Hidden Risk: Detecting Fraud in Chinese Banks’ Non-performing Loan Data

Robert Mayo

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Using self-reported data from banks in mainland China, I apply a technique used in forensic accounting based on Benford’s Law to detect fraudulent manipulation of non-performing loan (NPL) figures. I find large data anomalies consistent with false reporting in mainland banks that do not appear in an identically structured survey of Hong Kong banks. A comparison of different types of data from mainland banks shows no statistically significant anomalies in data for total deposits from customers, operating expenses, net interest income, or non-interest income.

Keywords: China; banking; non-performing loans; fraud; Benford distribution. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/98435/1/MPRA_paper_98435.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:98435

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter (winter@lmu.de).