IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/kbawps/42.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Banking sector competition and intermediation efficiency in Kenya

Author

Listed:
  • Kiemo, Samuel
  • Kamau, Anne

Abstract

This paper seeks to evaluate efficiency and competition dynamics of the Kenyan banking sector for the period 2001-2017 using bank-level data for 37 commercial banks. To achieve this, the paper uses a three-step estimation approach; first, we apply non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to analyze measures of various aspects of efficiency in the banking sector; secondly, we apply Panzar-Rosse, H-statistics model to assess competition in the banking sector; thirdly we introduce the DEA efficiency scores as an explanatory variable in the re-estimated P-R equation to capture the role of efficiency in competition. The study findings indicate efficiency was on an upward trend and averaging at 69 percent. The results also indicate Kenyan-banking sector is characterized by monopolistic competition as shown by H-statistics of 0.59. Managerial ability measured by DEA efficiency score is found to be an important factor in promoting competition for the Kenyan banking sector. The study reveals there is room for Kenyan banks to improve on efficiency by optimizing on scale of operations, managerial abilities and continual adoption of technology. Further, bank consolidation over the years seems to favor efficiency and competition gains in the sector, therefore, authorities should continue adopting policies that promote greater banking sector efficiency and competition.

Suggested Citation

  • Kiemo, Samuel & Kamau, Anne, 2020. "Banking sector competition and intermediation efficiency in Kenya," KBA Centre for Research on Financial Markets and Policy Working Paper Series 42, Kenya Bankers Association (KBA).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:kbawps:42
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/249543/1/WPS-42.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ahmad, Usman, 2011. "Financial Reforms and Banking Efficiency: Case of Pakistan," MPRA Paper 34220, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Newey, Whitney K & West, Kenneth D, 1987. "Hypothesis Testing with Efficient Method of Moments Estimation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 28(3), pages 777-787, October.
    3. Hausman, Jerry, 2015. "Specification tests in econometrics," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 38(2), pages 112-134.
    4. Richard S. BARR & Lawrence M. SEIFORD & Thomas F. SIEMS, 1994. "Forecasting Bank Failure : A Non-Parametric Frontier Estimation Approach," Discussion Papers (REL - Recherches Economiques de Louvain) 1994041, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    5. Jan Boone, 2008. "A New Way to Measure Competition," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(531), pages 1245-1261, August.
    6. Martin BROWNBRIDGE, 1998. "The Causes Of Financial Distress In Local Banks In Africa And Implications For Prudential Policy," UNCTAD Discussion Papers 132, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
    7. Mukesh Kumar & Vincent Charles & Chandra Sekhar Mishra, 2016. "Evaluating the performance of indian banking sector using DEA during post-reform and global financial crisis," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 156-172, February.
    8. Franklin Allen & Douglas Gale, 2004. "Competition and financial stability," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 453-486.
    9. Lina Novickytė & Jolanta Droždz, 2018. "Measuring the Efficiency in the Lithuanian Banking Sector: The DEA Application," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-15, March.
    10. Barbara Casu & Claudia Girardone, 2006. "Bank Competition, Concentration And Efficiency In The Single European Market," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 74(4), pages 441-468, July.
    11. Jacob A. Bikker & Sherrill Shaffer & Laura Spierdijk, 2012. "Assessing Competition with the Panzar-Rosse Model: The Role of Scale, Costs, and Equilibrium," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(4), pages 1025-1044, November.
    12. Jan Boone, 2008. "A New Way to Measure Competition," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(531), pages 1245-1261, August.
    13. Hao, Jonathan & Hunter, William Curt & Yang, Won Keun, 2001. "Deregulation and efficiency: the case of private Korean banks," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 53(2-3), pages 237-254.
    14. Kupukile Mlambo & Mthuli Ncube, 2011. "Competition and Efficiency in the Banking Sector in South Africa," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 23(1), pages 4-15.
    15. Iftekhar Robin & Ruhul Salim & Harry Bloch, 2018. "Cost efficiency in Bangladesh banking: does financial reform matter?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(8), pages 891-904, February.
    16. Joseph C. Paradi & H. David Sherman & Fai Keung Tam, 2018. "Data Envelopment Analysis in the Financial Services Industry," International Series in Operations Research and Management Science, Springer, number 978-3-319-69725-3, April.
    17. Alex Bara & Sanderson Abel, 2017. "Decomposition of the Technical Efficiency: Pure Technical and Scale Efficiency of the Financial System," Working Papers 683, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    18. Luis Gutiérrez de Rozas, 2007. "Testing for competition in the Spanish banking industry: The Panzar-Rosse approach revisited," Working Papers 0726, Banco de España.
    19. R. D. Banker & A. Charnes & W. W. Cooper, 1984. "Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(9), pages 1078-1092, September.
    20. Fosu, Samuel, 2013. "Banking competition in Africa: Subregional comparative studies," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 233-254.
    21. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    22. Chuling Chen, 2009. "Bank Efficiency in Sub-Saharan African Middle Income Countries," IMF Working Papers 2009/014, International Monetary Fund.
    23. Levin, Andrew & Lin, Chien-Fu & James Chu, Chia-Shang, 2002. "Unit root tests in panel data: asymptotic and finite-sample properties," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 1-24, May.
    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. El Moussawi, Chawki & Mansour, Rana, 2022. "Competition, cost efficiency and stability of banks in the MENA region," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 143-170.
    2. Samuel Kiemo & Anne Kamau, 2021. "Banking sector competition and intermediation efficiency in Kenya," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 33(4), pages 648-661, December.
    3. Abdul Latif Alhassan & Nicholas Biekpe, 2017. "Liberalization Outcomes and Competitive Behaviour in an Emerging Insurance Market," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 29(2), pages 122-138, June.
    4. Léon, Florian, 2016. "Does the expansion of regional cross-border banks affect competition in Africa? Indirect evidence," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 66-77.
    5. Filip Switala & Malgorzata Olszak & Iwona Kowalska, 2013. "Competition in commercial banks in Poland – analysis of Panzar-Rosse H-statistics," Faculty of Management Working Paper Series 42013, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management.
    6. Samuel Kiemo (PhD) & Cyrus Mugo, 2021. "Banking Sector Consolidation and Stability in Kenya," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 11(3), pages 1-6.
    7. Nathaniel Blankson & Godfred Amewu & Kenneth Ofori-Boateng & Kwame Adanu, 2022. "Banking reforms, efficiency and competition: new empirical evidence from a panel vector autoregressive analysis of Ghanaian banks," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 2(5), pages 1-24, May.
    8. Akande Joseph Olorunfemi & Kwenda Farai, 2017. "Competitive Condition of Sub-Saharan Africa Commercial Banks," Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Oeconomica, Sciendo, vol. 62(2), pages 55-76, August.
    9. Issa, Samah & Girardone, Claudia & Snaith, Stuart, 2022. "Banking competition, convergence and growth across macro-regions of MENA," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 534-549.
    10. Saif-Alyousfi, Abdulazeez Y.H. & Saha, Asish & Md-Rus, Rohani, 2020. "The impact of bank competition and concentration on bank risk-taking behavior and stability: Evidence from GCC countries," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    11. Manthos D. Delis & Sotirios Kokas & Steven Ongena, 2016. "Foreign Ownership and Market Power in Banking: Evidence from a World Sample," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 449-483, March.
    12. González, Luis Otero & Razia, Alaa & Búa, Milagros Vivel & Sestayo, Rubén Lado, 2017. "Competition, concentration and risk taking in Banking sector of MENA countries," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 591-604.
    13. Craig, Ben R. & Dinger, Valeriya, 2013. "Deposit market competition, wholesale funding, and bank risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 3605-3622.
    14. Huang, Tai-Hsin & Hu, Chu-Nan & Chang, Bao-Guang, 2018. "Competition, efficiency, and innovation in Taiwan’s banking industry — An application of copula methods," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 362-375.
    15. Altunbas, Yener & Avignone, Giuseppe & Kok, Christoffer & Pancaro, Cosimo, 2023. "Euro area banks’ market power, lending channel and stability: the effects of negative policy rates," Working Paper Series 2790, European Central Bank.
    16. Atilla Çifter, 2015. "Bank concentration and non-performing loans in Central and Eastern European countries," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(1), pages 117-137, February.
    17. Osuagwu, Eze Simpson & Nwokoma, Ndubisi, 2017. "Empirical assessment of the competitive conduct of Nigerian banks in a post-consolidation era," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 412-422.
    18. Baldwin, Kenneth & Alhalboni, Maryam, 2023. "A value-based measure of market power for the participatory deposits of Islamic banks," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    19. Barbara Casu & Claudia Girardone & Philip Molyneux, 2012. "Is There a Conflict between Competition and Financial Stability?," Chapters, in: James R. Barth & Chen Lin & Clas Wihlborg (ed.), Research Handbook on International Banking and Governance, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Moses Nyangu & Nyankomo Marwa & Ashenafi Fanta, 2023. "What drives financial stability? the nexus between market power and bank efficiency within the East African Community," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 403-428, July.

    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:kbawps:42. 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://www.kba.co.ke/about_research_center.php .

    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.