Efficiency in the Romanian Banking System: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

The paper analyzes the efficiency and productivity of the Romanian banks from 2006-08. It uses a non-parametric approach, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) to analyze banks’ efficiency. Based on a sample of 15 commercial banks, our findings reveal that although the efficiency of the Romanian commercial banks improved since 2006, the cost efficiency scores are relatively low. Also, even if in 2007 the total factor productivity increased, in 2008 this score of the average productivity of banks decreased.