Information Technology and Productivity Changes in the Banking Industry

This paper analyses the effects of investment in information technologies (IT) in the financial sector using micro-data from a panel of 600 Italian banks over the period 1989–2000. Stochastic cost and profit functions are estimated allowing for individual banks' displacements from the best practice frontier and for non-neutral technological change. The results show that both cost and profit frontier shifts are strongly correlated with IT capital accumulation. Banks adopting IT capital-intensive techniques are also more efficient. On the whole, over the past decade IT capital-deepening contribution to total factor productivity growth of the Italian banking industry can be estimated in a range between 1.3 and 1.8 per cent per year.     

Financial deregulation and productivity growth in banking sector: empirical evidence from Bangladesh

This article examines the effects of regulatory reform on productivity growth in the Bangladesh banking industry. We use a unique balanced panel dataset comprising bank-level annual data from the early deregulation year (1984) to the most recent available period (2012) from major commercial banks in Bangladesh. Applying the Färe-Primont index, the paper provides estimates of productivity growth and identifies sources of total factor productivity (TFP) change. Empirical results show the sample banks have experienced positive TFP change after the financial deregulation. On average, TFP growth is higher in private banks than their public sector counterparts in the post-reform period. In addition, the decomposition analysis shows technological progress is the main driver of productivity change. Similar results are obtained by using the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Thus, empirical results remain robust irrespective of the methodology used. The regression analysis finds a positive technical change in the first stage of the reform program, i.e. during the transition period, as leading banks employ advanced technology to compete with potential new entrants. The result also shows that the banking industry still remains concentrated within the state-owned banks.     

Inefficiency in the Spanish Cooperative Banking Sector

This paper researches X-inefficiency and scale economies in Spanish cooperative banking between 1988 and 1996, using the stochastic cost frontier methodology. The Translog cost function, with three outputs and three inputs, is used to measure X-inefficiencies across time and size. During this period of time there is no important reduction in inefficiency levels, so deregulation and internationalization has little effect on the Spanish cooperative banking market. We can see that large cooperative banks are less inefficient than small ones, indicating that it would be convenient to increase the size of these kinds of banks in order to reduce inefficiencies in this sector. We also find scale economies during this period.     

The Effect of Specialisation on Banks' Efficiency: An International Comparison

This study analyses the effects of specialisation on the cost efficiency of a set of banking systems of the European Union over the period 1992–1998. Unlike in the established literature in which specialisation differences are not considered, in this paper cost inefficiencies are decomposed into two different components: the first is related to the inefficiency associated with the composition of specialisations in each banking system and the second is related to specific inefficiencies of banks within their specialisation. The results show the existence of high cost inefficiencies. However, the intra‐specialisation inefficiencies indicate that the inefficiencies of the European banking systems are much smaller when the effect of productive composition (specialisation) is discounted. This effect is much more evident in those banking systems specialised in the more costly types of business (retail banking) because their composition inefficiency is higher.     

Efficiency in the factoring industry

The efficiency and productivity in the Italian factoring industry between 1993 and 1997 is investigated using DEA. The factoring industry is an important part of many financial systems and it has established itself as a major source of finance and credit management for a growing number of companies. However, as far as the authors are aware no studies have applied frontier methodologies to examine the efficiency and productivity of this industry. This paper focuses on the Italian market, the second largest in the world after the UK. The results suggest that there are substantial cost savings to be had in the Italian factoring industry: the mean cost inefficiency in the Italian factoring industry over the period 1993–1997 ranged between 14% and 22%. These inefficiencies are mainly generated by allocative rather than technical inefficiencies. Scale and technical inefficiencies seem to be similar in magnitude and the supposed importance of the latter typically found in the banking efficiency literature, are not observed in Italian factoring. Firm size does not appear to be related to technical, allocative and economic efficiency and the hypothesis that ownership structure influences factoring firm efficiency could not be rejected. In order to analyse efficiency change over time the Malmquist index is used. Total factor productivity was decomposed into technical change and efficiency change and the latter was further divided into pure efficiency and scale efficiency change. Productivity changes were slight over the period 1993–1996, while a substantial increase in productivity occurred between 1996 and 1997: the latter appears to be the result of a large improvement in the technology and a positive scale efficiency change, however, this was slowed down by a negative pure efficiency change.     

Did the global financial crisis alter the competitive conditions in the Indian banking industry?

This article addresses a pertinent research question: Did the global financial crisis alter the competitive conditions in the Indian banking industry? In order to find the answer of this research question, we applied a dynamic version of the non-structural Panzar-Rosse model on a unique unbalanced panel dataset of Indian banks spanning over the period from 1998/99 to 2015/16. The robust estimates of H-statistic computed on the basis of the generalized method of moments estimates of the elasticities of input prices show that (i) Indian banks earned their interest and total revenue under monopolistic competition throughout the whole of the sample period and (ii) the global financial crisis altered the competitive conditions in the banking industry, and market moved closer to perfect competition following the financial crisis, especially when interest-bearing activities were in focus.     

Bank structure, capital accumulation and growth: a simple macroeconomic model

Summary. This paper analyzes the equilibrium growth paths of two economies that are identical in all respects, except for the organization of their financial systems: in particular, one has a competitive banking system and the other has a monopolistic banking system. In addition, the sources of inefficiencies, as a result of monopoly banking, and their relationship to the existence of credit rationing are explored. Monopoly in banking tends to depress the equilibrium law of motion for the capital stock for either of two reasons. When credit rationing exists, monopoly banks ration credit more heavily than competitive banks. When credit is not rationed, the existence of monopoly banking leads to excessive monitoring of credit financed investment. Both of these have adverse consequences for capital accumulation. In addition, monopoly banking is more likely to lead to credit rationing than is competitive banking. Finally, the scope for development trap phenomena to arise is considered under both a competitive and a monopolistic banking system. Received: September 20, 1999; revised version: December 3, 1999     

Economies of superscale in commercial banking

Most previous studies of scale economies in banking have excluded banks larger than $1 billion in assets. Thus study, by contrast, estimates cost functions for the 100 largest US commercial banks. ‘Hedonic’ terms are incorporated to correct for the aggregated nature of the Call Report data available for these banks. In addition, we attempt to quantify the cost benefit of diversification in the model. We estimate efficient bank scale to range from $15 billion to $37 billion in total assets, a thousandfold increase over some previous findings. These results are supported by comparison of actual average costs, as well as by casual historical observation and the level of widespread concern over interstate banking. Our findings suggest some cost incentive or benefit to expansion or consolidation among large regional banks, including interstate expansion or consolidation.     

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%.     

Consideration of technological and environmental heterogeneity in cost efficiency analysis

In order to evaluate and compare the efficiency levels across banking industries, we adopt the meta-frontier model that can assess the technological difference among countries. Given the importance of country specific conditions, we include in our analysis the different specificities of each country to incorporate the technological as the environmental differences in the evaluation of banking efficiencies. Using data on the banking industries of several countries in the MENA region, over the period 1991–2011, the results of the efficiency scores corrected by the technological and environmental gap led us to conclude that Egyptian banks are the most efficient in terms of cost compared with banks in other countries. Egyptian banks enjoy a very favourable banking technology. Our results support the hypothesis that traditional techniques of efficiency analysis based on the efficiency scores of a specific and pooled frontier tend to mystify efficiency levels and may incorrectly identify efficient banks. This paper contributes to the efficiency literature by incorporating technological and environmental heterogeneities in the evaluation of efficiency. This helps to characterize the production process of a bank and provides common standards by which the efficiencies of banks in different countries can be compared in a meaningful way with each other.     

Economic reforms,efficiency and productivity in Chinese banking

This paper analyzes the impact of banking reforms on efficiency and total factor productivity (TFP) change in Chinese banking industry. Using an input distance function, we find that joint-equity banks are more efficient than wholly state-owned banks (WSOBs). Furthermore, both WSOBs and joint-equity banks are found to be operating slightly below their optimal size, suggesting potential advantages in expansion of their businesses. Overall, TFP growth was 4.4% per annum for the sample period 1993–2002. Joint-equity banks experienced much higher growth in TFP (5.5% per annum) compared to the WSOBs (1.4% per annum).      

The size distribution of the banking sector and the effects of monetary policy

In recent years, the industrial organization of the banking system has received a large amount of attention. In particular, it is generally viewed that the size distribution of the banking sector has changed where it is dominated by a small number of large institutions. In this paper, we develop a model of imperfectly competitive banks that differ in terms of the size of their deposit base. Such differences are important for aggregate credit market activity and the effects of monetary policy. Notably, we explain how the optimal size distribution of the banking system involves trade-offs from distortions in credit markets due to imperfect competition across banking markets. Second, the effects of monetary policy on credit market activity are weaker in an economy dominated by a small number of large banks. Empirical analysis examining the role of concentration among the current members of the European Monetary Union is consistent with the predictions of the model.     

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.     

A test of the impact of mergers on bank competition

We propose a new test to evaluate the impact of horizontal mergers on competition in the banking industry. The test is designed to be applied ex ante to potential mergers while being parsimonious in terms of data, as it only uses information on branches in local markets. The test is a counterfactual exercise based on a two‐stage model where banks compete in branching and interest rates and requires comparing the estimated degree of competition in the status quo, where branching networks by banks are those actually observed, with a counterfactual scenario, where the branching network of the new entity is the sum of the branches of the banks involved in the horizontal merger. The statistical difference between the two estimated measures of competition quantifies the impact of the merger. We apply our test to French and Italian mergers.     

X-Efficiency and Productivity Change in Australian Banking

This paper investigates X -efficiency and productivity change in Australian banking between 1995 and 1999 using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Malmquist productivity indexes. It differs from earlier studies by examining efficiency by bank type, and finds that regional banks are less efficient than other bank types. The study concludes that diseconomies of scale set in very early and hence are not a sufficient basis on which to allow mergers between large banks to proceed. Total factor productivity in the banking sector was found to have increased by an average annual 7.6 per cent between 1995 and 1999. All of the productivity increase was due to technological advance shifting out the frontier. The banking sector's performance was less efficient relative to the frontier in 1999 than it had been in 1995.     

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.     

Is China’s banking industry embracing sustainable investment?

Built upon an analysis of 2858 publicly listed companies in China, we found that although polluting companies historically received more loans from banks than nonpolluting companies, this trend has recently changed in China. Polluting companies receive fewer loans from banks and the borrowing cost increases over time. This suggests that the Chinese banking industry is becoming more environmentally responsible in its loan decision-making.     

Managerial efficiency in Taiwan bank branches: A network DEA

Taiwan's banking industry remains highly fragmented and competitive after a series of financial liberalization and restructuring. With the enforcement of these fiscal policies, domestic banking institutions face a more dynamic, increasingly intense and highly competitive environment even as the banking industry's overall efficiency has gradually been enhanced. This structural change has further forced individual banking institutions, especially state-owned banks, to inspect the performance of their branches and identify improvement directions so as to gain further competitive advantages. To conduct a valid, fair and reliable evaluation on Taiwan's bank branches, we integrate a two-stage series performance model and fuzzy multiobjective model. A new scheme that considers the complementation of production and intermediation activities within a branch and overcomes the shortage of the traditional network DEA methodology about DMUs cannot be assessed on a common base. The results indicate that the overall performances of mixed ownership bank branches are superior to those of state-owned bank branches, representing that the advantages of banking privatization have some remedial effects for improving the managerial inefficiency of state-owned banks. In addition, the sensitivity analysis and decision-making matrix herein help bank management to identify branches' efficiency, weakness, and directions for improvement.     

European banks’ executive remuneration under the new European Union regulation

We review how the new European regulation of bank executive compensation could affect the future of banking in Europe. Although there is no conclusive empirical evidence on the relation between bank executive remuneration and the financial crisis, authorities have intensively regulated the compensation of bank managers to eliminate risk-taking incentives in the financial industry. However, the new regulation could have unintended consequences of creating an adverse selection problem at European banks, reducing the number of best-performing managers available for European banks, and motivating an excessive increase in fixed remuneration over total remuneration, altering the way incentive systems work.     

Measuring the degree of competition in Pakistan’s banking industry: an empirical analysis

Pakistan’s banking industry has gone through significant transformation from being in a heavily state regulated and controlled environment to a more liberalized market structure in recent years. This liberalization of banking industry in Pakistan has raised concerns over the dominant banks’ exercise of market power on account of increase in market concentration due to mergers and acquisitions, high profitability in banking sector and increasing interest rate spread. Present study therefore explicitly tests the market conduct of banks using quarterly panel data of 30 banks from 2004 to 2012 and employing Panzar–Rosse, Bresnahan–Lau, Hall–Roeger and Boone’s approaches to study market power. Our findings suggest that Pakistan’s banking industry is working in a competitive environment and we find little evidence for the exercise of market power by the dominant banks. Our results remain robust across all these approaches to measure market power. These findings indicate that the liberalization and deregulation of Pakistan’s banking industry has been successful in improving the competitive conditions in the market.