IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/bubdp2/5157.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The cost efficiency of German banks: a comparison of SFA and DEA

Author

Listed:
  • Koetter, Michael
  • Karmann, Alexander
  • Fiorentino, Elisabetta

Abstract

We investigate the consistency of efficiency scores derived with two competing frontier methods in the financial economics literature: Stochastic Frontier and Data Envelopment Analysis. We sample 34,192 observations for all German universal banks and analyze whether efficiency measures yield consistent results according to five criteria between 1993 and 2004: levels, rankings, identification of extreme performers, stability over time and correlation to standard accounting-based measures of performance. We find that non-parametric methods are particularly sensitive to measurement error and outliers. Furthermore, our results show that accounting for systematic differences among commercial, cooperative and savings banks is important to avoid misinterpretation about the status of efficiency of the total banking sector. Finally, despite ongoing fundamental changes in Europe?s largest banking system, efficiency rank stability is very high in the short run. However, we also find that annually estimated efficiency scores are markedly less stable over a period of twelve years, in particular for parametric methods. Thus, the implicit assumption of serial independence of bank production in most methods has an important influence on obtained efficiency rankings.

Suggested Citation

  • Koetter, Michael & Karmann, Alexander & Fiorentino, Elisabetta, 2006. "The cost efficiency of German banks: a comparison of SFA and DEA," Discussion Paper Series 2: Banking and Financial Studies 2006,10, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:bubdp2:5157
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/19757/1/200610dkp_b.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Y. Campbell & Jens Hilscher & Jan Szilagyi, 2008. "In Search of Distress Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2899-2939, December.
    2. Berger, Allen N. & Mester, Loretta J., 1997. "Inside the black box: What explains differences in the efficiencies of financial institutions?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(7), pages 895-947, July.
    3. Slacalek, Jirka & Fritsche, Ulrich & Dovern, Jonas & Döpke, Jörg, 2005. "European inflation expectations dynamics," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2005,37, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    4. Falko Fecht & Kevin X. D. Huang & Antoine Martin, 2008. "Financial Intermediaries, Markets, and Growth," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(4), pages 701-720, June.
    5. Hamburg, Britta & Hoffmann, Mathias & Keller, Joachim, 2005. "Consumption, wealth and business cycles: why is Germany different?," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2005,16, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    6. Hashem Pesaran & Davide Pettenuzzo & Allan Timmermann, 2007. "Learning, Structural Instability, and Present Value Calculations," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2-4), pages 253-288.
    7. Britta Hamburg & Mathias Hoffmann & Joachim Keller, 2008. "Consumption, wealth and business cycles in Germany," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 451-476, June.
    8. Koetter, M. & Bos, J.W.B. & Heid, F. & Kolari, J.W. & Kool, C.J.M. & Porath, D., 2007. "Accounting for distress in bank mergers," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(10), pages 3200-3217, October.
    9. Döpke, Jörg & Funke, Michael & Holly, Sean & Weber, Sebastian, 2005. "The cross-sectional dynamics of German business cycles: a bird's eye view," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2005,23, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    10. von Kalckreuth, Ulf, 2005. "A "wreckers theory" of financial distress," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2005,40, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Frey, Rainer & Hussinger, Katrin, 2006. "The role of technology in M&As: a firm-level comparison of cross-border and domestic deals," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2006,45, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    2. Arnold, Ivo J. M. & Kool, Clemens J. M. & Raabe, Katharina, 2006. "Industries and the bank lending effects of bank credit demand and monetary policy in Germany," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2006,48, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    3. Falko Fecht & Hans Grüner, 2008. "Limits to International Banking Consolidation," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 19(5), pages 651-666, November.
    4. Ziegler, Christina & Eickmeier, Sandra, 2006. "How good are dynamic factor models at forecasting output and inflation? A meta-analytic approach," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2006,42, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    5. Hakenes, Hendrik & Fecht, Falko, 2006. "Money market derivatives and the allocation of liquidity risk in the banking sector," Discussion Paper Series 2: Banking and Financial Studies 2006,12, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    6. Stahn, Kerstin, 2006. "Has the export pricing behaviour of German enterprises changed? Empirical evidence from German sectoral prices," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2006,37, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    7. Luis J. Álvarez & Emmanuel Dhyne & Marco Hoeberichts & Claudia Kwapil & Hervé Le Bihan & Patrick Lünnemann & Fernando Martins & Roberto Sabbatini & Harald Stahl & Philip Vermeulen & Jouko Vilmunen, 2006. "Sticky Prices in the Euro Area: A Summary of New Micro-Evidence," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(2-3), pages 575-584, 04-05.
    8. Breitung, Jörg & Pesaran, Mohammad Hashem, 2005. "Unit roots and cointegration in panels," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2005,42, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    9. Pierdzioch, Christian & Döpke, Jörg & Hartmann, Daniel, 2008. "Forecasting stock market volatility with macroeconomic variables in real time," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 256-276.
    10. Stahn, Kerstin, 2006. "Has the impact of key determinants of German exports changed? Results from estimations of Germany's intra euro-area and extra euro-area exports," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2006,07, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    11. Jäckle Robert & Wamser Georg, 2010. "Going Multinational: What are the Effects on Home-Market Performance?," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 11(2), pages 188-207, May.
    12. Evelyn Hayden & Daniel Porath & Natalja Westernhagen, 2007. "Does Diversification Improve the Performance of German Banks? Evidence from Individual Bank Loan Portfolios," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 32(3), pages 123-140, December.
    13. Döpke, Jörg & Hartmann, Daniel & Pierdzioch, Christian, 2006. "Real-time macroeconomic data and ex ante predictability of stock returns," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2006,10, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    14. Thomas A. Knetsch, 2007. "Forecasting the price of crude oil via convenience yield predictions," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(7), pages 527-549.
    15. Fisch, Jan Hendrik, 2006. "Internalization and internationalization under copeting real options," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2006,15, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    16. Herrmann, Sabine & Jochem, Axel, 2005. "Trade balances of the central and east European EU member states and the role of foreign direct investment," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2005,41, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    17. Thomas A. Knetsch, 2006. "Short-Run and Long-Run Comovement of GDP and Some Expenditure Aggregates in Germany, France and Italy," Springer Books, in: Convergence or Divergence in Europe?, pages 209-249, Springer.
    18. Wolfgang Gerke & Ferdinand Mager & Timo Reinschmidt & Christian Schmieder, 2008. "Empirical Risk Analysis of Pension Insurance: The Case of Germany," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 75(3), pages 763-784, September.
    19. Koetter, Michael, 2005. "Evaluating the German bank merger wave," Discussion Paper Series 2: Banking and Financial Studies 2005,12, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    20. Knetsch, Thomas A. & Reimers, Hans-Eggert, 2006. "How to treat benchmark revisions? The case of German production and orders statistics," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2006,38, Deutsche Bundesbank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cost Efficiency; Banks; Stochastic Frontier Approach; Data Envelopment Analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:bubdp2:5157. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dbbgvde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.