This paper investigates the impact of regulation and ownership on the performance of banks in 19 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We test the hypothesis that the effect of regulation on bank profitability depends on the type of ownership structure. The public and private views of bank regulation are also tested along with the interaction of bank regulation and ownership. We find regulation measures to have a strong influence on bank profitability, whereas ownership structure seems to play a limited role in explaining bank performance in the MENA region. The results support the private view of bank regulation and suggest that capital requirements and private monitoring when interacted with ownership concentration exert a strong influence on bank profitability. When the analysis is done separately for conventional and Islamic banks, we find that the impact of bank regulations though strongly significant, does not depend on the type of ownership structure prevailing in conventional banks. In contrast, regulatory effects seem to be important drivers of profitability of Islamic banks. Therefore, it is very important for policy makers in these countries not to treat the two types of banks identically when setting up and implementing bank regulations especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

本文调查了监管和所有权对中东和北非 (MENA) 地区 19 个国家银行业绩的影响。我们检验监管对银行盈利能力的影响取决于所有权结构类型的假设。银行监管的公共和私人观点也随着银行监管和所有权的相互作用而受到检验。我们发现监管措施对银行盈利能力有很大影响，而所有权结构似乎在解释 MENA 地区银行业绩方面的作用有限。结果支持银行监管的私人观点，并表明资本要求和私人监控与所有权集中相互作用时对银行盈利能力产生强烈影响。当对传统银行和伊斯兰银行分别进行分析时，我们发现银行监管的影响虽然非常显着，但并不取决于传统银行普遍存在的所有权结构类型。相比之下，监管效应似乎是伊斯兰银行盈利能力的重要驱动因素。因此，这些国家的政策制定者在制定和实施银行法规时，尤其是在 COVID-19 大流行期间，不要将这两种银行一视同仁，这一点非常重要。