German banks experienced a merger wave throughout the 1990's. However,the success of bank mergers remains a continuous matter of debate.In this paper we suggest a taxonomy as how to evaluate post-merger performanceon the basis of cost efficiency (CE). We categorise mergers a successthat fulfill...

In this paper we analyse bank efficiency in Germany for four cross-sections of data during the period 1995-2001. Under the assumption of cost minimisation we obtain firm-specific efficiency estimates using stochastic frontier analysis. To explicitly allow for different risk preferences when...

This paper investigates the forces driving output change in a panel of EU manufacturing industries. A flexible modeling strategy is adopted that accounts for (i) inefficient use of resources, and (ii) differences in the production technology across industries. With our model we are able to...

In this paper, we compare standard approaches used to handle losses in logarithmic stochastic profit frontier models with a simple novel approach. We discuss discriminatory power, rank stability and precision of profit efficiency scores. Our new method enhances rank stability and discriminatory...

This paper investigates the forces driving output growth, namely technological, efficiency, and input changes, in 80 countries over the period 1970-2000. Relevant past studies typically assume that: (i) countries use resources efficiently, and (ii) the underlying production technology is the...