A considerable number of Western European banks have acquired banks in Central and Eastern Europe from the mid-1990s onwards. The question is whether or not this will improve the efficiency and profitability of the Central and Eastern European banking sectors. We test the relative strength of...

We study whether bank efficiency is related to bank ownership in Russia. We find that foreign banks are more efficient than domestic private banks and – surprisingly – that domestic private banks are not more efficient than domestic public banks. These results are not driven by the choice of...