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PurposeThe majority of MENA countries suffer low levels of human development, coupled with scarcity of funding resources, low level of governance, and poor institutional environment. Consequently, this research aims at detecting the impact of development finance resources and institutional quality on the human development in the MENA region, in order to examine if/why the MENA countries fail to efficiently exploit all the available financial inflows to promote human development and boost living standards.Design/methodology/approachThis study tests the short- and long-run impact of six financing resources representing injections in the economy and four institutional quality variables on the human development index in the MENA region. It adopts co-integration analysis, vector error correction model, and Granger causality test on a sample of 13 MENA countries over the period 1996–2019.FindingsThis research finds that domestic credit to private sector and exports of goods and services do not have any significant added value for human development in the MENA region. In contrast, government expenditures and migrant remittances are found to be crucial in promoting human development in both the short- and long-run. FDI and ODA do enhance human development, but only in the short-run. In parallel, control of corruption, government effectiveness and regulation quality are essential boosters of human development in the MENA region, but with different importance, while political stability was found to be irrelevant.Originality/valueTo the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first study that examines the impact of financial inflows and institutional quality on the overall human development index in the MENA region. The contribution of this paper lies in unlocking for policymakers the potential impactful financing resources to serve national developmental plans, in an endeavour to catch up to the SDGs amid the additional challenges imposed by governance and institutional environment.

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The effect of bank heterogeneity on the transmission of monetary policy is capturing an increasing attention, and the debate on how bank specific characteristics may determine their reaction to monetary actions is mounting. This paper participates in this flow of research by studying the reaction of 40 banks operating in Lebanon between 1994 and 2017, to a change in lending interest rate, taking into consideration: size, market power, capitalisation, credit risk, and liquidity. The empirical results show that the impact of a change in interest rate on loan supply depends on bank market power and bank liquidity only. Consequently, interest rate channel in Lebanon operates through banks with high market power and banks with high liquidity stocks.