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.     

Foreign bank lending during a crisis: The impact of financial regulations

This study examines foreign bank lending during crises by using data on 1,558 individual banks in Asian and Latin American countries during the period 1987-2013. Our results reveal that, in a crisis period, Asian banks with a higher level of foreign ownership tend to reduce their lending. Nevertheless, during crises banks consistently increase their lending in order to support their borrowers; in fact, in Latin America, crises stimulate foreign banks to lend more. Our evidence on lending during a crisis supports credit rationing theories with a flight to quality. The international substitution effect also holds based on our results. Taking financial structures and regulation into consideration, for banks with more foreign ownership in a highly concentrated financial system in Asia, the crisis has less effect on a cut in lending, while it has a greater effect on cuts in lending for countries with a higher level of government-owned assets. This paper contributes to the existing literature on the bank lending channel and provides implications for policymakers.     

Some causes of interstate differences in community bank performance

This study assesses the relationship between the performance of community banks and conditions in their marketplaces over the 1994–2008 period. A panel model is used, in which the states serve as the panels, and focuses on banks termed community financial institutions (CFIs). Bank performance is measured by the return on assets (ROA). The ROAs are averaged for all CFIs in each state. Statewide ROAs are related to each state’s economic, demographic, and market structure characteristics. These state-level characteristics explain some of the variations in the performance of each state’s CFIs over time, and results are economically and financially reasonable. Fixed effects play a role, linking each state’s performance to unidentified factors unique to each state. The mild (but statistically significant) explanatory power of the economic/demographic variables suggests that CFI managers can effectively deal with economic/demographic changes in their marketplace, in contrast to the troubles of big banks.     

关于国有商业银行深化改革的若干思考

国有商业银行是我国金融业的主体,但目前这几家银行却面临着激烈的竞争.竞争来自于两个方面:外资银行的进入形成大兵压境之势,国内股份制银行的快速发展形成咄咄逼人之势.面对这种局面,既不能妄自尊大,也不能妄自菲薄,必须振作精神,加快改革才有出路.本文分析了当前国有商业银行面临的困境和挑战,探讨了国有商业银行改革的思路.     

The Dynamics of Efficiency Improving Input Allocation

A dynamic theory of efficiency improving input reallocations is presented which relaxes the assumption that decision-making units have the ability to reorganize their activities instantaneously to achieve efficient input allocations. Explicit account is taken of the decision-making unit’s gradual transition to an efficient input allocation. A balanced panel data set covering 906 U.S. agricultural banks is constructed for the period 1996–2000 and we find that these banks are allocatively efficient but technically inefficient. The explicit solution for the optimal input use finds evidence of gradual transitions for two of the three inputs, with the labor input transition being the slowest. The efficiency improving path finds the firm transitions toward an efficient allocation by simultaneously improving on technical efficiency instantaneously and on allocative efficiency intertemporally, which suggests a non-linear path toward the most efficient allocation.     

Do Pan-African banks have the best of both worlds?

There has been a large expansion of foreign banks in Africa over the last two decades, with Pan-African banks playing a key role in this phenomenon. This paper questions if this development is beneficial for bank efficiency in African countries by investigating if Pan-African banks are more efficient than other types of foreign and domestic banks. We analyse the relation between ownership type and bank efficiency on a large sample of African banks covering 39 African countries over the period 2002–2015. We find that Pan-African banks are the most efficient banks in the African banking industries. We explain this finding with the fact that these banks combine the best of both worlds: they have the global advantages of foreign banks and the home field advantages of domestic banks. They are therefore able to be more efficient than both foreign banks from developed countries and domestic banks. This suggests that favouring the entry of Pan-African banks would be beneficial to bank efficiency in Africa.     

A cross-country comparison of productivity growth using the generalised metafrontier Malmquist productivity index: with application to banking industries in Taiwan and China

This paper is an extension of the metafrontier Malmquist productivity index, which takes into account the effect of scale efficiency change in its decomposition for both the non-parametric and parametric frameworks. Meanwhile, the ‘catch-up’ in the index is also disintegrated as two components: pure technological catch-up and frontier catch-up. An empirical application that uses unbalanced panel data of the Taiwanese and Chinese commercial banking industry is also conducted under a parametric framework. The results reveal that the adverse scale efficiency change is the key factor to inducing the inferior productivity growth seen in Chinese banks compared with Taiwanese banks, which spotlights the importance of the scale efficiency change term on productivity measures. It also provides one possible explanation for the recent hot issue about the motives for the two shores of the Taiwan Straits advancing financial openness to each other and mutually signing a banking Memorandum of Understanding.     

Employee perceptions of performance appraisals: a comparative study on Indian banks

Performance appraisal is the most critical human resource practice and an indispensable part of every organization; however, the practice continues to generate dissatisfaction among employees and is often viewed as unfair and ineffective. Indian banking sector is one of the biggest and fastest growing financial service sectors. The post-liberalization era has witnessed significant changes in the structure and operations of banks operating in India. Arrival of new private and foreign banks has given a cause to public sector banks to be more competitive, effective and innovative in their approach. Past researches have compared public and private sector banks and have indicated that new private sector banks are outscoring public sector banks in terms of technical and economic efficiency parameters. However, no study could be found that compared public and private banks in India on fairness perceptions of performance appraisal system. Therefore, this research studied the differences between public and private sector banks with respect to perception of fairness of the performance appraisal system and performance appraisal satisfaction. Perception of fairness of the performance appraisal system has been studied through nine factors. The study used independent samples t-test and qualitative analysis to study the mean differences between the two banks. Results indicated that private sector bank employees perceive greater fairness and satisfaction with their performance appraisal system as compared to public sector bank employees.     

Productivity,efficiency and technical change: measuring the performance of China’s transforming agriculture

As China enters the twenty-first century the health of the agricultural economy will increasingly rely, not on the growth of inputs, but on the growth of total factor productivity (TFP). However, the tremendous changes in the sector—sometimes back and sometimes forwards—as well as evolving institutions make it difficult to gauge from casual observation if the sector is healthy or not. Research spending has waxed and waned. Policies to encourage the import of foreign technologies have been applied unevenly. Structural adjustment policies also triggered wrenching changes in the sector. Horticulture and livestock production has boomed; while the output of other crops, such as rice, wheat and soybeans, has stagnated or fallen. At a time when China’s millions of producers are faced with complex decisions, the extension system is crumbling and farmer professional associations remain in their infancy. In short, there are just as many reasons to be optimistic about the productivity trends in agriculture as to be pessimistic. In this paper, we pursue one overall goal: to better understand the productivity trends in China’s agricultural sector during the reform era—with an emphasis on the 1990–2004 period. To do so, we pursue three specific objectives. First, relying on the National Cost of Production Data Set—China’s most complete set of farm input and output data—we chart the input and output trends for 23 of China’s main farm commodities. Second, using a stochastic production frontier function approach we estimate the rate of change in TFP for each commodity. Finally, we decompose the changes in TFP into two components: changes in efficiency and changes in technical change. Our findings—especially after the early 1990s are remarkably consistent. China’s agricultural TFP has grown at a healthy rate for all 23 commodities. TFP growth for the staple commodities generally rose around 2% annually; TFP growth for most horticulture and livestock commodities was even higher (between 3 and 5%). Equally consistent, we find that most of the change is accounted for by technical change. The analysis is consistent with the conclusion that new technologies have pushed out the production functions, since technical change accounts for most of the rise in TFP. In the case of many of the commodities, however, the efficiency of producers—that is, the average distance of producers from the production frontier—has fallen. In other words, China’s TFP growth would have been even higher had the efficiency of production not eroded the gains of technical change. Although we do not pinpoint the source of rising inefficiency, the results are consistent with a story that there is considerable disequilibrium in the farm economy during this period of rapid structural change and farmers are getting little help in making these adjustments from the extension system.     

The effect of foreign ownership on SMEs performance: An efficiency analysis perspective

This paper uses both Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Free Disposal Hull (FDH) models in order to determine different performance levels in a sample of 353 foreign equities operating in the Greek manufacturing sector. Particularly, convex and non-convex models are used alongside with bootstrap techniques in order to determine the effect of foreign ownership on SMEs’ performance. The study illustrates how the recent developments in efficiency analysis and statistical inference can be applied when evaluating performance issues. The analysis among the foreign equities indicates that the levels of foreign ownership have a positive effect on SMEs’ performance.     

Cost and profit efficiency of conventional and Islamic banks in GCC countries

Using stochastic frontier approach, this paper investigates the cost and profit efficiency levels of 71 commercial banks in Gulf cooperation council countries over the period 1999–2007. This study also conducts a comparative analysis of the efficiency across countries and between conventional and Islamic banks. Moreover, we examine the bank-specific variables that may explain the sources of inefficiency. The empirical results indicate that banks in the Gulf region are relatively more efficient at generating profits than at controlling costs. We also find that in terms of both cost and profit efficiency levels, the conventional banks on average are more efficient than Islamic banks. Furthermore, we observe a positive correlation of cost and profit efficiency with bank capitalization and profitability, and a negative one with operation cost. Higher loan activity increases the profit efficiency of banks, but it has a negative impact on cost efficiency.     

银行业改革、赶超与开放——基于Malmquist TFP指数的实证分析

为评估近年来中国国有银行改革、城市商业银行赶超与银行业对外全面开放5年来外资银行效率的变化,主要采取"中介法",利用2005～2010年数据对中国本土和外资银行Malmquist TFP指数及其组成部分进行了测算分解和实证分析。研究表明:改革促进了中国银行业效率的提高;城市商业银行的"赶超"战略显著提升了效率;中国本土银行的纯技术效率亟待改善;中国银行业对外全面开放后,外资银行的全要素生产率有所提高,但规模效率和技术进步有待改进;股权/资产比率等因素降低了银行效率。     

Measuring technical and allocative efficiencies for banks in the transition countries using the Fourier flexible cost function

The transition economies are known to have quite different market structures from the market economies. State-owned banks accounts for a major part of the financial sector in East European countries before the transition period. Since the input prices of the sector are frequently under the control of those governments, the misallocated resources may incur the loss of economic efficiency. This paper attempts to gauge the technical and allocative efficiency using unbalanced panel data of 340 banks from 14 transition countries under the framework of the Fourier flexible shadow cost function. Accommodating technical and allocative efficiencies simultaneously, as suggested by Atkinson and Cornwell (Int Econ Rev 35:231–243, 1994a) and Kumbhakar and Wang (J Econom 134:317–340, 2006a), avoids potential specification errors and leads to consistent parameter estimates. The average total cost savings resulting from greater technical and allocative efficiency are around 28.31 and 7.13%, respectively. Foreign-owned banks are found to be the most economically efficient. The enforcement of financial liberalization does gradually improve upon the sample banks’ technical efficiency. The allocative inefficiency arises from over capitalization and excess funds. Scale diseconomies appear to prevail in the sample states with a few exceptions.     

A Study on the Productivities of IT Capital and Computer Labor: Firm-level Evidence from Taiwan’s Banking Industry

The current paper extends the non-neutral stochastic frontier production function—which belongs to the class of a one-step procedure as defined by Wang and Schmidt (2002) and developed by Huang and Liu (1994)—from a cross-sectional setting to a panel data modeling. Using a newly-surveyed dataset from Taiwan’s commercial banks on their investments in information and communication technologies (IT), I find that IT capital and computer labor tend to exhibit higher productivities than their non-IT and non-computer counterparts, that IT capital has positive impacts on the marginal productivities of computer labor and borrowed funds, and that the mean technical efficiency is around 87.7%. Evidence is found that the total factor productivity of the banking sector grew at an average rate of 0.28% per annum, albeit fluctuating, for the past 8 years.     

Rising productivity of Australian trading banks under deregulation 1986–1995

Productivity of four major trading banks and six regional banks is investigated using Malmquist productivity indices in the deregulated period 1986–1995. The principal findings indicate an overall rise in total productivity driven more by technological progress than technical efficiency. Performance of major trading banks on technical efficiency is similar to that of regional banks but higher on technological progress. Distinguishing between improvement in technical efficiency and technological change is significant for policy formulation. Technological innovation can be construed as a sign of dynamic efficiency where banks take advantage of new cost-effective technologies and pursue product and market development.     

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 operating efficiency of financial holding and nonfinancial holding banks—Epsilou‐based measure metafrontier data envelopment analysis model

Previous bank efficiency studies assumed that the same efficient frontier system exists in different types of banks, but the conventional radial data envelopment analysis (DEA) model slacks are not counted in efficiency scores, and nonradial DEA models do not consider radial features. This paper develops an Epsilou‐based measure meta‐DEA approach for measuring the efficiencies and technology gaps of different bank types. The results are as the follows: The average efficiency and technology gaps of nonfinancial holding banks are better than those of financial holding banks. The nonfinancial holding banks are more efficient than financial holding banks in investment and other income.     

The productivity and performance of Australia’s major banks since deregulation

The aim of this study is to present some measures of the performance of banks operating in Australia since the deregulation of the Australian financial system in early 1980s; including the periods of financial market instability (the early 1990s and mid to late 2000s). In undertaking this measurement two approaches will be used. The first simply applies standard financial indicators. The second approach applies data envelopment analysis (DEA), to determine Malmquist indices of the levels of and the changes in the efficiency and productivity of Australian banks. The empirical results demonstrate the effect of deregulation and periodic financial crisis’s on the performance of individual banks, and the major part of the Australian banking sector. Overall the productivity performance of the Australian banks tended to improve considerably in those periods of strongest economic growth (i.e. the mid 1980s and 2000s).     

Performance compensation contracts and CEOs’ incentive to shift risk to debtholders: An empirical analysis

The paper investigates the relationships among CEO incentive contracts, manager ownership, charter value, and bank risk taking. We analyze whether the presence and magnitude of incentive contracts induce CEOs of financially distressed firms and firms with high manager ownership to take unprofitable risks that shift wealth from debtholders to equity holders. Our sample focuses on banks that had both the incentive and opportunity to shift risks, and compares them with those that did not. We compare weak and strong banks in periods when the banks’ principal creditor, the FDIC, was a lenient and then a stringent monitor. The evidence is consistent with bonus compensation inducing CEOs of financially weak firms to shift risk to debtholders only if they do not have large insider ownership. The evidence is also consistent with these contracts rewarding CEOs for their effort to manage unforeseeable risk albeit not their ability. Low charter value banks with high managerial ownership took profitable risk during the lenient regulatory period.     

Feedback trading in exchange-rate markets: Evidence from within and across economic blocks

This paper examines the pattern of autocorrelation of exchange rates in the EU, ASEAN, and NAFTA. We find no feedback trading within blocks among developed financial markets’ currencies, but it exists for less developed financial markets. Across blocks, no feedback trading is found. ASEAN currencies are an exception on both counts. When present, feedback trading is a destabilizing factor, and it takes place during rising volatility. Finally, the prevalence of negative feedback trading suggests that, in spite of the recent addition of new players into the market, such as mutual funds and hedge funds, the foreign exchange market is mainly influenced by informed players and/or central banks which intervene to protect their currencies.