Banking Sector Development and Bank Risk-Taking Behaviour: Evidence from Commercial and Non-commercial Banks in Tanzania

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of banking sector development measured by domestic credit provided by banks to private sector as percentage of GDP on risk-taking behaviour of the banks in Tanzania, measured in terms of bank capitalization ratio. The relationship was observed using annual country-level and bank-level data from commercial and non-commercial banks operating in Tanzania from 2012 to 2021. A system GMM estimation technique was employed in the investigation. Our results found that the effects of banking sector development on bank risk measured in terms of bank capitalization ratio is homogeneous across commercial and non-commercial banks. This means the development in banking sector measured as credit to the private sector by banks percentage of GDP in Tanzania has significant positive effect on bank capitalization ratio. Hence, reduce bank risk of default. Nonetheless, the findings reveal further that the profitability of bank and bank size factors are significant positive and negative respectively in relation to bank capitalization ratio. The results are further robust to bank ownership status dummy variable (DOSF) and for country of originality of the banks (DCOF) used to investigate whether there will be significant change in the result or not. The results of the robustness test indicate that banking sector development has insignificant effects on capitalization ratio when banks categorized as domestic and foreign banks as well as when banks categorized as private and state-owned banks.