Abstract:

The paper investigates a sample of 25 European systemically important banks, in terms of performance in fulfilling their financial intermediation function. Performance has been measured by relying on a Malmquist productivity index with panel data, to account for productivity changes over time and to decompose the main sources of changes into the catch-up effect and technological progress. As the database covered the 2007-2016 timeframe, we were able to investigate if the impact of the financial crisis appears in the data. The findings obtained for each year confirmed that the financial crisis exerted a significant influence on banks’ productivity which witnessed a decline for most banks in the sample in 2009 relative to 2008. Some systemic banks detached themselves as they exhibited increases of productivity during most time periods considered. The 10-year average levels recorded by the Malmquist index and its two components show that technical efficiency improvements slightly outperformed technological changes.