This study proposes a "Flexible Cost Model" (FCM) for settings in which firms may be unable or unwilling to optimally manage their cost structures. FCM, which nests a wide range of more restrictive models, allows for a flexible specification not only of the technology but also of firm-level...

Numerous bank productivity studies indicate rapid changes in the structure of the financial services industry and advances in financial and nonfinancial technologies. Based on the literature review, this paper analyses the theoretical background of two concepts of performance evaluation – the...

Purpose: The consolidation of the banking market in Croatia is characterized by a decreasing number of banks, especially small banks. The inability to remain in the market is often the result of the inability to maintain sustainable efficiency over time. Therefore, the main aim of the study was...

The Italian and German banking systems shared similar characteristics early in the 1990s but have evolved in different directions since then: Italy privatized its publicly-owned banks while Germany has maintained a large share of state-owned savings banks. Contemporaneously, banks in both...

This study examines the effect of market structure variables on stability subject to regulation and supervision variables. The Extreme Bound Analysis (EBA) is employed over a sample of banks operating within the enlarged European Union during the period 2002-2010. The results show an inverse...

This paper investigates the size-efficiency relation of European cooperative banks during the 2006-2015 period. We employ the Stochastic Frontier Analysis in order to obtain inefficiency estimates and its determinants on the set of 183 cooperative banks from 12 European countries. This work...

The present study employs the state of the art bias-corrected Malmquist Productivity Index method to examine the sources of efficiency and productivity of the foreign and domestic banks operating in the Malaysian banking sector. The preferred methodology enables us to isolate efforts to catch up...