Bank Efficiency and Default in Brazil: Causality Tests

Periods of Financial Stability are associated to low bank efficiency and high non-performing loans in credit portfolios. Therefore, this paper studies the relationship between bank efficiency and non-performing loans. To evaluate the bank efficiency, we employ a Data Envelopment Analysis. We employ the Arelano-Bond dynamic panel approach and a panel-VAR to test whether non-performing loans Granger cause bank efficiency (bad luck hypothesis) or whether bank efficiency affects loan quality (management with risk aversion). Empirical results for the Brazilian case corroborate the second hypothesis.