The Cost Effects of Government‐Subsidised Credit: Evidence from Farmers’ Credit Unions in Taiwan
研究了政府补贴信贷对参与金融机构成本效率的影响，以台湾农会信用部为例，发现补贴参与程度越高，成本无效率越严重，提醒政策评估需考虑中介效率损失。
Abstract We investigate government‐subsidised credit effects on participating financial institutions’ performance in terms of cost efficiency. Using farmers’ credit unions in Taiwan as an example, we find that credit unions’ cost inefficiency is positively correlated with the extent of involvement in subsidy programmes. The results are robust to the control of local competition and labour quality. In addition to the stochastic frontier models from which we obtain the main results, we also propose a new distribution‐free estimation method based on quantile regressions. Results of this study point out that, when evaluating the social costs of the credit programmes, it is important to take into account the efficiency loss generated among financial intermediaries by credit subsidy programmes.