Ownership and Production Efficiency: Evidence from Taiwanese Banks

In the early 1990s, Taiwan began her deregulation trend in order to enhance competition and economic efficiency across all industries. We derive a theoretical framework to predict possible rankings in technical efficiencies of public, mixed, and private banks. A panel data set with 43 Taiwanese banks during 1997-1999 is used for empirical analysis. We then apply a translog distance function to estimate technical efficiencies. The relationship between technical efficiency and government shareholding is also examined. Empirical results show that a public bank in Taiwan can improve its technical efficiency by mixed ownership at a diminishing rate. Moreover, banks in Taiwan on average performed worse after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.