The Impact of M&A on Technical Efficiency, Scale Efficiency and Productivity Change in the Polish Banking Sector: a Non-Parametric Approach

In recent decades, the banking sectors of many transition countries have been subject to globalization, deregulation and liberalization similar to that in industrialized countries such as the EU countries and the USA. Those changes are linked with merger and acquisition (M&A) processes aimed at increasing banking competitiveness and efficiency. Banking efficiency is a crucial issue for transition countries. For most advanced transition ountries, the question of the degree of their banks’ competitiveness and efficiency has become an important issue in relation to EU accession. This paper examines the impact of M&A on the efficiency of Polish commercial banks in the period 1997-2001. The aim of this paper is to check whether M&A increased the efficiency and productivity of commercial banks. This paper employs Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)3 to investigate technical efficiency, scale efficiency and productivity. It considers all the models that are based on the output measures of technical and scale efficiency. Productivity growth has been analyzed via the Malmquist output-based productivity index (M), which was divided into technical efficiency change (E) and technological change (TC).