Turkish Banking Recapitalization and the Financial Crisis: An Efficiency and Productivity Analysis

This paper describes procedures in panel data econometrics for efficiency measurement and productivity decomposition in the banking system of an emerging economy with a special focus on the period following a financial crisis. In the recovery from a banking crisis, policymakers attempt to recapitalize the banking system, but this has the potential to impose significant costs. Turkey has restructured the banking system through recapitalization, and this has directly caused the shadow return on equity to turn negative. This negative shadow return on equity is an offset to total factor productivity change, and there is an important policy lesson that a successful recapitalization has a cost in restricting the banking system's overall productivity growth.