Title: Bank risk-taking behaviour, market power and efficiency: empirical evidence from the East African community

Authors: Moses Nyangu; Nyankomo Marwa; Ashenafi Fanta

Addresses: University of Stellenbosch Business School, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa; Strathmore University Business School, Strathmore University, Kenya ' University of Stellenbosch Business School, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa ' University of Stellenbosch Business School, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract: The paper examines the impact of bank risk-taking behaviour and market power on efficiency within the East African community. Comprehensive types of risk-taking behaviour include credit risk, liquidity risk, capital risk and insolvency risk, while structural and non-structural measures of market power are employed. Unlike previous studies, bank efficiency is decomposed into technical, pure technical, scale, cost and revenue efficiency. Using a two-step system GMM on 149 banks with 1,805 observations over the period 2001-2018, the findings reveal that the effect of bank risk-taking behaviour varies depending on the type of efficiency and existing market structure. Market power is observed to precede all types of bank efficiency, thus supporting the concentration-efficiency hypothesis that banks with greater market power are more efficient. Overall, reduced bank risk-taking behaviour and greater market power leads to more bank efficiency. The results present potentially important policy recommendations for bank risks, market power and efficiency.

Keywords: bank risk-taking; market power; efficiency; system GMM; East African community; EAC.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBAAF.2022.126154

International Journal of Banking, Accounting and Finance, 2022 Vol.13 No.2, pp.145 - 176

Accepted: 02 Jan 2022
Published online: 13 Oct 2022 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article