Exactly what constitutes bank input and output has not yet been settled. Some argue that deposit liabilities and earning assets are outputs as they represent the capacity of services banks can perform. A number of economists, however, assert that only earning assets can be considered as outputs since inclusion of deposit liabilities fails to distinguish between production in the technical sense and production in the economic sense. To delineate bank outputs and inputs, this study ascertains whether Philippine commercial banks incur positive costs on demand deposits. Utilizing statistical revenue-cost accounting technique, results help to classify bank input and output and to determine the rate of return on the composition of bank portfolio.
