Investigating the Effects of Banks' Cost Efficiency on Financial Reporting Quality: Data Envelopment Analysis and GMM Approach

The performance of economic enterprises is one of the issues that have been evaluated from different aspects in the historical periods of economics. Among these, the concept of cost efficiency has been considered as one of the most basic concepts to express the performance and therefore several studies have tried to explore efficiency index. Nowadays, users' judgment is based on the ability of banks to help solve problems and develop the country's trade. In the banking system, proper performance, non-waste of resources and costs, allocation of cost efficiency as the most important element of success in the competition of banks. Measuring efficiency in the banking industry affects the cost of financial intermediation and the overall stability of financial markets. Therefore, in this study, the effects of Banks' Cost Efficiency on the quality of financial reporting have been measured. In this regard, the data of 12 specialized and commercial banks of the country over the period 2010- 2019 have been collected and then measured using the data envelopment analysis approach. moreover, to measure the quality of accounting and financial reporting information, the model of Dechow and Dichev (2002) based on data panel data during the period 2010 to 2019 was estimated by GMM method. We find that the efficiency of doubtful debts cost has a positive and significant impact on the quality of accounting and financial reporting information index. In contrast, the the efficiency of other fixed costs including the efficiency of financial costs, general, administrative and organizational costs and depreciation costs, have a significant negative impact on the quality of financial accounting and reporting information index