Efficiency and productivity change in the banking industry: Empirical evidence from New Zealand banks

Abstract

This paper examines the New Zealand banking industry’s efficiency and productivity changes during the period 2007‐2011, a period dominated by the US subprime mortgage crisis. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to identify the technical efficiency frontier (static in nature). The DEA‐based Malmquist productivity index is used to further analyse the Malmquist components to account for dynamic shifts in the efficiency frontier. Findings indicate that New Zealand retail banks generally have high levels of efficiency. This suggests that the banks wasted relatively less of their input resources over the period under study. In addition, the results suggest that a large part of overall technical inefficiency of retail banks could be attributed to scale inefficiency rather than pure technical inefficiency. Furthermore, the results indicate that New Zealand banks experienced a modest productivity growth rate over the 2007 to 2011 period. This increase is mainly attributed to technological progress, since the average efficiency change declined, thus generating a negative impact on the total productivity growth. This decline appeared to be a result of the decreasing rate in both scale efficiency change and pure technical efficiency change.