This article investigates the determinants of Net Interest Margins (NIM) of banks in Fiji, a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) in the South Pacific, over the period 2000-2010. Based mainly on the Ho and Saunders' (1981) dealership model and extensions thereto, this study uses a number of...

Purpose - Understanding the relationship between government revenue and government expenditure is important from a policy point of view, especially for a country like Fiji, which is suffering from persistent budget deficits. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between...

The Fijian economy seems to be have made a sustained recovery since 2011 after the impact of the economic fallout from the December 2006 coup. However, the recovery may not be as great as is being forecast by the Reserve Bank of Fiji. Higher growth rates have mostly remained elusive, despite the...

Does finance really lead to economic growth? A growing strand of literature finds positive and strong link between finance and growth. On the other hand, research has also questioned the robustness of the finance – growth nexus. Generally, however, there is some consensus that finance –...

Motivated by the Sharma and Gounder (2012b) finding that deposits may play a key role in enhancing bank credit to private sector in the Pacific, this study investigates a pertinent gap in the literature — the efficiency of banks in the region in converting deposits into credit. Data...

A body of evidence accumulated over the past several years, via different methods and estimation techniques, using firm –and household-level data, across many regions and countries show that finance matters for growth. Yet the role of finance in fostering growth in the Pacific, ironically, a...

This is the first study to simultaneously estimate the influence of market power and efficiency on profitability of banks in a Pacific Island context. Two market power hypotheses — the Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) and the Relative-Market-Power (RMP) hypotheses together with two measures...

Banks in the small island developing states of the Pacific have not only survived the Global Financial Crisis but remain strong and profitable raising the question: what determines the strong profitability of banks in the PICs? Moreover, despite the large and extended literature on the subject,...

Recognizing on one hand the importance of the MSE sector for growth and development of economies in the Pacific region and on the other, the financing constraints of the sector, we survey a group of MSEs in a Pacific island country and find that they may particularly be constrained by banks'...