The real interest rate has negatively-significantly driven NPLs. The banks’ NPLs are generally exacerbated by the impact of higher real money supply over the long run, real interest rate in the money market and upper return in the assets market mainly because of the negative-inflationary transmission effect. JEL Classifications: C16, C23, E51, G21

Development of E-banking has modified the structure of banking business and banking performance, efficiency, risk and challenges which have also been articulately recognized based on the international best practices. E-banking brazenly expedites and streamlines financial transactions via enhancing technology and expanding the bank services in comparison with conventional banking. Accordingly, online access to the banks’ products, financial statements, payment services and even credit scoring has considerably improved bank-customer relationships in the context of lending and borrowing practice, deposit composition, investment opportunities, trade finance options as well as account management diversification. The impact of recent E-banking developments on banking is statistically tested for the banking network of Iran using Dynamic Panel Data approach. Results indicate that the ratio of ATMs and Electronic Cards to bank assets positively and significantly influence profitability ratios. Meanwhile, the ratio of online branches and Pin Pads to the banks' assets negatively and significantly affects profitability although the transaction volumes have surged for the banks under study. JEL Classification: G21, G23, G32, F34 Keywords: E-Banking, Risks, Banks' Soundness Indicators

Quality Growth Index (QGI) is affected by two sets of combined-structural and social indicators. Structural indicator contributes to achieve the main target of sound-sustainable-competitive output growth. By the way, the sound output growth should enhance social-public services and living standards. Although QGIs are weightedly computed based on different scenarios, the trend of the QGIs and coefficient of variation of the QGIs indicate the robustness of results. The correlation among QGI and social sub-components highlights a positive relationship between QGI and school enrolment, per capita income and public spending on education and health. The result of co-integration model indicates that higher government size and devaluation of local currency have evidently exacerbated QGI. Meanwhile, openness and inflation underscore the positive long-run impact over QGI. Vector error correction equation outlines that about 84 percent of a short-term shock to the co-integrating vector will be absorbed in the first period. In this context, the impulse response of the QGI to the exchange rate and government size shocks are diminishingly and negatively permanent while the response of the QGI to the openness shock is significantly and positively permanent. JEL Classification: O40, O55, I10, I20, I32

Monetary environment as the core of financial system has been functionally designed in light of the new set of extensive goals including financial stability, sustainable noninflationary growth, external sustainability, and price stability. A comprehensive monetary policy framework is proposed for Iran which systematically include the new goals, stance variables, instruments, transmission mechanism as well as timely monitoring system. Accordingly, macroeconomic data provides a reliable momentum to evaluate how far the macroeconomic condition is away from the monetary goals in case the data is timely-consistently compiled by policy makers. A wide variety of policy instruments are occasionally applied in the context of the new monetary policy framework by the conventional transmission channels which are technically tracked via monetary condition index, early warning system, leading indicators, and stress tests that give a timely feedback to policy makers to draw contemporaneously a picture of macro prudential stance. Given the prominent share of asset market (housing and capital) in the whole financial and nonfinancial markets in Iran, the monetary policy is empirically required to streamline assets market’s flow of funds instead of extra concentration on broad money growth and lending channel. Meanwhile, balance sheet channel is obviously expected to be more effective against monetary policy stance rather than lending channel in order to achieve monetary goals. In this regard, housing and capital markets are both significantly considered more efficient to finance flow of funds and fiscal deficit. JEL Classifications: E52, E59, G10