This paper investigates the effects of ownership patterns on banks’ cost and profit efficiencies taking a sample of 607 commercial banks operating in 53 African countries during the period 2005–2015. Using pooled and modified true fixed effects (TFE) stochastic frontier panel approaches, we obtain two principal results. First, foreign-owned banks are not more profit or cost efficient than their domestic peers. Second, privately owned banks outperform state-owned banks. These findings result not only from bank-level inefficiencies but are explained by bank-level characteristics and macroeconomic conditions. Specifically, larger, older, and listed banks are associated with higher profit efficiency. This study also reveals that ownership concentration (blockholding) has adverse effects on the efficiency of banks.

本文以2005-2015年期间在53个非洲国家运营的607家商业银行为样本，研究了所有权模式对银行成本和利润效率的影响。使用合并和修正的真实固定效应（TFE）随机前沿面板方法，我们获得了两个主要结果。首先，外资银行的利润或成本效率不比国内银行高。第二，私有银行的表现要优于国有银行。这些发现不仅是由于银行层面的效率低下造成的，而且还可以通过银行层面的特征和宏观经济状况加以解释。具体而言，大型，较老和上市的银行与更高的利润效率相关。这项研究还表明，所有权集中（集体持股）会对银行的效率产生不利影响。