ECONOMETRIC ASSESSMENT OF MACROECONOMIC FACTORS INFLUENCING NON-PERFORMING LOANS IN COMMERCIAL BANKS

Abstract

This study develops a dynamic panel econometric framework to quantify the structural impact of macroeconomic conditions on the non-performing loan (NPL) ratios of commercial banks across a panel of twenty-eight emerging market economies observed between 2010 and 2024. Addressing dynamic persistence and the endogeneity inherent in the joint determination of credit quality and macro-financial conditions, the empirical strategy combines a two-step System Generalized Method of Moments (System GMM) estimator with a Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (P-ARDL) error-correction specification estimated via Pooled Mean Group (PMG). The results confirm strong dynamic persistence in NPL ratios and show that real GDP growth, the unemployment rate, consumer price inflation, and the real lending rate are statistically significant macroeconomic drivers of asset-quality deterioration. Critically, the interaction between currency depreciation and the share of unhedged foreign-currency lending is found to amplify the NPL response to exchange-rate shocks, a channel of particular relevance to partially dollarized banking systems in transition economies such as Uzbekistan, where reported and risk-based measures of asset quality have been shown to diverge materially. The error-correction estimates indicate that approximately one-third of any disequilibrium between actual and long-run equilibrium NPL levels is corrected within a single year. These findings offer a structural basis for calibrating countercyclical provisioning and macroprudential buffers in emerging banking systems exposed to currency and business-cycle volatility.