Panel stochastic frontier analysis of profitability and efficiency of Turkish banking sector in the post crisis era

This paper examines the efficiency and its relation to profitability in Turkish banking sector by employing Panel Stochastic Frontier Approach. In the post crises period, extensive structural changes have taken place and a great number of new developments have occurred, affecting the efficiency of banking sector. This is the first study that employs panel stochastic frontier approach for banking efficiency in Turkey. In this research, both cost and profit efficiency measures are estimated for the panel data consisting of 32 banks between 2002-2007. Results suggest that there is cost efficiency gain and convergence in the efficiency levels of banks. As another interesting result, foreign banks are less efficient and state banks are more efficient. This paper also analyzes the relation between efficiency and profitability and finds no robust relation between them. However, the bank size matters more for profitability.