The impact of monetary policy on bank performance and risk is driven by bank individual characteristics and the COVID-19 pandemic, and the joint effect of bank individual factors and the coronavirus has been under-researched so far. To fill this void, this research applies the dynamic two-step system generalized method of moments (S-GMM) estimator to a sample of representative commercial banks on a quarterly basis for a small open emerging market such as Vietnam. We find that monetary policy expansion stimulates both banks’ performance and risk in a COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, the effectiveness of monetary policy expansion on banks’ operating outcomes is dependent on the interaction between the heterogeneity of the bank’s balance sheet items and the COVID-19 outbreak. More specifically, the performance-decreasing effects of monetary policy loosening are more pronounced in banks with small size, high liquidity, low capitalization, and high credit risk in the shadow of the COVID-19 crisis. Meanwhile, the risk-increasing impacts of monetary policy easing are conspicuous in well liquid, less capitalized, and high credit risk banks in an uncertain time of the COVID-19 crisis. These results are robust to alternative proxies of monetary policy instruments.

While there is a large body of research on the bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission and the distributional dependence of this transmission on bank characteristics, the asymmetric effect of bank capital on monetary policy—bank loan supply nexus has been ignored. To fill this void, the new post-estimation approach of marginal analysis based on the two-step system-GMM methodology is conducted for the dynamic panel data of Vietnamese commercial banks covering the period of 2007–2020. The results confirm the inertia related to loan growth and the presence of a monetary policy bank lending mechanism, which is robust across a series of monetary policy instruments and the approach of variable exclusion from the baseline model. In addition to previous empirical evidence on less sensitivity of well-capitalized banks to tightened monetary policy, this study shows the specific range value of bank capital that monetary policy stance has no impact on bank loan supply in a time of monetary restrictions. Furthermore, better capitalized banks could take more advantage of the expansionary monetary policy by lending more. The relevant policy recommendations for policy-makers are also provided to the best practice of monetary policy implementations considering these asymmetric effects.

There is a large body of research investigating the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on economic growth; however, the empirical evidence on growth and its volatility simultaneously driven by ICT diffusion has still remained scarce so far. To fill this void, system two-step generalized method of moments (S-GMM) estimator and a new proxy capturing the product of growth and its fluctuation is employed to determine the nexus between ICT penetration and the interaction of growth and its volatility. Using a comprehensive panel of 122 economies covering the period 2000–2019, we find that all proxies for the ICT revolution show positive impacts on the product of growth and its volatility. This means that an increase in ICT diffusion could lead to both higher growth and lower growth volatility. To offer robust and consistent results, ICT growth and its volatility nexus are confirmed through several econometric techniques such as panel quantile regression, the control of fixed effects, alternative measure for the interaction between growth and its fluctuation, and across countries with different national incomes. The research could give rise to use of this proxy for the product of growth and its volatility with inverse hyperbolic sine transformation in the empirically econometric model for the future studies.

Research on the impact of fiscal policy and foreign direct investment (FDI) on environmental quality has yielded conflicting results on their effects on carbon dioxide emissions. To further explore the asymmetric influences of these two critical factors on environmental quality, we employed a nonlinear ARDL approach to examine how fiscal policy (GOEX), FDI inflows, and other drivers of CO₂ emissions, such as trade openness, financial development, and economic growth, have affected environmental quality in Vietnam from 1990 to 2022. Our findings indicate that a positive shock in GOEX results in decreased emissions, whereas a negative shock in GOEX leads to increased emissions, challenging previous research that suggests that higher expenditures typically harm the environment. We also observe that positive changes in FDI result in higher CO₂ emissions, whereas negative FDI shifts have no significant impact. Additionally, our study reveals that trade openness improves environmental conditions, whereas economic growth and financial development contribute to increased CO₂ emissions. The responses of CO₂ emissions to the asymmetric effects of fiscal policy, FDI inflows, and other determinants in the short term last in the long term. These insights are valuable for policymakers in developing environmental sustainability strategies to mitigate climate change by addressing fiscal policies and other determinants of CO₂ emissions.

Despite the driving role of economic growth, SMEs in Vietnam have dealt with many critical constraints relating to insufficiency of internal financing sources and inaccessibility of external funds arising from the crisis period. Based on the unique dataset of Vietnam’s SMEs covering the period of 2008–2016, this research aims to investigate the role of the financial crisis on financing and investment behaviours of SMEs, which remains scarce in the existing studies. The results find that there is a reduction in SMEs’ investment caused by the crisis period. In addition, following the onset of the economic crisis, the internally generated finance is more influential on SMEs’ investment than the supply of bank finance, supporting the pecking order theory to explain the nexus between investment and financing behaviours, similar to the behaviours of large-sized firms or listed firms. Some policy implications are provided to better conduct business practices for the sustainability of SMEs.

This research aims to consider determinants of economic growth, such as financial development, institutional quality, and information and communication technology (ICT) penetration, which have been explored separately in previous studies and have produced mixed findings in different regions. Using the two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator for a dynamic panel dataset of 35 selected emerging countries, several research findings could be drawn as the following. First, both ICT penetration and institutional quality have significantly positive effects on economic growth. On the contrary, economic development could be hampered by financial development. Second, there are the U-shape and inverted U-shape relations for the cases of institutional quality and ICT penetration on economic growth, respectively. Third, the interaction effect of ICT penetration and financial development could enhance economic growth while the negative impact of financial development on economic development is amplified by the high level of institutional quality. These findings are robust to the global financial crisis control and the use of an alternative ICT proxy when setting up the approach of principal component analysis. Given these findings from emerging countries, some policy challenges that policy-makers should address by simultaneously considering each growth driver, such as financial development, ICT evolution, and institutional quality and interactions between them, as well as the non-monotonic effect of ICT penetration and institutional quality to facilitate economic growth.