Measuring and explaining the efficiencies of the United Arab Emirates banking system

Using newly collected data from a survey distributed to all banks in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), this article measures economic efficiency in the banking industry, namely allocative, technical, pure technical and scale efficiency. Employing a nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, the study estimates the efficiency for a cross section of the UAE banks in 2004. The results indicate that the dominant source of inefficiency in the UAE banking is stemming from allocative inefficiency rather than technical inefficiency. Furthermore, the main source of the relatively small size, technical inefficiency in the UAE banking industry is not the scale inefficiency but rather pure technical inefficiency. The results further indicate that the UAE banks are able to use their input resources more efficiently when they have more branches, and that newer banks are performing better than older banks on average. Moreover, the results also show that short experiences of employees affect efficiencies negatively and government ownership tends to reduce efficiency (as the government shares increase in the bank, the efficiency scores get lower). Finally, the most interesting results have to do with finding higher average efficiencies in banks that employ more women, more managers and less national citizens of the UAE.     

Has regulatory reform had any impact on bank efficiency in Indonesia? A two-stage analysis

More than a decade following the severe economic crisis 1997, Indonesia has undergone major regulatory changes in its banking industry. This article examines the impact of these regulatory changes on the relative technical efficiency (TE) of the Indonesian banking industry employing data envelopment analysis (DEA) and censored Tobit regression model. Additionally, the bootstrap approach of Simar and Wilson is employed to provide statistical properties to the DEA efficiency score. The findings show that the industry on average is inefficient over the period of analysis. Also, state-owned and foreign-owned banks are found to be more efficient than any other group of banks. Finally, the impact of regulatory reforms is generally positive and statistically significant.     

Determinants of banks’ Nerlovian economic efficiency: a DEA-bootstrap approach

ABSTRACT

This study aims to evaluate the Nerlovian economic efficiency of Taiwanese commercial banks and its determinants by assuming the presence of an imperfectly competitive market using a two-stage estimation procedure: Nerlovian economic inefficiency and its components’ price, technical and allocative efficiencies computed and decomposed in the first stage, which are regressed on the explanatory variables with a bootstrapped truncated approach in the second stage. The estimation results show that in the first-stage analysis, the Nerlovian economic inefficiency of banks is primarily due to allocative inefficiency, and indicate the existence of price inefficiency in Taiwan. In the second-stage analysis, the results confirm that both the years in operation of the bank and the ratio of credit loans are the main determinants of banking profit efficiency. In addition, this study not only shows that publicly owned banks contribute to better price efficiency but also proves that loan loss reserve to total assets is negatively associated with technical efficiency. The equity ratio exerts an insignificant favourable impact on allocative efficiency. The findings of this research are essential for bank managers in Taiwan.     

Evolution of banking efficiency within an unstable macroeconomic environment: the case of Turkish commercial banks

This paper analyses the efficiency performance of the Turkish banking sector between 1988 and 1999, a period characterized by increasing macroeconomic instability. The technical and scale efficiencies of Turkish commercial banks are measured with the use of nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis. The empirical results suggest that over the sample period both pure technical and scale efficiency measures show a great variation and the sector did not achieve sustained efficiency gains. It is also reported that the sector suffers mainly from scale inefficiency and scale inefficiency, in turn, is due to decreasing returns to scale. There are also reported differences in the efficiency performance of commercial banks with different ownership status. In addition, the relationships between profitability, asset quality, size and the two definitions of efficiency are considered. Efficient banks are more profitable, and pure technical efficiency and scale inefficiency are positively related to size. The trend in the performance levels over the period suggests that macroeconomic conditions had a profound influence on the efficiency measures.     

Determinants of bank cost efficiency in transition economies: evidence for Latin America,Central and Eastern Europe and South-East Asia

In this study, we adopt Wang’s (2002) heteroscedastic stochastic frontier model, which allows us to investigate bank cost efficiency and to measure the marginal effects of some variables on both the level and the variability of inefficiency. In recent years, the financial crisis has significantly affected the banking systems of the transition countries. Hence, the efficiency is of major importance for the stability of the banks. Regarding the determinants of efficiency, we find evidence that banks that follow a more cautious strategy, characterized by lower risk appetite and average expectations on profitability, have higher cost efficiency. We also find that traditional deposit-taking and loan-making still remain the most efficient activity of the banks. Additionally, the results showed that a higher Gross Domestic Product growth rate implies an increase in the inefficiency level, indicating an unsustainable bank management behaviour, which in periods of economic growth adopts policies that can generate inefficiency in order to gain market share and to obtain higher bonuses. Country cost efficiency results show significant differences. The banking systems in transition countries in South Eastern Asia appear to have a higher cost efficiency level. Also, the effects of the financial crisis were less significant in this region.     

Financial liberalization and bank efficiency: a comparative analysis of India and Pakistan

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the evolution of the technical efficiency of commercial banks in India and Pakistan during 1988–1998, a period characterized by far-reaching changes in the banking industry brought about by financial liberalization. Data Envelopment Analysis is applied to two alternative input–output specifications to measure technical efficiency, and to decompose technical efficiency into its two components, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency. The consistency of the estimated efficiency scores are checked by examining their relationship with three traditional non-frontier measures of bank performance. In addition, the relationship between bank size and technical efficiency is examined. It is found that the overall technical efficiency of the banking industry of both countries improved gradually over the years, especially after 1995. Unlike public sector banks in India, public sector banks in Pakistan witnessed improvement in scale efficiency only. It is also found that banks are relatively more efficient in generating earning assets than in generating income. This is attributed to the presence of high non-performing loans. In addition, it is found that the gap between the pure technical efficiency of different size groups has declined over the years.     

Pre-recession efficiencies and input allocation decisions of agricultural and critically insolvent banks

The late 2000s’ economic recession is considered the longest economic downturn since the 1930s Great Depression. Declining real estate values ignited an increase in loan defaults and mortgage foreclosures that led to a surge of bank failures at a rate not experienced by the U.S. banking industry since the 1980s. A total of 509 bank failures were recorded by the FDIC from January 2007–December 2014, with nearly 60% of these failures occurring in 2009 and 2010. In contrast, there were only 24 bank failures in the U.S. during the 7-year period prior to 2007. This study analyzed certain components of operating decisions made by banks that either survived or became critically insolvent during the late 2000s financial crisis using an Input Distance Stochastic Frontier function to estimate the technical efficiency (TE) and allocative efficiency (AE) between agricultural banks and non-agricultural banks. This efficiency analysis was applied to a 7-year pre-recession period and is designed to final out any early warning signals that decrease the efficiency level of banks. Results suggest that survival banks were more technically efficient than critically insolvent banks, and banks’ tendency to utilize cheaper inputs were more likely to stand the economic crisis.     

银行业市场结构、效率和绩效的相关性研究--基于上海地区银行业的考察

文章利用上海市银行业1999～2003年的相关数据,对该市银行业的市场结构、综合效率和经营绩效及其相互关系进行了实证研究.研究表明,上海市银行业是一个中等集中度的市场结构类型.利用DEA技术测定的银行业效率的结果显示,上海四大国有商业银行的整体综合效率要好于股份制商业银行,且股份制上市银行的综合效率对非上市银行不具有比较优势.此外,研究发现决定商业银行绩效水平的市场力假说和效率结构假说在上海银行业中都不成立,但是银行业的规模效率对银行绩效水平具有积极的作用.     

我国商业银行经济效率及影响因素分析

本文在取得银行投入品价格信息的基础上,利用DEA模型测度了我国9家商业银行(包括4大国有商业银行和5家股份制商业银行)1997-2001期间的经济效率;进而建立计量经济模型,从微观层面对影响我国商业银行经济效率的因素进行了回归分析,结果表明银行自由资本比例、贷款质量、人力资源质量和经营管理水平是影响银行经济效率的关键因素.     

WTO challenges and efficiency of Chinese banks

After joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in December 2001, China was given 5 years to completely open up its banking market for international competition. Chinese banks have been renowned for their mounting nonperforming loans and low efficiency. Despite gradual reforms, the banking system is still dominated by state ownership and encapsulated monopolistic control. How to raise efficiency is a key to the survival and success of domestic banks, especially the state-owned commercial banks. Two important factors may be responsible for raising efficiency: ownership reform and hard budget constraints. This article uses a panel data of 22 banks over the period 1995 to 2001, and employs a stochastic frontier production function to investigate the effects of ownership structure and hard budget constraint on efficiency. Empirical results suggest that nonstate banks were 8–18% more efficient than state banks, and that banks facing a harder budget tend to perform better than those heavily capitalized by the state or regional governments. The results shed important light on banking sector reform in China to face the tough challenges after WTO accession.     

什么决定了中国商业银行的高盈利

本文分银行和省际两个层面探讨了中国商业银行高盈利的原因。研究结果显示,经济持续良好的增长使人们的收入不断提高,人们对银行产品和服务的需求日益高涨,而政府对存款利率和民间金融等的严格控制,使商业银行处于供不应求和相对垄断的地位。这些是商业银行利润持续走高的最主要原因。虽然2003年开始的银行业改革使银行的市场化程度大幅提升,但是中国的商业银行仍不是自主经营的真正企业。银行的利润主要是宏观和政策环境给予的,这也是银行的高利润备受市场批评的主要原因。     

Cost structures of banks grouped by strategic conduct

The hypothesis that the banking system consists of firms that use the same production technology is tested and rejected in this study. Six groupings of the population of commercial banks are identified using cluster analysis. The banks are grouped to reflect similar production technologies within groups but different technologies across groups as defined by the strategic conduct (i.e., activities) of the banks. The results suggest that banks in different clusters employ production processes that feature different degrees of substitutability between factors of production, and that the estimates of input substitutability for those groups look quite different from those estimated based on the full population of commercial banks. The impact of the homogeneity production technology assumption on the measurement of cost efficiency is also assessed. The results show that partitioning the industry by strategic conduct reduces the average inefficiency in the industry. These results support those found by others who used similar partitioning criteria but a more narrowly defined sample of banks.     

Banking reforms,performance and risk in China

We investigate the impact of the banking reform started from 2005 on ownership structures in China on commercial banks’ profitability, efficiency and risk over the period 2000–2012, providing comprehensive evidence on the impact of banking reform in China. We find that banks on average tend to have higher profitability, lower risk and lower efficiency after the reforms, and the results are robust with our difference-in-difference approach. Our results also show that the Big 5 state-owned banks (SOCB) underperform banks with other types of ownership when risk is measured by non-performing loans (NPLs) over the entire study period but tend to have fewer NPLs than other banks during the post-reform period. Our results provide some supporting evidence on the ongoing banking reforms in China, suggesting that attracting strategic foreign investors and listing SOCBs on stock exchanges appear to be effective ways to help SOCBs deal with the problem of NPLs and manage their risk.     

中国银行业效率的实证分析

中国于 2 0 0 1年 1 2月加入WTO ,5年之后必须对外全面开放国内银行业市场。中国的银行一直以大量不良贷款和效率低下而著称。尽管在逐步改革 ,中国的银行体系仍由国有银行主导并形成垄断控制。怎样提高效率是国内银行尤其是国有商业银行生存和成功的关键。以下两个重要因素可能有助于提高中国的银行效率 :所有制改革和硬预算约束。本文使用了 2 2家银行 1 995— 2 0 0 1年期间的一组数据 ,利用随机前沿生产函数研究了所有制结构和硬预算约束对银行效率的影响。经验结果表明 ,非国有银行比国有银行效率高 1 1 %— 1 8% ;面临硬预算约束的银行的绩效比国家和地方政府投入大量资本的银行好。本文结论的重要意义是 :在加入WTO 3年后的今天 ,中国银行业的改革面临着更为严峻的挑战     

中国有色金属工业生产效率评价

利用2006—2010年我国省际面板数据,利用数据包络分析方法,从静态和动态两个角度,对我国29个省(自治区、直辖市)有色金属工业的生产效率进行了实证分析。静态分析结果表明:我国有色金属工业的生产效率整体偏低,受地方经济发达程度的影响较显著;整个行业的无效率主要来自于纯技术无效率,且行业的地区发展极不平衡,行业抵抗突发性经济危机的能力较脆弱;有色金属工业生产效率的省际差异逐渐拉大,个别省份的生产效率极低。利用Malmquist生产率指数进行的动态研究结果表明:2006—2010年期间,受技术进步这一主动力的影响,我国有色金属工业生产率总体上处于上升状态;技术效率和技术进步两个因素的交相波动决定了整个行业的生产率水平呈波动上升态势。     

Impact of financial reforms on efficiency of state-owned,private and foreign banks in Pakistan

This article uses a unique bank level data from 1991 to 2000 and evaluates how financial reforms affect banking efficiency of domestic and foreign banks in Pakistan. The results suggest that banking efficiency falls during initial reform period when banks adjust to enhanced competition but increases in more advanced stages of reform. While in general foreign and private banks show superior efficiency and factor productivity than do state-owned banks, the relative performance of foreign banks worsens after the consolidation stage of the financial reforms is over. We show the importance of link between bank size, asset quality and bank branches with efficiency indexes and also note that every 10% increase in share of nonperforming to total loans decreases banking efficiency by 6 to 10%.     

WHAT CAUSES THE EFFICIENCY AND THE TECHNOLOGY GAP UNDER DIFFERENT OWNERSHIP STRUCTURES IN THE CHINESE BANKING INDUSTRY?

This paper estimates and compares the cost efficiency of the Chinese banking industry among different ownership types for the period 2003–2014, using the stochastic metafrontier model. We find that foreign banks have the lowest cost frontier, while state‐owned commercial banks undertake the least sophisticated technology. Moreover, the results of the upward trend in the technology gap ratio (TGR) and in metafrontier cost efficiency support that a more open financial market is able to enhance banking efficiency. As for the role of environmental conditions, off‐balance sheet items, non‐performing loans, and financial market structure significantly impact the TGRs of different bank types. (JEL C51, G21, D24)     

中国商业银行业的全要素 生产率增长及其分解——基于24家银行面板数据的实证分析

本文收集了2003-2010年24家商业银行的非平衡面板数据,首先通过构建随机前沿生产模型,对中国银行业的技术效率进行测算,然后利用TFP分解模型对商业银行TFP增长的驱动因素及其演变过程进行了系统分析。研究发现,整体来说,中国银行业的全要素生产率在所有年份均实现了明显的增长。相对而言,国有大型商业银行在研究初期并没有显示出明显的优势,但随着时间的推移,其TFP增长率开始不断上升,并逐渐赶超中小型银行。通过对TFP增长率的分解计算,技术效率变化和要素配置效率变化对中国银行业TFP增长具有较强的拉动作用,技术进步的影响并不明显,而规模效率变化的负面作用最为显著。     

国有商业银行与股份制商业银行生产效率的比较研究

本文采用基于投入的DEA方法 ,比较了加入WTO之前我国国有商业银行与股份制商业银行的生产效率。我们把存款当作产出 ,选取 1999年～ 2 0 0 1年十四家全国性商业银行为样本 ,计算出银行的技术效率 ,并将技术效率分解为纯技术效率和规模效率 ,确定银行的规模报酬变化。我们从银行的技术有效性、整体效率、技术无效性原因和规模报酬四个方面对国有和股份制商业银行进行了比较分析 ,研究国有商业银行与股份制商业银行之间的差距 ,并分析了原因。     

Performance of Thailand banks after the 1997 East Asian financial crisis

The performance of commercial banks and government-owned specialized banks in Thailand is estimated after the 1997 East Asian financial crisis. Commercial banks exhibit increasing returns to scale, whereas government-owned specialized banks exhibit decreasing returns to scale, implying further increases in bank size and market concentration in the commercial bank sector but not for government specialized banks. Cost inefficiency varies by bank and is a function of the ratio of nonperforming loans (NPLs) to total loans, equity to total assets and liquid assets to total assets, as well as the number of branches. On average, banks with fewer NPLs, that are well capitalized and with adequate liquidity are efficient. Thus, stricter rules to regulate credit risk management and ensure capital and liquidity adequacy would enhance efficiency in the banking sector. Although estimated input substitutability appears to be low, labour and loanable fund are substitutes. However, labour and physical capital as well as physical and loanable funds are complements in commercial banks. All the three inputs of labour, physical capital and loanable funds are substitutes for the government specialized banks.