University of Bath

About: University of Bath is a education organization based out in Bath, Bath and North East Somerset, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 15830 authors who have published 39608 publications receiving 1358769 citations. The organization is also known as: Bath University.

Estimating the Technical and Scale Efficiency of Greek Commercial Banks: The Impact of Credit Risk, Off-Balance Sheet Activities, and International Operations

Abstract: This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to investigate the efficiency of the Greek commercial banking industry over the period 2000-2004. Our results indicate that the inclusion of loan loss provisions as an input increases the efficiency scores, but off-balance sheet items do not have a significant impact. The differences between the efficiency scores obtained through the profit-oriented and the intermediation approaches are in general small. Banks that have expanded their operations abroad appear to be more technical efficient than those operating only at a national level. Higher capitalization, loan activity, and market power increase the efficiency of banks. The number of branches has a positive and significant impact on efficiency, but the number of ATMs does not. The results are mixed with respect to variables indicating whether the banks are operating abroad through subsidiaries or branches.

The impact of non-traditional activities on the estimation of bank efficiency: International evidence

Abstract: This paper investigates the relevance of non-traditional activities in the estimation of bank efficiency levels using a sample of 752 publicly quoted commercial banks from 87 countries around the world, allowing comparison of the impact of such activities under different levels of economic development, geographical regions and other country characteristics. We estimate both cost and profit efficiency of banks using a traditional function that considers loans and other earnings assets as the only outputs, and two additional functions to account for non-traditional activities, one with off-balance sheet (OBS) items and the other with non-interest income as an additional output. Controlling for cross-country differences in regulatory and environmental conditions, we find that, on average, cost efficiency increases irrespective of whether we use OBS or non-interest income, although the results for profit efficiency are mixed. Our results also reveal that while the inclusion of non-traditional outputs does not alter the directional impact of environmental variables on bank inefficiency, regulations that restrict bank activities and enhance monitoring and supervision provisions improve both cost and profit efficiency. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.

Evaluating investments in IT

Abstract: Evaluating the costs and benefits of IT projects is currently a major issue for senior general managers. This paper focuses on a particular aspect of the problem: how organizations appraise IT investments in taking the decision whether to go ahead with them or not. The paper looks first at the different roles of evaluation; second at what is done in practice and third at what might be done given the wide range of techniques that are available and the widely different circumstances in which appraisal is undertaken. A speculative heuristic is proposed for matching an evaluation method with a particular situation. The method is presented in the hope of stimulating further research into the matching problem.