Terrorist attacks and bank financial stability: evidence from MENA economies

This study examines the impact of terrorism on bank stability, represented by bank risk and financial performance. We consider banks from 14 countries located in the Middle East and North Africa region for the period 2010–2018 using both the three-stage least-square and the generalised method of moments. The results provide strong evidence that banks located in countries with high exposure to terrorist attack exhibit low financial stability, due to high bank risk (i.e., high credit and insolvency risk). However, these banks show high financial performance (i.e., high profitability and cost efficiency), on average. Our results also show differential impacts on bank stability for countries marked as more (less) exposed to risk of attacks. For banks located in high-income-generating countries, we find that exposure to terrorism is associated with low financial performance and high credit risk, which is the opposite case for low-income-generating countries. Our results also indicate high systemic risk for listed banks operating under high terrorism risk exposure.