The technical efficiency of US banks

The paper uses a non-parametric frontier approach to measure the technical efficiency of a sample of U.S. banks. The results indicate that these banks could have produced the same level of output with only 70% of the inputs actually used. In addition, most of this inefficiency is due to pure technical inefficiency (wasting inputs) rather than scale inefficiency (operating at non-constant returns to scale). Finally, regression analysis indicates that the technical efficiency of the banks is positively related to size, negatively related to product diversity, and not at all related to the extent to which branch banking is allowed. © 1988.