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...

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,...

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...

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...

Diversified and focused business models may affect foreign bank efficiency differently in branches or subsidiaries. We investigate whether there is a unique optimal business model in three dimensions: assets, funding and income. We apply recently developed bootstrap methods to estimate group...

This paper investigates whether home or host country factors can explain differences in technical efficiency among foreign banks operating in the Luxembourg financial center. We first address heterogeneity across banks by using the group-wise bootstrap to compare DEA measures of bank efficiency...

Diversified and focused business models may affect foreign bank efficiency differently. We investigate whether there is an optimal business model along three business dimensions—assets, funding and income—and which business model is optimal for foreign banks in a financial center....

This paper assesses and tests the response of banks operating in the financial centres to the financial crisis in terms of the actual productivity change and its main components: the pure efficiency change, scale efficiency change and technological change (innovation). The heterogeneity in the...