Are Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Research & Development (R&D) productive inputs or efficiency determinants? This is the topic of this paper, which analyses a sample of 2691 Italian manufacturing firms over the period 2007–2009. Data are from a merged EFIGE–AIDA dataset....

One learns two main lessons from studying the great quantity of banking efficiency literature. These lessons regard the heterogeneity in results and the absence of a comprehensive review aimed at understanding the reasons for this variability. Surprisingly, although this issue is well-known, it...

The objective of this paper is to analyse the efficiency of the Italian Banking System over the period 2006-2011. The Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) is applied to a panel of 700 Italian Banks. The analysis is based on the joint estimation of a cost function and an efficiency equation...