A Taxonomy for the Literature of Financial Institution Performance Analysis

This paper presents a scheme for classifying the performance analysis of financial institutions (PAFI) literature. Performance, is viewed by: (1) The perspective of each of five major groups; owners, regulators, managers, clients, and researchers. The attribute used to appraise performance is subdivided into; productivity, production, cost, revenue, profit, risk, and dominance. (2) The nature of the study; theoretical, empirical, analysis of previous studies, both theoretical and empirical, both theoretical and analysis of previous studies, both empirical and analysis of previous studies, and literature survey. The methodology adopted or discussed to measure performance is subdivided into; the concept used, the technique adopted, and the approach employed to identify the institution's inputs and outputs. (3) Manner in which the analysis was conducted; the data used, the financial institutions considered, the level of data aggregation, the use (or not) of non-discretionary variables and the number of stages to accomplish the analysis. (4) Why performance was measured; the purpose of the study, and formulation (or not) of strategies to improve performance. Sample articles are classified to illustrate the descriptive power and the parsimony of this taxonomy