Abstract

The primary purpose of this paper is to measure the differences in technology and production efficiency among 220 commercial banks in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Japan, and South Korean during 2004–2007. This will enable us to explore the differences in resource operation and production level so as to establish a mutual learning benchmark for the East Asian regional banks. To further consider the differences in the production technology of different regions, this study eliminates the impact of environment variables and banking features and examines the differences in technology efficiency and production efficiency in these regions. The empirical findings show that both the Metatechnology efficiency and the technology gap ratio are significantly well-performed take place in China and Japan. In addition, the efficiency performance and technology gap ratio in the private and new banking sectors are significantly greater than those in the public and old banking sectors. However, if the effects of environmental variables and banking features are not eliminated, we find that both efficiency values and technology gap ratio may have been underestimated and the ranking of technology efficiency and the technology gap ratio are significantly different for different regions.