This paper explores the issue of efficiency in European banking. It tries to distinguish among the market‐structure and efficient‐structure hypotheses by incorporating into our empirical analysis measures of X‐efficiency and scale‐efficiency. Tests of the four hypotheses (the two market...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues of efficiency, economies of scale and technical change in Southern European banking. Design/methodology/approach – The flexible Fourier functional form of the stochastic cost frontier approach is used to calculate inefficiencies...