Efficiency assessment and benchmarking are crucial in management given the context of world-wide competition. OR and economic methods for evaluating efficiency are becoming basic tools for performance improvement. These methods have also been applied to banks and the results received a strong interest from bank managers.
This course serves 3 purposes:
(i) to develop an intuitive understanding of the concepts of production process and different notions of efficiency in production,
(ii) their meaning in the banking industry,
(iii) the application of the basic measurement tools and the managerial interpretation of its results within the same sector as well as in portfolio analysis.
At the end of the course, the student should be able to:
– understand production processes
– understand the various notions of static efficiency
– interpret efficiency measures
– understand the scope for applications in banking and other industries.
The topics treated in the course include the following:
– Service production and the need for performance criteria
– Efficiency in financial services (what do banks and bank branches “produce”?)
– Frontier technologies for benchmarking
– Sources of efficiency: A regulatory perspective (e.g., failure prediction, mergers)
– U.S. Case studies: Efficiency in commercial banks, credit unions, within a holding bank, among others
– European Case studies: Efficiency in a Greek, a Cypriote and some UK banks
