The spotlight of this study is to examine whether environmental, social, and governance performance affects the financial performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs). The topic has been of much interest to researchers and policymakers due to increased awareness among stakeholders on the adverse social and environmental impacts of business actions. Using a dataset covering 5 years for 62 MFIs across 34 countries, we find that environmental and governance performance has no impact on the financial performance of MFIs. As for the social-financial performance nexus, our results reveal a positive relationship using the depth of outreach as proxy of social performance. However, when women empowerment is used as a proxy for social performance, evidence suggest presence of negative relationship. The study contributes to the literature by providing new evidence on the relationship between environmental, social, and governance and financial performance from microfinance industry. Our results are robust to a variety of econometric specifications and have significant policy implications for donors, investors, MFIs, and regulators.

Despite the promising evidence of the corporate social and environmental performance-corporate financial performance relations across various business sectors, the findings from banking sector remain limited and inconclusive. This article examines the impact of access to finance and environmental financing on the financial performance of the banking sector globally. Based on cross-sectional linear regression and non-linear threshold regression of 713 banks from 75 countries over the period of 2013-2015, we find that access to finance has significantly positive effects on banks' financial performance in most of the estimation models controlling for both bank specific and macroeconomic variables. The positive impact on financial performance is channelled through loan growth (in both cases) and management quality (in the case of access to finance). We find that banks with total assets of lower than USD 2.07 billion experience significantly positive impact of access to finance on their ROE. Policy implications toward policy and regulatory development in the banking sector are discussed.

This study seeks to examine whether corporate environmental performance (CEP) and corporate social performance (CSP) affect stability of the banking industry. The topic is of much interest to researchers and policy makers considering the growing demand to integrate environmental and social practices into banking business model. Based on a panel dataset of 473 banks in 74 countries, this research finds that CEP is negatively related to bank stability as measured by non-performing loans (NPL). However, the impact is insignificant for small and large banks, as well as for banks in countries with low environmental scores. Furthermore, CSP does not appear to have a significant relationship with bank stability, but financial product safety, which is an aspect of CSP, does. The results are robust to a variety of econometric specifications and have significant policy implications for investors, bankers and regulators.

The spotlight of this study is to examine the relationship between microfinance and poverty with specific focus to OIC countries and Islamic Microfinance institutions (MFls). Using an unbalanced panel dataset covering of 2,904 microfinance institutions from 120 countries and applying two econometrics techniques: Generalized method of moments (GMM) and two stage least squares instrumental variable regression, my study fails to establish the positive role of microfinance institutions in alleviating poverty. Taking into account the endogeneity problem associated with microfinance loans and domestic credit, I show that microfinance institutions neither reach the poor nor the poorest. I find no significant difference in performance of microfinance institution in OIC and Non-OIC countries when it comes to poverty reduction. Moreover, evidence suggest that role played by Islamic microfinance institutions and conventional MFIs in combating poverty is indifferent. The study contributes to the literature by providing new evidence on the microfinance-poverty nexus at macro level, comparing between OIC and Non-OIC countries as well as Islamic and conventional MFIs. Results presented in this study have important policy implications for researchers, investors, governments and international bodies ...