Determinants of banks liquidity: evidence from OIC countries

Purpose Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to identify the key factors affecting banks’ liquidity in developing/less-developing countries. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the author uses the ordinary least-square fixed effect model on an unbalanced panel data set of all conventional banks (686 banks) operating in the organization of Islamic cooperation countries over the period 1989-2008. Findings The estimation results show that all the determinants have statistically significant relationship with liquidity (except for concentration) but with different signs. On the one hand, capital ratio, foreign ownership, credit risk, inflation rate, monetary policy and deposit insurance negatively affected banks’ liquidity, while on the other hand, efficiency, size, off-balance sheet activities, market capitalization and concentration have a positive link with banks’ liquidity. Originality/value According to the best of author’s knowledge, this is the first empirical study to investigate the determinants of banks liquidity in developing/less-developing countries using a large sample of banks (686 banks) and for long period (19 years).