THE EVOLUTION OF BULGARIAN BANKS’ EFFICIENCY DURING THE TWENTIES: A DEA APPROACH
Nikolay Nenovsky
Bulgarian National Bank, University of Orleans and ICER
Martin Ivanov
Institute of History, Sofia
Gergana Mihaylova
Agency for Economic Analysis and Forecasting, Sofia
ABSTRACT
This paper studies the dynamics of the bank efficiency in Bulgaria in the years 1923 and 1928. In the course of research several interdependencies were detected, related mainly to the reaction of different types of banks to the financial crisis and the financial stabilization. Official bank balance sheets were used as well as the profit and loss statements of 50 Bulgarian credit institutions. After their classification into subgroups different variations of DEA (data envelopment analysis), in particular the intermediation approach, were applied to the banks’ financial positions. The DEA overcomes several deficiencies in the traditional accounting measurement of bank efficiency, which has made it very popular in latest literature. To our knowledge this method has not been applied so far to historical data.
Keywords:Bulgarian monetary history; Banking system; Βanking efficiency; DEA modelling.
JEL classification: N24; G21.
Acknowledgements: We would like to express our gratitude to Joanna Bachovska who helped with the data collection
Nikolay Nenovsky
Bulgarian National Bank
University of Orleans and ICER
e-mail: http://www.bankofgreece.gr/publications/nenovsky.n@bnbank.org