This paper tests whether corruption can be viewed as an efficient grease in the wheels of an otherwise deficient institutional framework. It does so by analyzing the interaction between aggregate efficiency, corruption, and other dimensions of governance for a panel of 54 countries both...

This study evaluates whether the development of Islamic banking influences macroeconomic efficiency. Thus, we contribute to the analysis of the relation between Islamic finance and economic growth by applying the stochastic frontier approach to estimate technical efficiency at the country level...

This paper aims at investigating the effects of concentration on competition and cost efficiency of the French audit market. Competition is measured with the Rosse-Panzar model, while cost efficiency is estimated with stochastic frontier approach. Cost efficiency levels are estimated at around...

This paper investigates whether financial intermediary development influences macroeconomic technical efficiency on a sample of 47 countries, both developed and developing, over 1980-1995. We do so by applying Battese and Coelli (1995)’s method at the aggregate level. It is found that...

Since the preparation of the Single Market program in the 80s, financial integration in Europe has been expected to provide gains in growth by favoring competition and efficiency on financial markets. Our paper aims to check whether financial integration has taken place on the banking markets,...

We study conditions under which legal sanctions may lead to an efficient selection of heterogeneous investment projects. The bankruptcy code is a "primitive creditor system" and financial distress leads to an arbitration between private agreement and costly formal bankruptcy. We consider a...

We analyze how adding the shadow economy to official output figures affects technical efficiency. We find that this only slightly affects the ranking of efficiency scores, but increases average efficiency. Our results are robust to the functional form of the production technology and the...

This paper tests whether corruption may act as an efficient grease for the wheels of an otherwise deficient institutional framework. We analyze the interaction between aggregate efficiency, corruption, and other dimensions of governance for a panel of 54 developed and developing countries. Using...

This paper addresses the relationship between bank competition and efficiency by computing Lerner indices and cost efficiency scores for a sample of Chinese banks over the period 2002-2011. Granger-causality tests are performed in a dynamic GMM panel estimator framework to evaluate the sign and...