Abstract:
This paper is the first attempt to estimate commercial banks’ efficiency in the Visegrad region before joining the EU and also to consider differences in efficiency across the countries. Employing Data Envelopment Analysis, we analyze which of the banking sectors is the most efficient and whether there has been an improvement in banking intermediation efficiency since 1999. Incorporating censored Tobit regression analysis we try to detect whether the cross-country differences should be explained by country specific environmental factors or internal variables such as profitability, size or foreign ownership. Overall, the results suggest that since 1999 there has been, with the exception of Hungary, no improvement in efficiency, and its actual level reaches preferably moderate levels. Efficiency differences among Visegrad banking industries seem to be in the first place determined by country specific factors.