Good practice suggests that budget allocations should reflect spending priorities and that spending should provide cost-effective delivery of public goods and services. This paper analyzes the composition of public expenditure in the Slovak Republic. It also assesses the relative efficiency of...

Pakistan undertook major financial sector reforms starting in the late 1980s. The effects of these reforms on the profitability and cost and revenue efficiency of the banking sector are evaluated. The revenue performance of all banks, and especially the privatized banks, improved significantly,...

Cost-efficiency, scale efficiency, and productivity change are estimated by data envelopment analysis; and cost-efficiency is regressed on explanatory variables. No evidence is found for average productivity responding to deregulation over the period studied. State-owned banks are found to be...

Ukraine has the potential to be a very wealthy country. It has a well-educated workforce, some of the best agricultural land in the world, an enviable supply of hydrocarbons and minerals, and a relatively well-developed infrastructure. Despite these advantages, however, Ukraine''s per capita...

We use bank level data to study the efficiency of banks in Sub-Saharan African middle-income countries and provide possible explanations for the difference in the efficiency levels of banks. We find that banks, on average, could save 20-30 percent of their total costs if they were operating...

Good practice suggests that budget allocations should reflect spending priorities and that spending should provide cost-effective delivery of public goods and services. This paper analyzes the composition of public expenditure in the Slovak Republic. It also assesses the relative efficiency of...

This study investigates the relationship between production efficiency in financial intermediation and financial system size. The study predicts and tests for the existence of ""systemic scale economies"" (SSEs), whereby value-maximizing intermediaries operating in large systems are expected to...

This paper assesses the efficiency of education expenditure in Portugal and delineates a possible agenda for reform. Portugal’s low educational performance has coincided with the highest level of primary and secondary education expenditure to GDP in the Organization for Economic Cooperation...