Abstract:

The banking system represents the main channel through which most of the European Union economies are financed, this being the case especially for the new EU member states. Thus it becomes important to analyse and understand the way in which the efficiency and productivity of this sector evolves and is influenced by both, internal and external factors. In this context, the aim of our research is to analyse the changes occurred in the productivity of the banks operating in Romania, a new European Union member country. In order to achieve this we have chosen a sample of 25 commercial banks that together own over 90% of the total banking assets from Romania, the analysed period being 2003-2010. We employed a two stage approach, estimating in the first stage the efficiency scores for the banks from our sample using a non-parametric approach, namely the Data Envelopment Analysis, while in the second stage we estimated the changes in productivity with the help of the Malmquist index. By correlating the obtained results we were able to better understand the evolutions of the Romanian banks productivity before the crisis, while also underling the impact that the first wave of the international crisis had on it.