The optimum economic outcome of financial system development depends on its level of efficiency. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of institutional quality on financial system efficiency. For empirical analysis, we have used a panel dataset of 108 countries from 1996–2020 and employed fixed effect regression and two stages least squares (2SLS) regression methods. The empirical results show that institutional quality has a significant positive effect on financial system efficiency. Particularly all the constituting elements—voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, rule of law, and control of corruption—of institutional quality are found to have a significant positive impact on financial system efficiency. Moreover, we found that the effect of institutional quality is more pronounced in countries with low-income levels and strong institutional quality. These findings are robust across several robustness tests conducted using additional controls, alternative methodologies, an alternative measure of institutional quality, and financial system efficiency. The results of the study suggest that policy makers should prioritize both enhancing and sustaining institutional quality to promote the efficiency of the financial system, which is crucial for sustainable growth and development.

Economic policy uncertainty (EPU) adversely affects financial system functioning with potentially critical repercussions for economies and corporations worldwide. Financial system efficiency (FSE) has a vital influence on fostering optimal economic growth and development; however, the impact of EPU on FSE remains under-explored. This study investigates the effect of EPU on FSE along with its components financial institution efficiency (FIE) and financial market efficiency (FME). Using data from 22 countries over a 20-year period (2002–2021), our analysis reveals a significant negative effect of EPU on FSE, FIE and FME. Notably, our split-sample analysis highlights the accentuated adverse effects of EPU in high-EPU regimes, emphasising the importance of vigilance during periods of elevated policy uncertainty. We conduct a series of sensitivity tests, including alternative measures of EPU, FSE, FIE and FME, and apply two-stage least squares and two-step dynamic system generalised method of moments estimators and introduce additional control variables. These tests consistently reaffirm the core conclusions of our study. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for policymakers.

Trust is a basic component of social trust that has been neglected in existing empirical literature regarding stock markets comovements. It is an important factor due to its implications for portfolio management and financial system stability. This study investigates how trust distance affects the way stock markets co-move together in ASEAN, BRICS, and G12 countries. Further, we investigate the moderating effect of trust distance on trade between different nations and the comovement of their stock markets. This is because trade is an important factor when it comes to stock market integration. Our findings based on the OLS and quantile regression demonstrate that similarity in trust positively affects the way stock markets move together, however, this is not always the case during market turmoils because of increased volatility. For the quantile regression we discovered that trust distance has an asymmetric effect to stock markets co-movement as it is only significant below the 60th percentile only. Moreover, we find that trust positively moderates the effect of trade on stock markets’ co-movement between BRICS and G12 nations as it increases openness to trade which in turn leads to synchronizing business cycles and equity markets. This however is not the case with ASEAN nations as they are still nascent markets and not yet mature. The policy implications for stakeholders imply that invetors need to diversify their portfolios to markets which are furthest in trust distance above 1 and that policymakers like central banks need to put in place regulations which consider trust distance in order to avoid financial contagion during market turmoils.