Over the last twenty years, the Spanish banking industry has been deeply reshaped in several respects. One of the features that has allowed for it has been the geographic expansion of most savings banks, which could not enter other markets different from their natural market before 1989. Since...

There is a large literature on the existence of agglomeration economies, as shown in the surveys by Moomaw (1983) or Gerking (1993). The benefits of these economies arise from multiple sources, but some negative externalities might also emerge. Within the hierarchical urban system, cities at...

After the financial crisis of 2007-2008, some bank performance dimensions have been the subject of debate, two of which are bank efficiency and bank risk-taking behavior. The literature on bank efficiency and productivity has grown considerably over the past three decades, and has gained...

We analyse overall cost efficiency in Spanish local governments during the crisis period (2008-2015). To this end, we first consider some of the most popular nonparametric methods to evaluate local government efficiency, data envelopment analysis and free disposal hull, as well as recent...