1、 外文翻译 原文 Privatization Matters: Bank Efficiency in Transition Countries Material source:William DavidsonInstitute, Author:John P. Bonin University of Michigan Iftekhar Hasan Paul Wachtel 1. Introduction A constructiBanking sectors in the transition economies of Central and Southeastern Europe were r
2、estructured dramatically the 1990s.Beginning with a financial organization that, in most cases, was designed to support the central planning apparatus, new governments moved to create modern commercial banking sectors immediately. The first rudimentary step was to divest commercial and retail activi
3、ties from the portfolios of national banks and to set up new joint-stock banks with universal licenses that were fully state-owned initially. Bank privatization was an essential part of the financial reform agendas in these countries. Although much descriptive work exists on these financial sector r
4、eforms and bank privatizations, e.g., Bonin, Mizsei, Szkely, and Wachtel (1998), no systematic empirical work was possible until sufficient time had elapsed to make the construction of a meaningful dataset possible. The basic issue to investigate is whether or not privatization improves bank perform
5、ance. Although the theoretical literature indicates that private firms should outperform government-owned firms, empirical evidence is needed to confirm this theoretical hypothesis for banks in transition countries. The empirical literature provides evidence of the influence of ownership on the perf
6、ormance of individual banks and on the effectiveness of the banking sector. In a cross-country study, La Porta, Lopez-De-Silanes, and Shleifer (2002) find that the performance of government-owned banks is inferior to that of private banks. Claessens, Demirgc-Kunt and Huizinga (2001) investigate perf
7、ormance differences between domestic and foreign banks in eighty countries, both developed and developing, over an eight-year period from 1988 to 1995. These authors find that foreign bank entry was followed by a reduction in both the profitability and the overhead expenses of domestic banks and tha
8、t foreign banks in developing countries perform better than do domestic banks. For Latin American countries, Crystal, Dages, and Goldberg (2001) argue that foreign bank entry is associated with improved production of financial services and more banking competition; in addition, they claim that it fa
9、cilitates the early waves of privatization ofgovernment-owned domestic banks.Hence, this empirical literature provides evidence that ownership matters; in particular, government ownership of banks is less efficient than private ownership and foreign bank entry has a salutary effect on banking sector
10、s. Much of the empirical literature on banking in transition countries addresses the impact of foreign bank entry on banking efficiency. Hasan and Marton (2003), Drakos (2003), and Fries and Taci (2003) demonstrate that the entry of more efficient foreign banks creates an environment that forces the
11、 entire banking system to become more efficient, both directly and indirectly, in transition countries.Buch (2000) compares interest rate spreads in the three fast-track transition countries, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, from 1995 to 1999. She finds evidence confirming the hypothesis that
12、 foreign banks create a more competitive market environment in transition economies, but only after they have attained sufficient aggregate market share. A few studies examine the effects of ownership on individual bank efficiency.For Poland, Nikiel and Opiela (2002) find that foreign banks servicin
13、g foreign and business customers are more cost-efficient but less profit-efficient than other banks in Poland. Bonin, Hasan, and Wachtel (2003) examine the performance of banks in eleven transition countries and show that majority foreign ownership is associated with improved bank efficiency.However
14、, these authors cannot investigate privatization directly because their data do not distinguish among different types of foreign bank ownership. Studies focusing specifically on the effects of bank privatization are less numerous.Verbrugge,Megginson and Owens (2000) document marginal performance imp
15、rovements and increases in equity among privatized banks in OECD countries. For Argentina, Clark and Cull (1999, 2000) study the privatization process and show that the success of the provincial bank privatization depended on the effectiveness of the buyers. These authors find evidence that credit a
16、llocation and efficiency are higher in privatized banks. The transformation of the Argentine banking system occurred mainly through domestic mergers and acquisitions so that foreign banks played only a relatively minor role. In the transition countries, the prevalence of foreign strategic owners in
17、formerly state-owned but subsequently privatized banks makes it crucial to distinguish these banks from foreign greenfield banks when analyzing bank privatization. In this paper, we focus on six relatively advanced transition countries, namely, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland
18、and Romania. We chose not to include banks in very small transition economies, e.g., the Baltic countries and Slovenia, and those in less advanced transition economies that have only recently restructured the banking system, e.g., the former Soviet Union, Albania and the other Balkan states.In the n
19、ext section, we present a brief description of the privatization experiences in these six countries to establish that the strategies and the timing of privatizations are sufficiently different to allow us to use these experiences as the basis for an empirical analysis of privatization.Section 3 desc
20、ribes our dataset and presents the results of testing for differences in means across bank types for several measures of bank performance and for several bank characteristics.Section 4 characterizes briefly our methodology of deriving profit and cost efficiency measures from stochastic frontier esti
21、mates that allow for country and year effects directly in a pooled data set.In this section, we relate the bank efficiency scores, as well as a measure of financial performance, to the type of ownership and the method of privatization in second-stage regressions. Section 5 concludes with a brief sum
22、mary focusing on policy implications. 2. Bank Privatization in Six Transition Economies Pre-transition banking sectors were designed to meet the needs of a centrally planned economy(CPE).Intermediatio between savers and borrowers was internalized within the state banking apparatus basically through
23、a system of directed credits to state-owned enterprises for both investment needs and budget allocations for the working capital necessary to meet the output plan. In most CPEs, large specialty banks performed specific functions. A state savings bank, with an extensive branch network, collected virt
24、ually all household deposits. A foreign trade bank handled all transactions involving foreign currency. An agricultural bank provided short-term financing to the agricultural sector. on bank funded long-term capital projects and infrastructure development.Hence,banking activities were both subservie
25、nt to the plan and segmented along functional lines in CPEs. In the transition economies (TEs), the first step in banking sector reform involved creating a two-tier system with commercial banking activities carved out of the old central bank. At the beginning of the decade, the new banking sectors i
26、n the former CPEs consisted of the newly created commercial banks and the specialty banks, both types having universal banking licenses, along with a few foreign greenfield banks and often many relatively undercapitalized denovo domestic private banks that were born under lax entry requirements.Spec
27、ialty banks had virtual monopolies in their core activities, e.g., the savings bank was often the only entity with an extensive enough branch network throughout the country to collect primary deposits. Typically, three or four large banks dominated the emerging banking sector in a TE. Both the newly
28、 created commercial entities and the specialty banks were state-owned initially. Hence, structural segmentation, a proliferation of weak small domestic private banks, and state-ownership of the large banks were the major features of banking sectors in TEs at the beginning of the 1990s. These legacie
29、s affected the banking sectors in all of the countries in our sample with the exception of Croatia, which was part of Yugoslavia.From the 1950s, commercial banks in Croatia as well as the other republics were not state-owned but were owned collectively according to the Yugoslavian system of self-man
30、agement. Virtually all foreign exchange deposits collected by the republic-level banks were remitted to the National Bank of Yugoslavia in Belgrade in exchange for credits in dinars.Upon succession in June 1991, the Yugoslavian government froze the foreign exchange deposits of Croatian banks. Hence,
31、 Croatian banks faced a currency mismatch between assets and liabilities creating large holes in their balance sheets after succession.At the end of 1995, four Croatian banks were selected for government rehabilitation because of the poor quality of their loan portfolios. Involvement in this program
32、 resulted in these banks being nationalized so that four large state-owned banks were created in Croatia in the middle of the 1990s. The three more advanced TEs, i.e., Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, embarked on significantly different bank privatizations programs during the first half of the 1
33、990s. Even before the political change, the Hungarian government had been receptive to foreign bank activity as it allowed three foreign banks to operate in the country from 1985. By the end of 1994, the Hungarian foreign trade bank had been purchased by a foreign owner and foreign investors held ab
34、out 20% of total banking assets in Hungary. In the Czech Republic, three of the largest four banks participated in the first wave of voucher privatization in 1992. Both of thesoutheastern TEs,i.e., Bulgaria and Romania,began bank privatization only in the late In 2000, foreign investors owned less t
35、han half of Romanian banking assets and two of the three largest banks remained state-owned as late as 2003. Beginning in 1995 with virtually no Although the Czech governmenIn Croatia, only one small foreign bank was operating in 1995 and there was hardly any foreign ownership of With some inducemen
36、t from the G7 donor countries and international financial institutions, Polish authorities set a three Investment funds, the largest of which were created by these banks, were an integral part of the Czech voucher privatization program.Hence, this initial divestiture of state holdings resulted in in
37、terlocking ownership with the state retaining large controlling stakes of voucher-privatized Czech banks. At the end of 1994, although foreign investors held about 6% of banking assets in the Czech Republic, none of the large banks had any foreign ownership. -year timetable at the beginning of 1993
38、for privatizing the nine medium-sized, regional, state-owned banks that were created from the commercial portfolio of the national bank. However, by the end of 1994, only two of these banks had been privatized and only two more would be privatized before 1997. Foreign ownership of banking assets rem
39、ained insignificant in Poland at about 2% in the mid-1990s. Macroeconomic instability and financial sector distress made bank privatization infeasible in Bulgaria and Romania during the first half of the 1990s. By 1995, neither Bulgaria nor Romania had privatized any banks and foreign ownership of b
40、anking assets was negligible at less than 1% in both countries. banking assets. Of the six countries, only Hungary and to a lesser extent Poland had committed to selling banks to foreign investors by the end of the first half of the 1990s.However, by the end the decade, five of the six countries wer
41、e embarked on, or had completed, privatizations that would put at least 75% of their banking assets under foreign control by 2002. The second half of the 1990s witnessed a flurry of bank privatizations in these countries. Appendix A lists the banks in our sample from each country ranked according to
42、 market share at the end of the decade. Information on each banks status throughout the 1990s is provided and, when relevant, the banks privatization is dated. Bank privatization proceeded relatively swiftly in Hungary; by mid-1997, eight of the top ten banks were majority foreign-owned. After a few
43、 initial bank privatizations, the Polish government became sidetracked by a bank consolidation initiative that was intended to fend off foreign competition. Nonetheless, a combination of mergers and privatizations involving foreign partners left foreigner investors holding more than 75% of Polish ba
44、nking assets by 2000. t was late to recognize the importance of attracting strategic foreign investors for its large voucher-privatized banks, all major banks were sold to foreign owners by mid-2001. 1990s.After instituting a currency board and stabilizing the macroeconomic environment, the Bulgaria
45、n government privatized its first bank to a consortium of investors in 1997.By the end of 2000, eight of the ten largest banks in Bulgaria were foreign owned. Romania is a laggard in bank privatization compared to the other former CPEs. holdings in Croatia, foreigner investors had acquired about 84%
46、 of banking assets by 2000 and, by 2002, all of the ten largest banks in the country were majority foreign owned. In summary, Hungary was the first country to shed the legacies of the CPE by privatizing all but one of its major banks by mid-1997. In Poland, after some delay in the privatization time
47、table, only the zloty savings bank and the umbrella agricultural bank remain state-controlled. Initially, the Czech Republic placed three big banks in the voucher privatization program but, despite a late start, foreign investors gained control of all large Czech banks by mid-2001. The banking secto
48、rs in Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia were financially distressed in the first half of the 1990s, albeit for different reasons, so that bank privatization could not begin until the late 1990s. Once started, sales of banks to foreign investors were rapid in Bulgaria and Croatia. Romania is the only on
49、e of the six transition countries in this study to retain significant government ownership in its banking sector through 2003 with only one of its three largest banks privatized. 译文 民营化问题：银行在转型国家的效率 资料来源： 威廉戴维森研究所，密西根大学 作者：约翰 博宁 伊夫特哈尔哈桑 保罗沃赫特尔 1 简介 在上世纪 90 年代，中欧和东南欧转型经济体的银行 部门进行了调整。在大多数情况下，进行金融组织旨在支持中央计划机关， 新政府立即纷纷采取措施建立现代商业银行部门。最初第一个基本步骤是从国有银行剥离的投资组合的商业和零售业务，新的股份制银行与通用许可证完全国有。银行私有化是在这些国家的金融改革议程的重要组成部分， 虽然许多文章描述这些金融领域的改革和银行私有化的存在，没有系统的实证研究是可能的，直到有足够的建立一个有意义的数据集，例如： Bonin， Mizsei， Szkely， 和 Wachtel (19
