This study investigates the trend of X-(in) efficiencies across Eastern European 2004-accession countries' banking industries over the period 1999 to 2003. We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) estimators to obtain proxies for X-(in)efficiencies and we then analyse the inter-country industry...

During the first phase of the financial crisis in 2008/09, after Iceland and Belgium, Kazakhstan experienced the most significant bank failures as a share of bank system assets. Using rich monthly data for virtually the entire Kazakh banking industry for the period March 2007--December 2010,...

This paper analyses the production technology of Portuguese banks during the 1992-2004 period through the estimation of a translog cost frontier. Banks are modelled as firms which produce loans and other earning assets, choosing the cost minimizing combination of labour, capital and interest...

Despite the great achievement of three decades of economic reform, the Chinese banking sector takes the blame for its dysfunctional system, especially the large amount of non-performing loans. The ease of foreign banks' entry set by the WTO from December 2007 raises our concern of the capability...