Cost efficiency of Kazakhstan and Russian banks: results from competing panel data models-super-1

In this paper, we estimate cost efficiency of the Kazakhstan and Russian banks. A stochastic frontier approach based on a panel data for 2002--6 is used. The Kazakhstan banking system is traditionally assumed to be more advanced compared to the Russian system. Empirically we do not find any significant differences in the cost efficiency of banks between these two countries during the period of our study. This result is found to be quite robust across several alternative and competing models. We also find that many of the banks in both countries operate below their optimal size.