Productivity and efficiency analyses have been indispensable tools for evaluating firms’ performance in the banking sector. In this context, the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) has been recently proposed in order to obtain a globally flexible functional form which is capable of...

This paper proposes and estimates a globally flexible functional form for the cost function, which we call Neural Cost Function (NCF). The proposed specification imposes a priori and satisfies globally all the properties that economic theory dictates. The functional form can be estimated easily...

The output distance function is a key concept in economics. However, its empirical estimation often violates properties dictated by neoclassical production theory. In this paper, we introduce the neural distance function (NDF) which constitutes a global approximation to any arbitrary production...

Efficiency analysis is an important tool for evaluating firms' performance. This paper introduces a novel approach for measuring technical efficiency (TE) in the case of technologies with multiple outputs which deals with the endogeneity of outputs issue. The proposed approach uses Artificial...