Traditional efficiency measures neglect bank risk and, even when risk is accounted for, do not differentiate between the portion subject to managerial control (¿internal¿) versus the portion that is exogenous and is part of a changing environment (¿external¿). This paper proposes a new...

Increased competition and the attempts of European banks to increase their presence in other markets may have affected the efficiency and credit risk. The first of this aspects is based on the incentive to the banks to reduce cost in order to gain in competitiveness. The second is associated to...

The objective of this study is to analyze the macroeconomic performance of 16 Ibero- American countries over the period 1980- 199 1. Macroeconomic performance is defined as the ability of a country's macroeconomic managers to provide four welfare-enhancing economic services to their citizens: a...

In this paper we extend the efficiency cross-country comparisons to ten European countries in order to know how different or similar current banking performances are. We start with two types of comparisons. First of all, we evaluate the average technical efficiency of each country by means of a...

In this paper we examine the performance of the target setting procedure employed by one of the largest savings banks in Spain, Caja de Ahorros del Mediterraneo, to evaluate the operating performance of its branch offices. We begin by evaluating the ability of the branch offices to meet the...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the efficiency of the travel agencies operatingin Spain, and to examine the determining factors of such efficiency, in terms of verticalintegration, market concentration, size and performance. The methodology employed is based on different techniques for the...

In this paper, we propose a new approach to represent a country's outward orientation. Prior work mostly uses indicators of aggregate trade intensity, trade policy or trade restrictiveness. Our approach offers a broader perspective as it measures a country's level of integration not only by its...

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to the study of international trade that leads to a measure of country openness that is quite different from the various alternatives proposed by the received literature. In contrast to these, our measure does not use indicators of aggregate trade...