Efficiency of Financial Institutions : International Survey and Directions for Future Research

Note: The following is a description of the paper and not the actual abstract.The results of applying frontier efficiency analysis to financial institutions are surveyed. While most of the 130 studies have been applied to U.S. financial institutions, 21 countries are covered overall. We find that the various nonparametric and parametric frontier methodologies generally differ both in terms of reported average efficiency as well as in rankings of financial firms by their efficiency level. The results of these studies for government policy, methodological issues, and managerial performance are also summarized and topics where further analysis would prove useful are identified