Recent cross-country comparisons of bank efficiency have been based on pooled estimates of banks across countries and have typically assumed a common frontier and that differences in performance among banks are primarily due to disparities in certain country-specific aspects of banking...

The paper analyzes bank performance in the context of the integrated European Union market and its member countries. First, the paper investigates the technical efficiency of banks in each country sample using a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model incorporating only banking variables. Then, a...

We use a sample of 4,960 observations from 752 publicly quoted commercial banks operating in 87 countries between 1999 and 2006 and estimate cost efficiency and alternative profit efficiency using a global best-practice frontier while controlling for cross-country differences in regulations,...

This paper analyzes the productive differences of banking among countries. It proposes a Malmquist type index that allows intercountry productivity differences to be broken down into pure technological differences and differences due to environmental effects. The most relevant feature of this...

This paper examines the impact of regulatory reform on the performance of Spanish savings banks. To this end it uses panel data for the period 1986-1995 and a flexible variable profit function that incorporates time-varying technical efficiency. The focus is whether increased competition brought...

This paper analyzes whether risk shifting took place in the European Union’s banking sector in 2002–2009. We also identify the type of risk shifting, if any, in the sample. In addition, our method provides a way to determine which variables incentivize/disincentivize risk shifting. Our main...

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on risk shifting. It proposes a method to find out whether risk shifting is present in the banking industry and, if so, what type. The type of risk shifting depends on the group of debt holders to whom risk is shifted. We apply this method to...

In the crisis that started in 2007, banks’ off-balance sheet activity has been blamed for flooding the market with low-quality assets and contributing to spreading risk throughout the economic system. Nevertheless, this view is hardly sustainable within the context of sophisticated markets....