efficiency in the factoring industry the efficiency and productivity in the italian factoring industry between 1993 and 1997 is investigated using dea the factoring industry is an important part of many financial systems and it has established itself as a major source of finance and credit management for a growing number of companies however as far as the authors are aware no studies have applied frontier methodologies to examine the efficiency and productivity of this industry this paper focuses on the italian market the second largest in the world after the uk the results suggest that there are substantial cost savings to be had in the italian factoring industry the mean cost inefficiency in the italian factoring industry over the period 1993 1997 ranged between 14 and 22 these inefficiencies are mainly generated by allocative rather than technical inefficiencies scale and technical inefficiencies seem to be similar in magnitude and the supposed importance of the latter typically found in the banking efficiency literature are n

efficiency analysis in banking firms an international comparison abstract the intensive process of financial european integration together with the profound transformation and deregulation that has taken place in the spanish banking system justifies the evaluation of its efficiency in comparison with that of other banking systems in this context the aim of this study is to analyze the productivity efficiency and differences in technology of several banking systems using a non parametric approach together with the malmquist index we compare the efficiency productivity and differences in technology of different european and us banking systems for the year 1992

an index number approach to measuring bank efficiency an application to mergers abstract the current wave of bank mergers has resulted in an interest in the measurement of consequent efficiencies previous studies have generally focused on the measurement of merger induced cost efficiencies in this paper we turn to the production side and examine the change in relative productivity arising from bank mergers after deriving our superlative multilateral productivity index we compute the indexes for our entire sample of banks approximately 2 000 banks in each of the years 1984 1988 and for a cohort of 160 banks that merged in 1986 we find that acquiring banks achieve no gains in efficiency and this finding supports those of other studies on the other hand we find that our acquiring banks are consistently more productive than the sample as a whole by implication if mergers can be generally characterized as the acquisition by a relatively more productive bank of a relatively less productive bank an empirically valid supposition then industry performance should improve as a result of these mergers

shareholder information and partial tender offers abstract the raider faces a winners curse problem when the target shareholders have private information about the post takeover value using marquez and yilmaz 2008 framework we show that this problem can be partly mitigated by using partial tender offers

on the optimality of partial tender offers abstract this paper analyzes the optimality of partial tender offers in acquisition of firms we show that partial offers have no impact on the acquirer s expected profit under complete information

productive efficiency performance of minority and nonminority owned banks a nonparametric approach abstract this study examines the efficiency performance of the minority owned banks mobs as multiproduct firms relative to that of the nonminority banks nmobs using a highly flexible nonparametric approach since mobs and nmobs employ distinct technologies the efficiency indices for the two groups are derived relative to their respective group specific frontiers and are contrasted to shed light on the ownership efficiency relationship the mob sample is then disaggregated and the intra group efficiency differentials are investigated the findings support the hypothesis that abstracting the regional regulatory size and maturity characteristics of banks efficiency differentials between mobs and nmobs are statistically insignificant

the dominance of inefficiencies over scale and product mix economies in banking abstract this study measures and analyzes inefficiencies for all u s banks in 1984 inefficiencies are measured relative to a thick frontier cost function and are found to dominate measured scale and product mix economies most inefficiencies are operational in nature involving the overuse of physical inputs rather than financial involving overpayment of interest also technical inefficiencies proportionate overuse of all inputs dominate allocative inefficiencies improper mix of inputs these results suggest that competitive pressures in banking from deregulation will be focused primarily on banks that do not control costs rather than on those of a particular size or product mix

profit efficiency for spanish savings banks abstract frontier profit efficiency is examined for spanish savings banks over 1986 1991 a period in which the spanish banking has seen considerable deregulation in spain the standard assumption that firms operate in a perfectly competitive output market is unlikely to be met thus we use an alternative profit function specification which allows for market power in the output market profit efficiency is determined using the thick frontier approach and estimated using both alternative and standard profit function specifications to illustrate the effect of different assumptions regarding the competitiveness of the output market estimation of the alternative profit function suggests that the profit inefficiency of spanish savings banks which averaged 28 fell by forty percent between 1986 to 1991 the standard profit function which we believe yields less reliable results generated greater average inefficiency there was no significant shift up or down in the profit frontier itself

risk arbitrage in takeovers this article studies the role of risk arbitrageurs in takeovers and the source of their advantage we show how the presence of arbitrageurs affects the value of the target shares since arbitrageurs are more likely to tender therefore an arbitrageur has the informational advantage of knowing he bought shares in equilibrium the number of arbitrageurs buying shares and the price they pay are determined endogenously we also present several empirical implications including the relationship among trading volume takeover premium liquidity of the shares and the number of risk arbitrageurs investing in one particular deal copyright 2002 oxford university press

a dynamic stochastic frontier model to evaluate regional financial efficiency evidence from chinese county level panel data abstract studies have widely used stochastic frontier models to assess financial efficiency however traditional static approaches do not take dynamic characteristics of financial systems into account this article develops a dynamic stochastic frontier model to evaluate regional financial efficiency and provides an empirical test of the model by using panel data of 62 chinese counties during the 2001 2010 period the model measures the dynamic impact of the input output variables and environmental variables on financial efficiency and allows for the separation of technical change from the change in technical efficiency the results show that the dynamic model provides a better fit to the data than the static model in addition a gradient difference emerges in the regional financial efficiency among the six major regions of china the results offer practical implications for the development of regional financial services in china as well as other developing countries and emerging economies

the technical efficiency of us banks abstract the paper uses a non parametric frontier approach to measure the technical efficiency of a sample of u s banks the results indicate that these banks could have produced the same level of output with only 70 of the inputs actually used in addition most of this inefficiency is due to pure technical inefficiency wasting inputs rather than scale inefficiency operating at non constant returns to scale finally regression analysis indicates that the technical efficiency of the banks is positively related to size negatively related to product diversity and not at all related to the extent to which branch banking is allowed

malmquist indices of productivity growth during the deregulation of norwegian banking 1980 89 productivity growth during the deregulation of the norwegian banking industry is studied within the framework of data envelopment analysis which explicitly allows for multiple outputs introducing malmquist indices for productivity growth total growth can be decomposed into frontier growth and change in each bank s distance to the frontier both the total growth index and its components can be consistently chained over time we find productivity regress at the average bank prior to the deregulation but rapid growth when deregulation took place deregulation also led to less dispersion of productivity levels within the industry

an examination of cost structure and production performance of commercial banks in singapore abstract this paper uses a parametric approach in the framework of a translog cost function and a non parametric approach in the framework of linear programming to examine production performance and cost structure of a sample of singaporean commercial banks the results of the parametric methodology suggest that the average cost curve of these banks is u shaped and there are economies of scale for small and medium size banks further analysis provides evidence of economies of scope for all banks regardless of their size the non parametric results indicate that the singaporean banks could have reduced cost by 43 had they all been overall efficient the sources of this cost inefficiency seem to be caused equally by allocative and technical inefficiencies

why higher takeover premia protect minority shareholders posttakeover moral hazard by the acquirer and free riding by the target shareholders lead the former to acquire as few sharcs as necessary to gain control as moral hazard is most severe under such low ownership concentration inefficiencies arise in successful takeovers moreover share supply is shown to be upward sloping rules promoting ownership concentration limit both agency costs and the occurrence of takeovers furthermore higher takeover premia induced by competition translate into higher ownership concen tration and are thus beneficial finally one share one vote and simple majority are generally not optimal and socially optimal rules need not emerge through private contracting

information and efficiency in tender offers we analyze tender offers where privately informed shareholders are uncertain about the raider s ability to improve firm value the raider suffers a lemons problem in that for any price offered only shareholders who are relatively pessimistic about the value of the firm tender their shares consequently the raider finds it too costly to induce shareholders to tender when their information is positive in the limit as the number of shareholders gets arbitrarily large when private benefits are relatively low the tender offer is unsuccessful if the takeover has the potential to create value the takeover market is therefore inefficient in contrast when private benefits of control are high the tender offer allocates the firm to any value increasing raider but may also allow inefficient takeovers to occur unlike the case where all information is symmetric shareholders cannot always extract the entire surplus from the acquisition

total factor productivity growth technological progress and technical efficiency change dimensions of productivity change in yugoslavia 1965 1978 this article total factor productivity growth technological progress and technical efficiency change dimensions of productivity change in yugoslavia 1965 78 was reprinted with permission from the december 1982 issue of the economic journal this article proposes a methodology that decomposes total factor productivity change into two distinct elements technological progress and changes in technical efficiency technological progress is defined as the change in the best practice production frontier all other productivity change is attributed to technical efficiency change the article provides a theoretical framework for decomposing total factor productivity growth as well as a specification and estimation of the deterministic frontier production function it employs a programming technique to estimate a flexible functional form of the production frontier the paper then applies this technique to empirical data from yugoslavia of the period from 1965 to 1978 it concludes that for yugoslavia improvements to technical efficiency comprise the dominant contribution to total factor productivity change this agrees with accumulating evidence that in many developing economies productivity gain due to technological mastery of imported technology is substantial

technical scale and allocative efficiencies in u s banking an empirical investigation a nonparametric frontier approach is used to calculate the overall technical pure technical allocative and scale efficiencies for a sample of 322 independent banks the sample was drawn from the federal deposit insurance corporation tapes on the reports of condition and reports of income call reports for the year 1986 the results indicated a low level of overall efficiency the main source of inefficiency was technical in nature rather than allocative separate efficiency frontiers were constructed to test the effect of branching however the distributions of efficiency measures for branching and non branching banks were not found to be different

organization and efficiency in the international insurance industry a cross frontier analysis abstract this paper employs cross frontier analysis an innovative tool based on data envelopment analysis to provide new insight into the relationship between organization and efficiency in international insurance markets we are the first to empirically test the expense preference hypothesis and the efficient structure hypothesis in a large cross country study for this purpose we consider 23 807 firm years for 21 countries from northern america and the european union a dataset not previously analyzed in this context we find evidence for the efficient structure hypothesis in selected market segments but we find no evidence for the expense preference hypothesis our results provide insight into the competitiveness of stock and mutual insurers from different countries at the country level the results can be used to compare different insurance markets our findings are especially interesting for the strategic management of insurance companies as well as for regulators and boards of national insurance associations

cross country comparisons of efficiency evidence from the uk and italian investment firms abstract this paper compares and reconciles two new methods for cross country comparisons of the cost efficiency of uk and italian investment firms over the period 1995 1998 it employs four different specifications of the stochastic frontier methodology using a translog cost function in order to measure x efficiency the traditional common frontier reveals that italian investment firms are nearly as efficient as uk firms to overcome traditional limitations two methods are used in this paper they provide consistent results the first method shows differences between the efficiency of the two countries by incorporating environmental variables into the cross country common frontier the second method shows differences in the efficiency of the domestic versus foreign investment firms in the two countries by testing the ability to monitor and control on a cross border basis finally to identify investment firms that are both cost and profit efficient we undertake a profitability test

banking efficiency in the nordic countries abstract evidence of the relative competitiveness of the banking industries in three nordic countries is provided by applying data envelopment analysis of productivity on the national and the pooled data sets the analysis produces a detailed account of how well banks from different countries and different sizes may be prepared to meet the more intense competition of a common european banking market

is there a single frontier in a single european banking market abstract this paper attempts to estimate comparable efficiency scores for european banks operating in the single market in the eu using a data set of more than 5000 large commercial banks from all major european banking markets over the period 1993 2004 the application of meta frontiers enables us to assess the existence of a single and integrated european banking market we find evidence in favor of a single european banking market characterized by cost and profit meta frontiers however compared to the meta frontier estimations pooled frontier estimations tend to underestimate efficiency levels and correlate poorly with country specific frontier efficiency ranks

explaining efficiency differences among large german and austrian banks cost efficiency scale efficiency and productivity change are estimated by data envelopment analysis and cost efficiency is regressed on explanatory variables no evidence is found for average productivity responding to deregulation over the period studied state owned banks are found to be more cost efficient likely owing to cheaper funds and cooperative banks to be about as cost efficient as private banks increasing economies of scale but decreasing economies of scope provide rationale for m as among banks with similar product portfolios interbank and capital market funding is found to be more cost efficient than deposits when the cost of retail networks is controlled

freeze out mergers do freeze out mergers mitigate the free rider problem of corporate takeovers we study this question in a tender offer model with finitely many shareholders under a freeze out merger minority shareholders expect to receive the original offer price whether or not they tender their shares we show that the ability to freeze out shareholders increases the raider s expected profit however as the number of shareholders gets arbitrarily large the raider s expected profit in equilibrium converges to zero for any freeze out clause with an ownership threshold that is strictly above simple majority in this sense freeze out mergers do not solve the free rider problem received september 17 2016 editorial decision june 3 2018 by editor francesca cornelli

information in tender offers with a large shareholder we study takeovers of firms whose ownership structure is a mixture of minority block holders and small shareholders we show that the combination of dispersed private information on the side of small shareholders and the presence of a large shareholder can facilitate profitable takeovers furthermore our analysis implies that even if some model of takeovers predicts a profit for the raider for example due to private benefits the profit will be underestimated unless the large shareholder and the dispersion of information among the small shareholders are modeled

deregulation and productivity decline the case of spanish savings banks abstract during the 1980s many regulatory constraints limiting competition in spanish banking were relaxed or removed although deregulation came later to savings banks than to the rest of the banking sector two consequences of partial deregulation of savings banks have been a rapid growth in branching activity much of it geographically dispersed and a burst of merger activity in this paper we investigate productive efficiency and total factor productivity change in spanish savings banks over the 1986 1991 post deregulation period neither branching nor mergers provide an adequate explanation for the magnitude or the nature of the productivity decline we observe over the period

bertrand without fudge abstract this paper reexamines bertrand competition with homogeneous products and different marginal costs it is shown that the conventional outcome is supported by an equilibrium in the original game under the standard rationing rule

efficiency in the commercial banking industry a production frontier approach 1990 efficiency in the commercial banking industry a production frontier approach applied economics vol 22 no 4 pp 539 551

testing for expense preference behavior mutual versus stock savings and loans this article investigates expense preference behavior in the savings and loan industry previous studies used an intercept test and in general concluded that managers of mutual s ls exhibit expense preference behavior i derive the necessary and sufficient conditions on cost functions for the intercept test to be valid these restrictions are rejected for the savings and loan industry stock and mutual s ls have different cost structures and both have non cobb douglas production technologies i derive a new more general test for expense preference behavior that does not require the restrictive assumptions of the intercept test the results of this test do not support earlier conclusions of managerial expense preferences

the efficiency effects of a single market for financial services in europe abstract this paper examines the potential efficiency effects of a single market for financial services in europe the topics covered include universal banking the merger and acquisition process itself cross border ownership and management of financial institutions and the effects of consolidation of financial institutions on the supply of relationship lending services to informationally opaque small businesses the research reviewed here suggests that the creation of a single market for the european financial services industry is not likely to bring about strong efficiency gains and that cross border efficiency barriers may prevent the single market from becoming a reality