Competition, Innovation, Risk-Taking, and Profitability in the Chinese Banking Sector: An Empirical Analysis Based on Structural Equation Modeling

Table 2

Definitions of variables.

Variable	Definition
Total cost
Capital cost	Interest expense
Operating cost	Business and management cost, loss of impairment of asset
Labor cost	Employee salary and welfare
Input
Labor price	The ratio of cash payments for salaries and staff expenses to amount of labor
Fixed assets price	The ratio of depreciation to net fixed asset
Funds price	The ratio of interest expense to the sum of customer deposit and borrowed fund
Output
Investment	Financial assets at fair value through profit or loss, available-for-sale financial assets, held-to-maturity investment, receivables-bond investment
Loan	Personal loan, corporate loan, other loans

This table reports the definitions and measurements of the variables in (9).