Productivity and Efficiency Change of Banks in North Africa Countries

Abstract

To measure technical efficiency of commercial banks in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria we employed in this paper Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based on the intermediation approach of banking services, which entails banks produce financial services using inputs. On regional level our results show that while there is slight drop in scale efficiency in 2009 there is evidence of overall improvement in technical efficiency, despite the international financial crisis. Looking at the scale efficiency performance of banks in the three countries, it is interesting to observe that the impact of the global financial crisis was relatively more significant on banks in Morocco compared to those in Tunisia. Our findings also indicate that a major source of technical inefficiency in 2009 for banks in Algeria was increasing return to scale, while for those in Morocco was a decreasing return to scale.