Abstract

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Approach is used to estimate the overall, pure technical and scale efficiencies for Malaysian commercial banks during the period 2000-2006. The results suggest that domestic banks were relatively more efficient than foreign banks. Our results also suggest that domestic banks’ inefficiency were attributed to pure technical inefficiency rather than scale inefficiency. In contrast, foreign banks inefficiency is attributed to scale inefficiency rather than pure technical inefficiency. The study further examines whether the domestic and foreign banks are drawn from the same environment by performing a series of parametric and non-parametric tests. The results from the parametric and non-parametric tests suggest that for the years 2000-2004, both domestic and foreign banks possessed the same technology whereas results for 2005 and 2006 suggest otherwise. This implies that banks in recent years have had access to different and more efficient technology.

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