Investigating the Relationship Between Liquidity and Financial Performance in Turkish Banking Sector: A Pre and Post 2008 Financial Crisis Assessment

Abstract

d This study aims to shed light on the relationship between liquidity and financial performance in Turkish banking sector by comparing pre and post 2008 financial crisis periods. Throughout this aim, a panel data covering the period of 2001. Q1-2015. Q3 for the state-owned and privately-owned deposit banks in Turkey is analyzed by Breusch and Pagan (The Review of Economic Studies 47: 239-253, 1980) and Pesaran (Cambridge Working Papers in Economics, No. 435, 2004) using cross-dependency tests; cross-sectional Augmented Dickey Fuller test of Pesaran (Journal of Applied Econometrics 22: 265-312, 2007); panel cointegration test of Westerlund (Journal of Applied Econometrics, 23: 193-233, 2008); Augmented Mean Group estimator developed by Eberhardt and Bound (MPRA Paper, No. 17870, 2009) and panel causality test of Dumitrescu and Hurlin (Economic Modelling 29: 1450-1460, 2012), respectively. Empirical findings indicate that in both pre and post crisis periods, liquidity has statistically positive effect on financial performance of Turkish banking sector. It can be concluded that the effect of 2008 financial crisis on Turkish banks has not been so severe, in terms of financial performance-liquidity relationship. Another empirical finding of the study is the existence of bi-directional causality relationship between liquidity and financial performance of Turkish banking sector, in both pre and post crisis periods.