银行盈利能力分析中英文对照外文翻译文献

济效益只有在根据资产小于10亿欧元的最小银行才有效，此后报酬不变和规模不经济的最大银行超过1000欧亿。 6 结语

在最近几年中，许多因素加剧了欧盟银行业的竞争，尤其是银行的操作环境的急速变化给银行带来了巨大的挑战。这是合理的假设去认为所有这些变化都必然会对银行的表现有一定的影响。格林在2001年指出，银行需要足够的资金以维持偿债能力并在合适的环境中生存。银行的效率和经济增长之间的关系是有据可查的。与此同时，银行的破产会对经济产生不利的后果。因此，认识影响银行的盈利能力的潜在因素是必不可少的，不仅是为了银行经理，也是为了在15个欧盟国家众多的利益相关者，如的中央银行，银行协会，政府和其他金融机构。从这项研究中得出的结论对于那些经济和银行系统正经历根本性变化的新欧盟国家都是很有意义的。

原文:

Factors influencing the profitability of domestic and foreign commercial banks in the European

Union

Abstract

Using bank level data this paper examines how bank's specific characteristics and the overall banking environment affect the profitability of commercial domestic and foreign banks operating in the 15 EU countries over the period 1995–2001. The results indicate that profitability of both domestic and foreign banks is affected not only by bank's specific characteristics but also by financial market structure and macroeconomic conditions. All the variables, with the exception of concentration in the case of domestic banks profits, are significant although their impact and relation

银行盈利能力分析中英文对照外文翻译文献

with profits is not always the same for domestic and foreign banks.

Keywords Banks; European Union; Profitability

1. Introduction

Over the last years a number of factors have contributed to the growing competition in the European Union (EU) banking sector. One of the most important factors is deregulation, promoted by the Second European Directive on Banking and Financial services, concerning establishment, operation and supervision of credit institutions. This Directive sets out the principles of banking in the Single European financial market and provides equal competitive conditions for all European banking institutions. As a result banks now compete in previously inaccessible domestic and foreign markets. Furthermore, a number of recent technological advances offered more opportunities for economies of scale and scope while the adoption of euro accelerated the changes in the industry. For instance, income generation from foreign exchange transactions has been lost while the pricing of banking products and services has become more transparent, enhancing competition. Furthermore, the macroeconomic policies that were followed in most countries gradually reduced inflation and interest rates. Finally, in more and more European countries non-financial firms were allowed to offer traditional banking services, leading to further increase in competition. Therefore, banks were forced to generate new products and seek new customers. This is reflected in the continued diversification across geographical areas and business lines. Many banks have been forced to increase in size in order to compete in the enlarged European market and the banking industry experienced an unprecedented level of consolidation through mergers and acquisitions.

It is reasonable to assume that all these changes posed great challenges to banks in the EU as the environment in which they operated changed rapidly, a fact that consequently had an impact on their performance. As Golin (2001) points out adequate earnings are required in order for banks to maintain solvency, to survive, grow and prosper in a suitable environment. Given the relation between the well-being of the banking sector and the growth of the economy (Rajan and Zingales, 1998, Levine, 1997 and Levine, 1998), knowledge of the underlying factors that influence banks’ profitability is essential not only for the managers of the banks but for numerous stakeholders such as the Central Banks, Bankers Associations, Governments, and other Financial Authorities. Knowledge of these factors would also be of particular interest to the new EU countries whose economies and banking systems are experiencing fundamental changes during this period.

The aim of this paper is to extent earlier work on the determinants of profitability of banks in the EU and examine to what extent the performance of commercial banks operating in EU markets is influenced by internal factors (i.e. banks’ specific characteristics) and to what extent by external factors (i.e. macroeconomic and

银行盈利能力分析中英文对照外文翻译文献

financial market structure) in view of the ongoing process of integration and concentration. Although a growing literature uses efficient frontier approaches to examine the profit and cost efficiency of EU banks (e.g., Altunbas et al., 2001 and Schure et al., 2004), to our best knowledge, there are only few studies that focus on the determinants of profitability while focusing on the EU as a total1 (e.g., Molyneux and Thorton, 1992 and Staikouras and Wood, 2003).

Molyneux and Thorton (1992) were the first that examined the determinants of banks profitability operating in 18 European countries over the period 1986–1989. Most recently the European banking sector was examined by Staikouras and Wood (2003) that considered banks from 13 EU countries over the period 1994–1998. The present study attempts to provide additional and more recent evidence on the determinants of banks profitability in the EU. In order to accomplish this task, our paper differs from the earlier mentioned studies in several aspects. First of all, we include more recent years in the analysis by examining the period 1995–2001. Furthermore, we examine more factors by introducing the influence of additional financial market structure variables such as stock market capitalization to GDP, stock market capitalization to assets of deposits money banks and assets of deposits money banks to GDP, not considered in the above studies. Finally, we are the first that distinguish between foreign and domestic banks. During the last years both developed and developing countries around the world have relaxed restrictions on foreign banking and most of them now allow more foreign banks to undertake more banking-related activities in their domestic banking markets, mainly because of the increasingly importance of international trade in goods and financial services. As Goddard et al. (2001) point out since 1989 the number of foreign banks has increased in every banking market in Europe, which now hold a large proportion of banking assets in the UK (53% of banking sector assets in 1999), Belgium (24% of assets in 1999), Portugal (12% of assets in 1999) and France (12% in 1999). Previous studies that distinguish between domestic and foreign banks focus mostly on differences on profit and cost efficiencies using frontier approaches (e.g., Berger et al., 2000 and Sathye, 2001) or financial characteristics that differentiate these two groups of banks (e.g., Kosmidou et al., 2006a) and not on whether the internal and external determinants of profitability among domestic and foreign banks are different.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 provides a literature review of related studies. Section 3 describes the dependent and independent variables while Section 4 presents the data and methodology used in the study. The empirical results are presented in Section 5. Finally, in Section 6, the concluding remarks are discussed. 2. Literature review

Prior literature related to the present paper can be classified in three broad categories. The first consists of studies that focus on the determinants of banks’ profitability. The second consists of studies that examine the profit and cost efficiency of European banks. The third consists of studies that compare domestic and foreign banks. In the following sections we discuss each one of these categories. 2.1. Studies on the determinants of profitability

银行盈利能力分析中英文对照外文翻译文献

Following the early studies of Short (1979) and Bourke (1989) a number of more recent studies have attempted to identify some of the major determinants of banks’ profitability. They consider internal and external factors and examine a single country (e.g., Berger, 1995, Angbazo, 1997, Guru et al., 1999, Ben Naceur, 2003, Mamatzakis and Remoundos, 2003, Kosmidou et al., 2005 and Kosmidou, 2006) or a panel of countries (Molyneux and Thorton, 1992, Demirguc-Kunt and Huizinga, 1999, Abreu and Mendes, 2001, Staikouras and Wood, 2003, Hassan and Bashir, 2003 and Goddard et al., 2004). In the discussion that follows we focus on the studies that examine the EU banking market.2

The study of Molyneux and Thorton (1992) is one of the first that examines the determinants of banks profitability in several countries. The results indicate a positive association between the return on equity and the level of interest rates, bank concentration and the government ownership. In a more recent study, Abreu and Mendes (2001) examine Portugal, Spain, France and Germany and find that loan to assets and equity to assets ratios have a positive impact on interest margins and profitability. They also find that operating costs have a positive impact on net interest margins measures but not on profits measures, while the opposite holds for bank's market share. From the macroeconomic variables, inflation is relevant in all cases, while the nominal effective exchange rate does not have an impact on performance. The unemployment rate has a negative sign in all regressions and is significant in the case of profits although not on net interest margins measures. Staikouras and Wood (2003) examine the performance of a sample of banks operating in thirteen EU banking markets. The results indicate that loans to assets ratio and the proportion of loan loss provisions are inversely related to banks’ return on assets, as well as that banks with greater levels of equity are relatively more profitable. The funds gap ratio is also significant and positively related to performance. Furthermore, the authors found no evidence to support either the structure–conduct–performance or the efficient hypothesis. Two of the three macroeconomic indicators, the variability of interest rates and the growth of GDP had a negative impact, while the level of interest rates had a positive effect. Goddard et al. (2004) investigate the determinants of profitability in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, for the period 1992–98. They find only weak evidence for any consistent or systematic size–profitability relationship and a positive relationship between capital-assets ratio and profitability. The relationship between the importance of off-balance-sheet business in a bank's portfolio and profitability is positive for the UK, but either neutral or negative elsewhere.

2.2. Studies on the profit and cost efficiency of EU banks In recent years, there has also been an increase of academic studies that focus on the efficiency of financial institutions using frontier analysis. Berger and Humphrey (1997) outline 130 studies, covering 21 countries, multiple time periods and various types of institutions that applied three parametric (i.e. stochastic frontier approach (SFA), distribution free approach (DFA), thick frontier approach (TFA)) and two non-parametric (i.e. data envelopment analysis (DEA), free disposal hull (FDH))

银行盈利能力分析中英文对照外文翻译文献

frontier approaches for determining the best-practice frontier against which relative efficiencies are measured.3 The efficiency of a bank is measured relatively to that of the best-practice banks of similar size, with most studies focusing on cost efficiency rather than profit efficiency.4 Some recent studies also consider both cost and profit efficiency (e.g., Berger and Humphrey, 1997 and Berger and Mester, 1997), as well as risk variables (e.g., Berger and DeYoung, 1997, Berg et al., 1992, McAllister and McManus, 1993, Mester, 1996 and Rao, 2005).

Although the EU is considered relatively under researched (given its size and importance) there is now a growing strand of literature that examines the efficiency of EU banking institutions. Examples of such studies are Altunbas et al. (2001), Bikker (2002), Maudos et al. (2002), Schure et al. (2004) and Staikouras et al. (2005). The studies of Dietsch and Weil (1998), Cavallo and Rossi (2002), Casu and Molyneux (2003), are also interesting as they focus on most of the main EU banking sectors. Earlier studies, as the ones of Berg et al. (1993), Pastor et al. (1995), Lang and Welzel (1996), Lozano-Vivas (1997), Dietsch and Lozano-Vivas (2000), focus mostly on sub-sets of selected markets or individual countries such as the nordic countries, France, Germany and Spain among others. 2.3. Studies on foreign versus domestic banks

Other studies have employed similar techniques to compare the efficiency of foreign and domestic banks. Hasan and Hunter (1996), Mahajan et al. (1996), and Chang et al. (1998) conclude that foreign banks in the US are less cost efficient than domestic banks, while Seth (1992) and Nolle (1995), find that foreign-owned banks are not as profitable as domestically owned banks. Similar results were obtained in studies which examined the Australian market. Using DEA Sathye (2001) found foreign banks to be less efficient than domestic, while comparable results were obtained by Avkiran (1997).

Fewer studies have examined European markets. After estimating separate frontiers for foreign and domestic banks in Spain, Hasan and Lozano-Vivas (1998) find that foreign banks are about equal as profit efficiency as domestic banks. Berger et al. (2000) estimate cost and profit frontiers to compare the efficiency of banks in France, Germany, Spain, UK and US. For the US case, the results showed that domestic banks are on average less cost efficient than foreign banks. For the EU countries, cost efficiency and profit efficiency were found higher for domestic banks than foreign banks in three cases (i.e. France, Germany, UK), but the difference was not found to be statistically significant. Using a multicriteria decision aid methodology, Kosmidou et al. (2004) find that domestic banks exhibit higher overall performance compared to foreign banks operating in the UK. Kosmidou et al. (2006a) examine how foreign banks differ from domestic banks in the UK and find that the later are characterized by higher return on equity, net interest revenue to total earning assets, and loans to customer and short term funding.

Studies that compare the performance of foreign and domestic banks in developing countries yield in general different results. Demirguc-Kunt and Huizinga (1999) as well as Claessens et al. (2001) find foreign banks to be disadvantaged compared to domestic banks in developed countries although not in less developed countries.