中国工业企业动态演化效率研究：所有制视角

不同所有制企业陆续进入、退出市场以及在市场中展开竞争,是中国渐进式改革在企业层面的一个重要特征。本文借助中国工业企业数据库(1998~2007年),在VDF总量生产率增长分解框架下,测度了不同所有制企业的动态演进效率。研究发现国有企业在总量上的效率贡献最大,民营企业在增量上的效率贡献则最大。经济总量上,内部效率提升环节对总量生产率贡献最大,而增量上,退出环节对总量生产率贡献最大,表明中国经济已经走上了一条内生增长、创新驱动与优胜劣汰的发展道路。进入环节无论在何种情况下效率贡献均为负,说明中国依然是一个进入门槛较高的国家。不同所有制企业对总量生产率的贡献与企业生命周期有关。本文对澄清我国企业改革的所有制误区,推进混合所有制经济改革与寻找经济增长新动力有着重要的理论价值与现实意义。     

An analysis of foreign takeovers in the United States

Using a sample of 96 US companies taken over by foreign companies during the period 1975-87, we assess foreign takeovers in two stages: pre-takeover and takeover. We find evidence that foreign firms target US firms whose operations are related to their own operations and that have low market-to-book ratios, suggesting foreign bidders acquire firms that provide a greater opportunity for market entry and synergistic gains. The synergistic gains appear to result from the foreign buyer using its own intangible assets (e.g. managerial skills) to improve the target. We also find that foreign takeover activity is aimed primarily at US industries that themselves make high levels of foreign direct investments, implying that the bidders use takeovers as a quick way to counteract rival firms' moves. We find evidence that foreign takeovers take place in relatively mature, low-growth industries and that foreign targets are, on average, smaller than the non-targets. The wealth effect on the announcement of a takeover is significantly higher for foreign takeovers than for takeovers by domestic firms. Also, we find that foreign bidders pay a slightly higher premium for targets whose operations are related to their own.     

Developing foreign bank efficiency models for DEA grounded in finance theory

We develop foreign bank technical, cost and profit efficiency models for particular application with data envelopment analysis (DEA). Key motivations for the paper are (a) the often-observed practice of choosing inputs and outputs where the selection process is poorly explained and linkages to theory are unclear, and (b) foreign bank productivity analysis, which has been neglected in DEA banking literature. The main aim is to demonstrate a process grounded in finance and banking theories for developing bank efficiency models, which can bring comparability and direction to empirical productivity studies. We expect this paper to foster empirical bank productivity studies.     

Long-term performance of divesting firms and the effect of managerial ownership

We study the long-term performance of firms that divest assets to assess whether gains arise from reducing agency costs. We find that divesting firms underperform control firms before the divestiture and outperform control firms following the divestiture. The poor performance experienced by divesting firms is unrelated to managerial ownership, but the post-divestiture improvement in performance is strongly related to stock ownership by the CEO. The results support the argument that divestitures remove assets that generate negative synergies and that managerial ownership provides strong incentives to improve operations following the divestiture.     

Inefficiency and heterogeneity in Turkish banking: 1990–2000

Recent studies have stressed the importance of privatization and openness to foreign competition for bank efficiency and economic growth. We study bank efficiency in Turkey, an emerging economy with great heterogeneity in bank types and ownership structures. Earlier studies of Turkish banking had three limitations: (i) excessive reliance on cost‐function frontier analyses, wherein volume of loans is a measure of banking output; (ii) pooling all banks or imposing ad hoc heterogeneity assumptions; and (iii) lack of a comprehensive panel data set for proper analysis of productivity and heterogeneity. We use an estimation–classification procedure to find likelihood‐driven classification of bank technologies in an 11‐year panel. In addition, we augment traditional cost‐frontier analysis with a labour‐efficiency analysis. We conclude that state banks are not particularly inefficient overall, but that they do utilize labour inefficiently. This partially supports recent calls for privatization. We also conclude that special finance houses (or Islamic banks) utilize the same technology as conventional domestic banks, and do so relatively efficiently. This suggests that they do not cause harm to the financial system. Finally, we conclude that foreign banks utilize a different technology from domestic ones. This suggests that one should not overstate their value to the financial sector. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of bank competition and concentration on bank risk-taking behavior and stability: Evidence from GCC countries

This paper presents a comprehensive assessment of the impact of competition on bank fragility pre and post financial crisis period in the GCC banking market as measured by bank risk-taking behavior and bank stability during the period 1998–2016. Our results indicate that a higher level of bank competition and the greater degree of concentration adds to financial fragility. The findings further shows that during the 2008 crisis, lower bank competition maintain the stability of GCC banks. We also find that lower level of competition and lower concentration in the banking market increases the risk-taking behavior of the low capitalized, low liquid and small banks which add to fragility in the banking system. Our findings suggest that countries with greater capital stringency, greater supervisory power, greater market discipline, and private monitoring, with explicit deposit insurance schemes, higher shareholder protection, and higher legal efficiency decrease banks’ risk-taking and increase their stability. We also find that greater regulatory restrictions and higher creditor protection decrease banks’ stability and increase risk in concerned countries. We find support for both competition-fragility and competition-stability hypotheses in the GCC banking market. The results also confirm that the use of a single measure of competition is insufficient to assess the role of competition in banking stability.     

Efficiency, productivity, and scale economies in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry

The paper examines efficiency, productivity and scale economies in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry. Productivity change is analyzed using Malmquist indices, and efficiency is estimated using data envelopment analysis. The results indicate that the majority of firms below median size in the industry are operating with increasing returns to scale, and the majority of firms above median size are operating with decreasing returns to scale. However, a significant number of firms in each size decile have achieved constant returns to scale. Over the sample period, the industry experienced significant gains in total factor productivity, and there is an upward trend in scale and allocative efficiency. More diversified firms and insurance groups were more likely to achieve efficiency and productivity gains. Higher technology investment is positively related to efficiency and productivity improvements.     

Knowledge Spillovers,ICT and Productivity Growth

This paper looks at the channels through which intangible assets affect productivity growth. The econometric analysis exploits a new data set on intangible investment (INTAN‐Invest) in conjunction with EUKLEMS productivity estimates for 10 EU member states from 1998 to 2007. We find that (a) the output elasticity of intangible capital depends upon ICT intensity, consistent with complementarities between ICT and intangible capital; (b) non‐R&D intangible capital has a higher estimated output elasticity than its factor share, as does (c) an index of labour composition. The last two findings are consistent with growth spillovers from investments in knowledge‐based/intangible capital and skills.     

Expansion and Efficiency in Banking: Evidence from Ghana

We use a translog functional form to estimate a stochastic frontier function of cost and profit efficiency (PE) of Ghanaian banks under the Battese–Coelli time‐varying decaying inefficiency parameterization for (unbalanced) panel data. We regressed efficiency estimates on a distance variable controlling for bank size, total cost, and profits. We find that Ghanaian bank PE is worsening, whereas cost efficiency is improving for the period analyzed. Our results show that PE is not related to distance, size, or cost and profitability ratios. Distance is however positively and significantly related to cost efficiency. Cost efficiency is however not influenced by size or cost and profit ratios. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evidence on the financial characteristics of banks that do and do not use derivatives

While the use of derivatives by U.S. commercial banks has exploded in recent years, the growth has not been evenly distributed. At present, only about five percent of banks are involved in the market for derivatives. Although the concentration of derivatives activities in the largest banks is well known, we know less about other factors underlying a bank’s decision to use derivatives. This article investigates the financial characteristics of banks that use derivatives and those that do not. We find that user banks, compared to nonusers, are associated with riskier capital structures (more notes and debentures and less equity capital), larger maturity mismatches between assets and liabilities, greater net loan charge-offs, and lower net interest margins. We also find that banks, especially smaller ones, benefit from being associated with bank-holding companies. Finally, our evidence does not support a regulatory hypothesis in which banks must have stronger capital positions to engage in derivative activities.JEL Classification: G21, G28, G32     

Credit allocation and the financial crisis: evidence from Spanish companies

The worldwide financial crisis of 2007–2008 raised serious concerns about the soundness of banks’ activities and about the extent to which banking regulation should supervise banks’ investment decisions. We contribute to this topic by examining the Spanish case, which has been emblematic of the bubble and burst dynamics in the credit market. In particular, we study the allocation of bank credit among Spanish companies from 1999 to 2014, showing that larger companies accumulated greater amounts of bank loans per unit of total assets, thus leading to a notable concentration. We also find that, during the Spanish boom period, bank loans shifted from the manufacturing to the construction industry, and in particular to the largest companies of the latter sector. This happened in spite of the high leverage of large construction firms, which was increasing also due to their growing debt. We argue that the higher operating benefits, reflecting the increase of the housing price during the boom period, overvalued construction firms as potential borrowers. The bankruptcy of several large construction companies during the Spanish crisis supports the need for monitoring and regulation, to avoid an excessive concentration of bank credit to a few large companies, especially if they belong to a specific sector.

     

Golden eggs versus plastic eggs: hyperbolic preferences and the persistence of debit

The popularity of debit cards is good news from a social perspective since they carry a lower transaction cost than other non-cash payment methods. Unfortunately, the reason for this consumer driven growth remains a mystery. Consumers do not benefit from any of the gains created by the low transaction costs. Rather, the incentives being offered to consumers encourage them to use credit cards despite higher transaction costs. We demonstrate that consumers may be using debit cards as a means of budgetary precommitment when preferences are hyperbolic. Using data from the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that consumers substitute debit use for investment in illiquid assets as a method of self constraint as incomes fall.     

Estimating banking cost efficiency with the consideration of cost management

This study re-investigates the bank cost efficiency by a combination of two strands of literature. The first strand is related to bank cost efficiency; the other is related to earnings management. Employing the findings reported in bank earnings management literature, this study argues that bank observed total cost (“accounting cost”) may be the biased estimator of the true total cost. Using the biased total cost may thus yield incorrect inferences from estimating bank cost efficiency. We propose a method to modify accounting cost, which is referred to as “economic cost”, to be consistent with the economic theory; that is, one that is free of cost management. Both accounting and economic costs are then adopted to analyze the efficiency of 29 commercial banks in Taiwan banking industry. Our results show that estimated efficiency, with the application of economic cost, offers results that are more reasonable results than those of the accounting cost.     

The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Micro Enterprises: Do Banks Matter? Evidence from Indian Manufacturing

This paper looks at the impact of trade liberalization on micro enterprises with differential access to banks. I use Indian data on rural micro enterprises employing less than ten workers in the manufacturing sector to find that trade liberalization, measured by a fall in the tariff, is associated with a larger increase or a smaller decrease in output, capital–labour ratio and labour productivity in districts with a larger number of bank branches per capita. Evidence is consistent with strong complementarities between trade liberalization effects, and the economic dynamism and access to financial intermediation associated with greater bank presence in the enterprise's location. The study underscores that trade liberalization can be beneficial to micro entrepreneurs under certain conditions and emphasizes reallocation resulting from trade liberalization. The study hence highlights the role for development policy in exploiting gains from trade.     

Explaining Bank Productivity in Ghana

The objective of this paper is to examine productivity changes among Ghanaian banks. The Malmquist productivity index is employed to estimate total factor productivity changes and its components on a panel of 18 banks from 2003 to 2011. The results indicate that productivity growth was attributable to the catch‐up effect of efficiency changes. We also find productivity growth across three categories of bank size to be driven by efficiency changes. From a panel regression analysis, we identify size, concentration, income diversification and risk as the factors that explain productivity differences among Ghanaian banks. Recommendations for improving bank productivity are derived from the results. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An entropy approach to size and variance heterogeneity in U.S. commercial banks

In this paper, we investigate the effect of bank size differences on cost efficiency heterogeneity using a heteroskedastic stochastic frontier model. This model is implemented by using an information theoretic maximum entropy approach. We explicitly model both bank size and variance heterogeneity simultaneously. We find that non-performing loans, federal insurance premium, legal expenses and director fees drive bank inefficiency as the bank becomes larger. Moral hazard, bank management and a ??too big to fail?? doctrine are likely explanations for the results from this study.     

Bank ownership and cost efficiency: New empirical evidence from Russia

This paper investigates the cost efficiency of Russian banks with regard to their heterogeneity in terms of ownership form, capitalization and asset structure. Using bank-level quarterly data over the period 2005–2013, we perform stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and compute cost efficiency scores at the bank and bank group levels. We deduct from gross costs the negative revaluations of foreign currency items generated by official exchange rate dynamics rather than by managerial decisions. The results indicate that the core state banks, as distinct from other state-controlled banks, were nearly as efficient as private domestic banks during and after the crisis of 2008–2009. Foreign banks appear to be the least efficient market participants in terms of costs, which might reflect their lower (and decreasing over time) penetration of the Russian banking system. We further document that the group ranking by cost efficiency is not permanent over time and depends on the observed differences in bank capitalization and asset structure. We find that foreign banks gain cost efficiency when they lend more to the economy. Core state banks, conversely, lead in terms of cost efficiency when they lend less to the economy, which can result from political interference in their lending decisions in favor of unprofitable projects Private domestic banks that maintain a lower capitalization significantly outperform foreign banks and do not differ from the core state banks in this respect.     

Bank efficiency and access to credit: International evidence

This paper examines the impact of bank efficiency on access to credit. We test the hypothesis that higher bank efficiency, meaning a better ability of banks to operate at lower costs, favors access to credit for firms. To this end, we perform a cross-country analysis with firm-level data on access to credit and bank-level data to compute bank efficiency, using a sample of about 54,000 firms from 76 countries. We find that greater bank efficiency improves access to credit for firms. The beneficial impact of bank efficiency to alleviate credit constraints takes place through the demand channel by reducing borrower discouragement to apply for a loan. Whereas the positive impact of bank efficiency on credit access is observed for firms of all sizes, the effect tends to be more pronounced in countries with a better economic and institutional framework. Our results therefore support policies favouring bank efficiency to enhance access to credit.     

Estimating Radial Measures of Productivity Growth: Frontier vs Non-Frontier Approaches

In this paper, we propose an alternative econometric framework for estimating and decomposing productivity change that does not require a distribution for inefficiency or the uncorrelatedness between inefficiency and the regressors. We develop our methodology for the input-oriented radial measure of productivity change and establish that this equals the negative of the time change in the log cost function. Our econometric framework is based on a fixed-effects, multiple-output cost frontier, where we decompose productivity change into discrete shifts in the frontier and changes in firm efficiency levels relative to the frontier. We also show that the standard non-frontier specification is nested within our frontier model and thus can produce different estimates of productivity change. Using a panel of twelve US railroads from 1951 to 1975, our estimated cost frontier suggests average annual productivity growth of roughly 0.3 percent, with efficiency change rising then falling over the period. Specification tests reject the non-frontier model, which yields smaller gains in productivity.     

Spillovers and diversification potential of bank equity returns from developed and emerging America

We examine the network spillovers, portfolio allocation characteristics and diversification potential of bank returns from developed and emerging America. We draw our results by applying a directional spillover index, the tail-event driven network (TENET) and nonlinear portfolio optimization methods on bank returns. We find that the spillovers and connectedness among banks from emerging America are noticeably smaller than those among banks from developed America. The largest emerging market spillover transmitters and receivers are the banks from Brazil, followed by the banks from Chile. The largest developed market spillover transmitter is JP Morgan Chase. The connectedness among banks from developed America is dominated by the banks from the USA, relative to those from Canada. The total connectedness of the emerging market banks is more intensified than that of the banks from developed America due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. The portfolio optimization shows that in developed America, the largest banks from the USA are the largest risk contributors to total portfolio risk, whereas the banks from Canada contribute the least risk. In emerging America, the banks from Brazil contribute the most risk to total portfolio risk while the banks from Peru and one bank from Colombia contribute the least risk. The portfolio of banks from emerging America offers greater diversification potential and lower total portfolio allocation risk.