The stochastic frontier analysis (Aigner et al., 1977, Meeusen and van de Broeck, 1977) is widely used to estimate individual efficiency scores. The basic idea lies in the introduction of an additive error term consisting of a noise and an inefficiency term. Most often the assumption of a...

The stochastic frontier analysis (Aigner et al., 1977, Meeusen and van de Broeck, 1977) is widely used to estimate individual efficiency scores. The basic idea lies in the introduction of an additive error term consisting of a noise and an inefficiency term. Most often the assumption of a...

The financial sector is undergoing extensive changes and challenges that affect the entire market and infrastructure of financial service providers. Technological development leads to increased digitalisation and allows new business models to emerge. With regard to the banking sector, it is...

The subject of General Cost Structure Analysis is the quantitative analysis of cost structures with a minimum of a priori assumptions on firm technology and on firm behaviour. The study develops an innovative line of attack building on the primal characterisation of the firm's generalised shadow...

The question of whether or not mergers and acquisitions have helped to enhance banks' efficiency and profitability has not yet been conclusively resolved in the literature. We argue that this is partly due to the severe methodological problems involved. In this study, we analyze the effect of...