Problem loans and cost efficiency in commercial banks

The authors suggest that what is largely missing from the research literature related to the field of financial institutions is an analysis of the relationships between problem loans and cost efficiency. Recent empirical literature suggests at least three significant links between these two topics. First, a number of researchers have found that failing banks tend to be very cost inefficient, that is, located far from the best-practice frontiers. Cost-inefficient banks may tend to have loan performance problems for a number of reasons, For example, banks with poor senior management may have problems in monitoring both their cost and their loan customers, with the losses of capital generated by both these phenomena potentially leading to failure. The authors refer to this as the "bad management" hypothesis. Alternatively, loan quality problems may be caused by an event exogenous to the bank, such as unanticipated regional economic downturns. The expenses associated with the nonperforming loans that results can crate the appearance, if not the reality, of low cost efficiency. The authors refer to this as the "bad luck" hypothesis. The second empirical link between problem loans and productive efficiency appears in studies that use supervisory examination data. A relationship between asset quality and cost is consistent with the failed bank data, and suggests that the negative relationship between problem loans and cost efficiency holds for the population of banks as a whole as well as for failing banks. Third, some recent studies of bank efficiency have directly included measures of nonperforming loans in cost or production relationships. Whether this procedure improves or hinders the estimation of cost efficiency depends upon the underlying reason for the relationship between costs and nonperforming loans. Thus, important policy and research issues rest on identifying the underlying relationship between problem loans and measured cost efficiency: T(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)