This study examines whether economic and geopolitical uncertainties affect bank risk. Using a sample of 574 banks from 19 countries for 2009–2020, our findings show that increasing economic and geopolitical uncertainty significantly constrain the bank risk and worsens its stability. Furthermore, we explore whether CEO power and board strength have played a moderate role in mitigating the adverse impact of economic and geopolitical uncertainty on bank risk. The finding shows that CEOs' power and strong boards improve the bank's performance and minimize the adverse effects of economic and geopolitical uncertainty on bank risk. The results are robust to alternative bank risk, economic uncertainty, and geopolitical uncertainty measures and address endogeneity. Additional analyses on bank heterogeneity show that the bank stability of listed, domestic and private-owned banks is more immune to such uncertainty.

本研究考察了经济和地缘政治的不确定性是否会影响银行风险。使用 2009 年至 2020 年间来自 19 个国家/地区的 574 家银行作为样本，我们的研究结果表明，日益增加的经济和地缘政治不确定性显着限制了银行风险并恶化其稳定性。此外，我们探讨了 CEO 权力和董事会实力是否在减轻经济和地缘政治不确定性对银行风险的不利影响方面发挥了适度的作用。调查结果表明，首席执行官的权力和强大的董事会可以提高银行的业绩，并最大限度地减少经济和地缘政治不确定性对银行风险的不利影响。结果对替代银行风险、经济不确定性和地缘政治不确定性措施具有稳健性，并解决了内生性问题。对银行异质性的额外分析表明，上市银行、内资银行和民营银行的银行稳定性更不受这种不确定性的影响。