The Impact of Corporate Governance and Political Connectedness on the Financial Performance of Lebanese Banks during the Financial Crisis of 2019–2021
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Using the relevant data of 194 banks from 2016 to 2021, this manuscript studies the impact of corporate governance and political connections on the financial performance of Lebanese banks during the financial crisis. It describes the research background, research methods and conclusions clearly and has a reasonable structure. However, the paper has the following problems:
- The research period in the title is from 2019 to 2021, inconsistent with that in the sample data.
- When constructing the multiple regression model, the authors omitted the random error term in Equation (1)~(6). Please expain it.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is interesting, but it is quite long
It would be a good idea to have the sections and subsections bolded.
Lit review
To a certain extent the references are not the newest ones. It would be nice to have an updated of them.
The relationship between sustainability management and performance and financial behavior as regards corporate governance mechanisms has not been covered, and thus such recent sources should be cited: May, A. Y. C., Hao, G. S., and Carter, S. (2021). “Intertwining Corporate Social Responsibility, Employee Green Behavior and Environmental Sustainability: The Mediation Effect of Organizational Trust and Organizational Identity,” Economics, Management, and Financial Markets 16(2): 32–61. doi: 10.22381/emfm16220212. Lăzăroiu, G., Ionescu, L., Andronie, M., and Dijmărescu, I. (2020). “Sustainability Management and Performance in the Urban Corporate Economy: A Systematic Literature Review,” Sustainability 12(18): 7705. doi: 10.3390/su12187705. Priem, R. (2021). “An Exploratory Study on the Impact of the COVID-19 Confinement on the Financial Behavior of Individual Investors,” Economics, Management, and Financial Markets 16(3): 9–40. doi: 10.22381/emfm16320211. The theoretical part should be renamed as hypothesis and conceptual model development. It should also be clear what the conceptual model is. The 12 hypothesis build up this model. Figure 1 is not clear and must be remade. The 12 hypothesis have to be shown on figure 1. For this kind of model you need to employ structural equations modelling. Regressions are not properly as you have to many relations and all relations can not be computed simultaneously. The tables are not clear. It is not possible to read them You need to show for each of the hypothesis separetely how you make the econometric computations. Now it is a mix up, and it is not clear which betas allow you to reject or accept the hypothesis. The tables are unreadable as the numbers are divided on different rows. This is inacceptable. The paper does not have discussions where the authors compare own findings with previous results from the literature. The paper has no proper conclusions consisting of theoretical implications managerial contributions limitations future research perspectives References are tooo old
Author Response
Please see changes in purple.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is interesting, but it is quite long. I do not have other suggestions for the authors.
