The false prosperity and promising future: Effects of data resources on bank efficiency

This study investigates the impact of data resources on bank efficiency. Based on data management theory, we measure bank data resources and find that higher data resources are associated with lower cost efficiency using data on Chinese banks over the period 2013 to 2019. However, data resources have no significant impact on profit efficiency. We discover that data resources reduce cost efficiency possibly due to increased overheads and decreased capital adequacy ratio. Furthermore, we conclude that emerging data technologies can reduce the cost burden of data resources on commercial banks, resulting in synergistic technical benefits. The findings are of timely policy importance and practical relevance for regulators, policy-makers, and bank managers. Our main results hold for a battery of endogeneity and robustness tests.