Abstract This study examines how small and medium-size enterprises’ (SMEs’) lending and credit guarantee affect Korean banks’ efficiency, by employing the stochastic frontier approach on 14 banks over the period 2001–2010. When lending increases to SMEs, the findings indicate that banks’ cost efficiency decreases due to information asymmetry. However, the increased proportion of credit guarantee can improve their cost efficiency. This proves that South Korea’s credit guarantee system can indeed share SMEs’ credit risk of lending in order to help raise bank efficiency.

中文翻译：

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中小企业的贷款和信用担保对韩国银行效率的影响

摘要本研究通过对2001-2010年间14家银行采用随机前沿方法，研究了中小企业的贷款和信用担保如何影响韩国银行的效率。当对中小企业的贷款增加时，研究结果表明，由于信息不对称，银行的成本效率降低了。但是，增加信用担保的比例可以提高其成本效率。这证明了韩国的信用担保体系确实可以分担中小企业的放贷信用风险，以帮助提高银行效率。