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This study investigates whether inefficiencies in Islamic banking in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are primarily driven by managerial limitations or by suboptimal scale of operations. While existing studies largely report aggregate efficiency scores, limited attention has been given to decomposing efficiency into its underlying components in emerging Islamic banking systems, particularly within the SSA context. The study employs a balanced panel of 35 fully fledged Islamic banks operating in SSA over the period 2010–2024. Operational efficiency is estimated using a bias-corrected Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model under an input-oriented Variable Returns to Scale (VRS) framework. To enhance statistical reliability, the Simar–Wilson bootstrap procedure with 2,000 replications is applied. Efficiency scores are decomposed into pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency to distinguish between managerial inefficiencies and structural scale constraints. The results indicate that overall efficiency levels remain low, with inefficiencies largely driven by scale factors rather than managerial performance. A significant proportion of banks operate under increasing returns to scale, suggesting suboptimal size linked to structural constraints such as limited market depth, fragmented regulatory environments, and underdeveloped financial infrastructure. Although pure technical efficiency shows moderate improvement over time, managerial gains are insufficient to offset these systemic limitations. The findings highlight the need for regulatory harmonization, market integration, and strategic expansion or consolidation to enable Islamic banks to achieve optimal scale and improve operational efficiency in SSA. This study provides one of the first comprehensive efficiency decomposition analyses of Islamic banks in SSA using bias-corrected DEA, offering new insights into the relative importance of structural versus managerial sources of inefficiency in emerging financial systems.

This study aimed to measure the technical efficiency of information technology (IT) companies listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) in Bangladesh. It included ten listed IT companies for the period 2016–2020. The input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach was used to measure technical efficiency. This study used two inputs, such as fixed assets and capital expenditure, and three outputs, such as return on equity, return on assets, and total income, to measure technical efficiency. All the required data were collected from publicly available annual reports, the sample companies’ websites, and the website of DSE. The study found that Bangladeshi-listed IT companies were not adequately technically efficient, with an average efficiency score of 56.6 percent, requiring a 43.6 percent improvement in efficiency during the period 2016–2020. This inefficiency was due primarily to pure technical inefficiency followed by scale inefficiency. The findings of the study are expected to provide important and useful information to the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS), the Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC), the ICT Division of the Bangladesh government, and the sample companies.

The escalating competitiveness within the healthcare industry and the growing financial burden necessitate public hospitals, which serve as crucial entities in this sector, to enhance the efficiency of their resource utilization. Public hospitals are mandated to determine their levels of activity, utilize cases of inactivity as benchmarks, and formulate strategies to ensure their active engagement. This study focuses on doing a performance and cost analysis of health institutions affiliated with the Turkish Republic Ministry of Health, namely the public hospitals in the Bakirköy area of Istanbul. The evaluation of activity and productivity is practiced to assess the performance and cost-effectiveness of these institutions. According to the data enveloping analysis method, it is evident that approximately 80% of health institutions affiliated with the Istanbul Bakirköy district public hospitals Union general secretary are fully operational and efficient. However, 20% of these institutions face challenges in effectively utilizing their resources. It is well acknowledged that teaching and research hospitals exhibit high levels of productivity and activity since they effectively utilize their resources in a sensible manner.

In the arena of economic analysis, the wealth of a nation is getting more and more attention to be a better indicator to evaluate the status of an economy. This paper had studied the aggregate household wealth of different nations of the world, 106 countries, for the year 2009-2018. During these years, only two countries of the world, China and the USA have managed to increase their wealth tremendously over the last decade while others experienced a slow pace in the growth of wealth. To satisfy the query of how efficient these countries were in maximizing their wealth, a stochastic frontier approach (SFA) has been used to predict the technical efficiency dependent variable and then generalized methods of moments (GMM) and other models have been used to find out the determinants of this efficiency. The study had come up with the result that land, labor, and capital mainly contributed to the output of wealth maximization while past year level of efficiency, export, and import played the main roles in determining the wealth maximizing efficiency status of a nation. It is found that there is a negative relationship between past-year efficiency with current years and the more a country imports, the less efficient the country is while the more it exports, the more efficient the country is in maximizing wealth. 

The precondition of the increase in the efficiency of the banks depends on their ability to compete. Through the banking sector with high competitive power, economic dynamism is promoted, and economic stability is ensured. The alteration in macroeconomic conditions affects the performance of the banking sector and financial stability. This study was used the malmquist productivity index  to analyze the efficiency of 19 commercial banks operating in Turkey during the period of 1990 - 2012  for intermediation and profit approach. Banks have experienced productivity loss according to both approaches in times of crisis. The efficiency of  intermediation function in the banking sector have increased owing to the regulations made ??under the restructuring program of the Turkish banking sector and the disinflation process. The regression analysis results reveals that the impact of credit / deposit ratio, ROA, ROE and inflation rate is positive on bank’s total factor productivity. As ROE increases, banks' total factor productivity has decreased under the intermediation approach. Increase in GDP has led to increase in bank’s technical efficiency for intermediation and profit approach.

By drawing on Ukrainian experience, this paper analyzes the anatomy of bank efficiency in a transitional economy. Acknowledging the vast disparities in the business technology of different size banks, in this comprehensive study, we innovatively estimate group-specific (distinct) frontiers for small, medium, and large size banks. The results from separate frontiers reveal that Ukrainian banks record 38% technical inefficiency, 26% pure technical inefficiency, and 17% scale inefficiency on average. Apparently, banks in transition waste about the two fifths of their factor inputs during the production of financial services. The cardinal source of sub-performance in transitional banks seems to be managerial inefficiencies. We also found that banks operating in areas with more political influence and more developed infrastructure outperform the banks operating in politically and economically weaker regions. The results also indicate that larger banks, enjoying public trust in a risky business climate, dominate smaller banks in all forms of efficiency. However, such bias for size causes large banks to suffer from decreasing returns to scale and small banks from idle capacity. Consequently, the policies promoting consolidation between small and large banks may alleviate the excess (idle) capacity for large (small) banks in a transitional economy.

This paper analyzes the total factor productivity developments in the Middle East banking, by drawing on the experience of Jordanian banks at the start of the new millennium. In order to control for the effects of different specifications of banking technology on the results, this study estimates the productivity and efficiency growth scores under two alternative approaches, production and intermediation models. On average, under the former model, we found 79% technical efficiency and 3.2% productivity growth, while under the later model we found 92% technical efficiency and 3.3% productivity growth for the sector. One implication is that the Jordanian banks can obtain considerable resource savings if they can catch up with the best practice banks. Among the organizational forms operating in this emerging market, we found that commercial banks generally outperform both investment and Islamic banks in terms of efficiency and total factor productivity growth.

<p>The proactively evolved banking regulations in the Indian Banking sector under the authorative directive of the Reserve bank of India (RBI) has often brought about a change in the business strategy, capital structure and operations of the banks in the Indian banking sector. During these events of continuous change and adoption of Basel norms, we analyse the efficiency of the Indian banking sector with using Data Envelopment Analysis across three economic eras andacross the different ownership structures. The determinants of efficiency are selected on the basis of intermediation approach. We also attempt to identify whether the inefficiency arises from managerial incompetence or improper size and resource allocation. From our analysis, we identify the main cause of inefficiency in the Indian Banking sector to be arising out of improper size allocation.</p>

The proactively evolved banking regulations in the Indian Banking sector under the authorative directive of the Reserve bank of India (RBI) has often brought about a change in the business strategy, capital structure and operations of the banks in the Indian banking sector. During these events of continuous change and adoption of Basel norms, we analyse the efficiency of the Indian banking sector with using Data Envelopment Analysis across three economic eras andacross the different ownership structures. The determinants of efficiency are selected on the basis of intermediation approach. We also attempt to identify whether the inefficiency arises from managerial incompetence or improper size and resource allocation. From our analysis, we identify the main cause of inefficiency in the Indian Banking sector to be arising out of improper size allocation.

The paper employed a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach to examine the sources of technical efficiency in the Nigerian banking sub-sector. Using a cross section of commercial and merchant banks, the study showed that the Nigerian banking industry was not efficient both in the pre-and-post-liberalization era. The study further revealed that market share was the strongest determinant of technical efficiency in the Nigerian banking Industry. Thus, appropriate macroeconomic policy, institutional development and structural reforms must accompany financial liberalization to create the stable environment required for it to succeed. Hence, the present bank consolidation and reforms by the Central Bank of Nigeria, which started with Soludo and continued with Sanusi, are considered necessary, especially in the areas of e banking and reorganizing the management of banks.

By employing non-parametric methods, namely Data Envelopment Analysis and Malmquist Index, this paper investigates efficiency of banks using a database of almost all banks in four countries in South-East Europe. The superior efficiency of foreignowned banks in intermediation is supported. It is argued that the improvement in efficiency of banks originated from the change in technology rather than scale and technical efficiency, and banks on average have not been able to catch-up with best-performers, thus widening the efficiency gap. The largest sources of inefficiency are found to be cost and scale inefficiencies and lending shortfalls. Because of its peculiarities, Kosovo banking sector is assessed relative to other economies. Findings suggest that despite some improvements, the banking system in Kosovo remained less efficient. A number of policy implications emanate from the findings, aiming at enhancing the intermediation efficiency of banks in the context of South-East European transition.