This study investigates the main determinants of Italian banks' cost efficiency over the period 1993-1996, by employing a Fourier-flexible stochastic cost frontier in order to measure X-efficiencies and economies of scale. Quality and riskiness of bank outputs are explicitly accounted for in the...

This paper explores the efficiency of banks in five South East Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) using the non-parametric data envelopment approach and Tobit regression. The results indicate that efficiency has significantly declined over the period...

<title/> This article outlines the nature, causes and extent of financial exclusion in Europe and discusses policy/industry responses to tackling it. Policy response has been ad hoc and country specific. Policy-making by the EC has been disappointing; national solutions are preferred to US-style...

The contributors – top international scholars from finance, law and business – explore the role of governance, both internal and external, in explaining risk-taking and other aspects of the behavior of financial institutions. Additionally, they discuss market and policy features...

On 11-12 November 2008, SUERF and Banque Centrale du Luxembourg organized a conference on Productivity in the Financial Services Sector on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Banque Centrale du Luxembourg.The conference addressed three main themes: first, stylized facts on banks'...

W ILLIAMS J. and G ARDENER E. P. M. (2003) The efficiency of European regional banking, Reg. Studies 37 , 321-330. Financial deregulation may segment European banking into pan-national and regional tiers. Regional banking must finance productive investment to facilitate regional economic growth....

This paper reports on tests, using panel methods, of a new capital augmentation model on Spanish savings banks over the period 1987-1996. It is argued that this banking subsector and time frame provide an interesting laboratory of the potential impact of regulation on bank capital augmentation....