A material balance approach for modelling banks’ production process with non-performing loans

The aim of this to study is to examine how non-performing loans on the balance sheets of Japanese banks affect their performance by adopting a material balance principle. The paper outlines how the material balance conditions can be applied when modelling banks’ production process in the presence of non-performing loans. The paper utilizes the generalized weak G-disposability principle which accounts for the heterogeneity among banks’ input quality. We test how an input-oriented model (non-performing loans are treated as an input), the weak disposability assumption and the adopted material balance approach, affect banks’ performance levels. We apply our test on a sample of Japanese banks over the period 2013 to 2019. Our findings indicate that the input-oriented model and the material balance estimator even if they present similar distributions, they account differently the effect of non-performing loans’ fluctuations over the examined period. In addition, the results under the weak disposability assumption are found to be different compared to the material balance measures and less sensitive to banks’ non-performing loans variation levels. We also provide evidence that the generalized weak G-disposability assumption captures better banks’ performance fluctuations that has been caused by the restructuring of the Japanese banking industry.