Countries with high levels of human development should be able to reduce the impact of natural disasters in terms of the total numbers of people killed and affected, and damage. In this study we investigate the impact of human development indicators such as income per capita and human capital (education level) on natural disaster fatalities (total deaths, total affected and total economic losses) in 79 selected countries. Using dynamic panel data analysis, we found that the level of economic development plays an important role in mitigating the impact of natural disasters such as droughts, earthquakes, extreme temperatures, floods, storms, volcanoes, landslides and wildfires. Other factors that are found to determine the number of natural disaster fatalities include population, population density, unemployment, investment, government consumption, openness, education and corruption. Using the dynamic panel data model, we found that education, investment, government consumption and openness display an inverse relationship, while population and population density have a direct positive relationship.

This study examines the impact of financial development on bank risk-taking, measured as bank capitalization and bank income diversification. We observe the relationship using annual bank-level data from countries with dual-banking systems. The dataset spans from 2000 to 2014. Our results suggest that the impact of financial development on bank capitalization is heterogeneous across Islamic and conventional commercial banks. Moreover, the effect is different across listed and unlisted banks. However, on average, the response of income diversification to financial development is similar across most specifications. Additionally, bank risk is found to be countercyclical, suggesting that bank risk increases in good times. On average, these results (countercyclical evidence) hold across bank types (Islamic and conventional) and ownership structure (listed and unlisted). However, these results are contingent on the size (small vs. large) factor. The results are robust to alternative proxies of financial development.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to find the meaningful relationship between the economic impact of the natural disaster and economic condition.Design/methodology/approach: The paper employed cross‐sectional analysis to investigate the relationship between economic condition namely, gross domestic product per capita (GDPpc); gross domestic product per capita squared (GDPpc²); government consumption ratio to GDP (gc); ratio of M2 over GDP(M2); years of schooling attainment (sc); land area and finally; population and the economic impact of natural disasters, whereby ten types of natural disasters were chosen. The degree to which the human and economic losses due to these ten natural disasters were measured by, the variables selected are, number of killed; total affected; and ratio of total damage to GDP. Three different points of time were regressed, namely, 1985, 1995, and 2005 covering 73 countries.Findings: Results clearly indicate that there seems to be meaningful relationship between the economic impact of natural disasters and economic conditions.Practical implications: The paper provides some evidence on the important role of economic condition in minimizing the impact of natural disasters.Originality/value: The paper incorporates a comprehensive list of explanatory variables in accounting for natural disaster fatalities.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the determinants and the impact of financial development on shadow economy in OIC countries and then compared with non-OIC countries.Design/methodology/approach: The study applies advanced panel GMM technique.Findings: The study finds that macro-variables (unemployment, economic growth, money supply and foreign trade) and institutional variables reduce shadow economy both in OIC and non-OIC countries. The study also explores that financial development mitigates shadow economy; however, its impact is significantly less in case of OIC economies compared to the non-OIC countries.Research limitations/implications: Since the focus of this study is OIC countries vs non-OIC countries, the research only includes discussion about shadow economy in 42 OIC member states and 99 non-OIC economies. The decision to restrict the study to 42 OIC economies and 99 non-OIC nations is due to the availability of data.Practical implications: The study suggests that free market and good business environment in the formal economy are the keys to have less shadow economy. Good institutional setup and ease in regulations can attract firms and businesses from informal sector to the official economy, while political instability is one of the main factors for having large size of shadow economy.Social implications: The OIC member countries should implement policies which improve accessibility to finance of every citizen of the country.Originality/value: Despite the growing importance of shadow economy, the literature investigating determinants and the role of financial development in shadow economy is scarce. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no literature that examined the shadow economy in the context of OIC member countries. Furthermore, this study has covered a large number of OIC and non-OIC economics over time and across different groups using largest data and advanced panel GMM techniques.