This paper examines the relationship between financial market regulation, country governance and efficiency of commercial banks in East Asian economies during the period 2001-2008 using a twostage estimation technique. In the first stage, we employ a non-parametric approach — Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) — to estimate the banks’ cost and profit efficiency scores and then Tobit estimation to analyze the impact of financial market regulations and country governance on bank efficiency. The results suggest that commercial banks in East Asia are relatively profit efficient rather than cost efficient. The findings show that countries with more financial freedom and independence are more cost efficient. Moreover, government effectiveness is found to be positively related to bank efficiency. Consistent with economic theory, corruption is negatively related to bank efficiency. Therefore, this study reveals the importance of financial market regulations and country governance as catalysts for efficient banking operations in East Asian economies.

中文翻译：

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金融市场监管、国家治理和银行效率：来自东亚国家的证据

本文使用两阶段估计技术研究了 2001-2008 年东亚经济体金融市场监管、国家治理和商业银行效率之间的关系。在第一阶段，我们采用非参数方法——数据包络分析（DEA）——来估计银行的成本和利润效率得分，然后采用 Tobit 估计来分析金融市场监管和国家治理对银行效率的影响。结果表明，东亚商业银行的利润效率相对高于成本效率。研究结果表明，财务自由度和独立性更高的国家成本效益更高。此外，政府效率与银行效率呈正相关。符合经济理论，腐败与银行效率呈负相关。因此，本研究揭示了金融市场监管和国家治理作为东亚经济体高效银行运营催化剂的重要性。