1 Cost Efficiency, Technological Progress and Productivity Growth of Public, Private, and Foreign Banks in People’s Republic of China: Evidence from Pre and Post WTO Accession (original) (raw)

Cost Efficiency, Technological Progress and Productivity Growth of Public, Private, and Foreign Banks in People's Republic of China: Evidence from Pre and Post WTO Accession

2000

The People's Republic of China has taken substantial steps to reform its financial system, especially the banking sector, since 1995. The speed of banking reform has accelerated after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001. This study examines the impact of recent banking reforms and of WTO accession on the cost efficiency of the Chinese banking sector. We use a non-parametric approach to investigate the efficiency trend and productivity growth of banks in China between 1998 and 2006. We also compare the efficiency and productivity growth of different banking ownership groups prior to and after joining the WTO. We find that, on average, domestic banks outperform their foreign counterparts over the sample period in terms of overall and allocative efficiency, but they fall behind in terms of overall technical efficiency. The comparison of efficiency indexes pre and post WTO accession reveals that the efficiency of domestic banks has declined post accession, while foreign banks have enjoyed an improvement rise in their cost efficiency post WTO accession in 2001.The findings of this study further suggest that the total factor productivity of Chinese banks has weakened over the period under study. However, a pre and post analysis of WTO accession results shows that total factor productivity has improved for both domestic and foreign banks after China joined the WTO, equally owing to efficiency improvement and technological progress

Cost efficiency, technological progress and productivity growth of Chinese banking pre- and post-WTO accession

Applied Financial Economics, 2011

The structure of banking systems in GCC countries; namely, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, has substantially changed over the past decade, mainly as a result of regional economic integration and banking deregulation. The new banking environment has given banks an incentive to focus on cost and productive efficiency. This study uses a non-parametric frontier approach to compare and contrast the efficiency performance, efficiency and technological change, and productivity growth of banks in GCC countries. The results indicate that banks in Oman, on average, have been the most efficient among GCC countries followed narrowly by banks from Bahrain and to a lesser extent by banks from Kuwait. In contrast, the findings point to a low efficient banking environment in UAE and Qatar, with Saudi Arabia being the least efficient. Additionally, the efficiency measures of banks in Oman and Kuwait has been descending from 1999 to 2004, while at the same time the efficiency scores of banks in Bahrain have been rising. Furthermore, banks from Oman and Bahrain are dominating the common efficient frontier since a larger percentage of banks from these countries lie on the frontier. Examination of return to scale measures provides evidence to indicate that there is very limited opportunity for banks to improve their scale efficiency, given that only a handful of banks are operating at increasing returns to scale. The result of the Malmquist productivity index reveals that banks on average have experienced a decline in productivity due to technological regress and to a lesser extent caused by a decline in overall technological efficiency.

Cost economies, efficiency and productivity growth in the Chinese banking industry: evidence from a quarterly panel dataset

Empirical Economics, 2011

This article examines cost economies, productivity growth and cost efficiency of the Chinese banks using a unique panel dataset that identifies banks’ four outputs and four input prices over the period of 1995–2001. By assessing the appropriateness of model specification, and making use of alternative methodologies in evaluating the performance of banks, we find that the joint-stock commercial banks outperform state-owned commercial banks in productivity growth and cost efficiency. Under the variable cost assumption, Chinese banks display economies of scale, with state-owned commercial banks enjoying cost advantages over the joint-stock commercial banks. Consequently, our results highlight the ownership advantage of these two types of banks and generally support the ongoing banking reform and transformation that is currently taking place in China.

Technical efficiency in the Chinese banking sector

Economic Modelling, 2011

a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o This paper applies an innovative DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) model, the Inverse B-convex model, in order to investigate the technical efficiency of a representative sample of Chinese banks. The banks are ranked according to their efficiency over the period 1998-2008. The results paint a mixed picture of the Chinese banks' performance. The influence of firm size and ownership on bank efficiency is not observed. However, the study shows that overall efficiency improved over time, especially after the entry of China into the WTO. Policy implications are derived.

X-Efficiency among Chinese Banks

Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2015

X-efficiency is a non-allocative form of efficiency first introduced by Harvey Leibenstein in 1966. The degree of X-efficiency is measured by the deviation of a firm's costs of production from the technologically minimum costs of production. X-efficiency theory predicts that firms will produce closer to their cost function when they face pressure to do so. In this paper we review studies of X-efficiency among Chinese banks. These studies include the effect of ownership form, for example, state-owned banks versus privately-owned banks, on costs of production. China's entrance into the WTO, the effect of a bank issuing an IPO and the effect of bank size are other topics of empirical studies reviewed in this paper. In addition some studies on Hong Kong banks before 1997 are included.

Bank Productivity in China 1997-2007: An Exercise in Measurement

2009

This study examines the productivity growth of the nationwide banks of China and a sample of city commercial, banks for the eleven years to 2007. Estimates of total factor productivity growth are constructed with appropriate confidence intervals, using a bootstrap method for the Malmquist index. The study adjusts for the quality of the output by accounting for the non-performing loans

WTO challenges and efficiency of Chinese banks

Applied Economics, 2007

After joining the 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 non-performing 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 paper uses a panel data of 22 banks over the period 1995-2001,

The sources of bank productivity growth in China during 2002–2009- A disaggregation view

This study investigates the sources of bank productivity growth in China over the period [2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009]. In order to perform this research, we propose an advanced index -input slack-based productivity index (ISP) -a model that disaggregates total factor productivity growth into each input productivity change. Funds, capital, and employees are chosen as the inputs, whereas loans and other earning assets are outputs in this study. Our results show that technological gains transcend the efficiency regressions and result in total factor productivity growth. More specifically, technical progress in capital productivity reveals the dominant force behind the total factor technical change and productivity improvement. In addition, this paper uses these disaggregation terms to find out the competitive advantages and disadvantages of input usages for each Chinese bank. These findings indicate that the ISP index provides more insights than traditional total factor productivity indices.

Efficiency of Nationwide Banks in China

This research investigates the efficiency of China's nationwide banks using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The Chinese government began reforms of its banking industry starting in 1978. Our dataset contains twelve nationwide banks in China during the period 1996 to 2003: Four state-owned specialized banks, three policy-related banks, and five nationwide joint-equity commercial banks. First, the DEA approach is used to estimate the efficiency scores of these twelve banks for each year in China. Second, the Tobit regression is used to analyze how the environmental variables affect various bank efficiency scores. Our empirical results show that: (1) There is no significant effect of ownership reform on the cost efficiency of these banks. (2) Nationwide joint-equity commercial banks have significantly higher overall technical and scale efficiencies, but lower pure technical efficiencies than state-owned specialized banks. (3) Small-sized banks' efficiency except for scale efficiency is higher than large-sized banks. (4) These twelve banks' efficiency (except allocative efficiency) have lower scores after WTO participation in 2001. (5) These twelve banks have lower cost efficiencies after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

Financial Development, Economic Efficiency, and Productivity Growth: Evidence from China

The Developing Economies, 2006

Financial development may lead to productivity improvement in developing countries. In this paper, based on the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, we use the Malmquist index to measure China's total factor productivity change and its two components (i.e., efficiency change and technical progress). We find that China has recorded an increase in total factor productivity from 1993 to 2001, and that productivity growth was mostly attributed to technical progress, rather than to improvement in efficiency. Moreover, using panel data set covering 29 Chinese provinces over the period of 1993-2001 and applying the Generalized-Method-of-Moment system estimation, we investigate the impact of financial development on productivity growth in China. Empirical results show that, during this period, financial development has significantly contributed to China's productivity growth, mainly through its favourable effect on efficiency.