Efficiency of the Bulgarian Banking System: Traditional Approach and Data Envelopment Analysis

The paper traces the trends in the development of the Bulgarian banking system focusing on the dynamics of bank efficiency. Although the financial crisis in 1996-1997 and the following shift in monetary regime (introduction of Currency Board Arrangement) exerted significant influence on the development of banking sector characteristics, the study covers only the period of 1999-2006 because of the lack of consistent available data prior 1999. During the analysed period the impact on the bank efficiency of the following factors is studied: change in property, penetration of the foreign commercial banks on the local banking market, competition, structure of bank assets and liabilities, central bank policy in respect to credit activity, etc. The limits of the traditional accounting approaches to bank efficiency evaluation are discussed, as well as the implementation of non-parametric methods, in particular Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Different specifications of DEA like intermediation and operating approaches were applied to separate groups and sub-groups. The results show that: firstly, the foreign banks perform better than domestic and state-owned banks because of the technological and managerial improvements; and secondly, the large banks are more efficient than the small banks due to decreasing operating costs and scale economies.