Banking competition is expected to provide welfare gains by reducing monopoly rents and cost inefficiencies, favoring a reduction of loan rates and then investment. These expected gains are a major issue for transition countries, in which bank credit represents the largest source of external...

A large number of bank failures occurred in transition countries during the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s. These failures were related to increases in non-performing loans and deteriorated cost efficiency of banks. This paper addresses the question of the causality between...

With the increasing domination of foreign capital in banking sectors of transition countries, it is of the highest interest to investigate the relative performance of domestic-owned and foreign-owned banks in these countries. We therefore aim here to compare the technical efficiency of...

This paper aims at providing theoretical foundations to the role of customer relationship as a strategic barrier to entry on banking markets. A bank which grants a loan to a customer gains a comparative advantage in information on this customer as compared with competitors. This informational...

In this paper we propose a new approach to the assessment of excessive risk-taking by a banking sector. We use the portfolio approach to assess the optimal risk-return combination of a bank’s portfolio, based on data for 32 categories of loans. It provides a benchmark for the optimality...