This paper investigates the efficiency of domestic and foreign banks in the Central American region during 2002-07. Using two main empirical approaches, Data Envelopment Analysis and Stochastic Frontier Analysis, the paper finds that foreign banks are not necessarily more efficient than their domestic counterparts. If anything, the regional banks that were acquired by global banks in a wave of acquisitions during 2005-07 can keep up with the local institutions. The efficiency of these acquired banks, however, is shown to have dropped during the acquisition year, recovering only slightly thereafter. Finally, it is important to account for the environment in which banks operate, as country-, sector- and firm-specific characteristics are found to have a considerable influence on bank efficiency.

Productivity growth is a keyword for sustainable economic growth in a knowledge-based society. There has been significant methodological development in the literature on productivity and efficiency analysis, e.g. SFA (Stochastic Frontier Analysis) and DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis). All these methodological developments should be matched with applications in order to provide practical implications for private and public decision-makers. This volume provides a collection of up-to-date and new applications of productivity and efficiency analysis. In particular, the case studies cover various economic issues in the Asia-Pacific region. The authors analyze the performance of manufacturing firms, banks, venture capital, broadcasting firms, as well as the issues of efficiency in the education sector, regional development, and defense industry. These case studies will shed light on the potential contribution of productivity and efficiency analysis to the enhancement of economic performance.

"Suggests processes and strategies for choosing the best technique to draw up policies for sustainable growth." - dust jacket.

The book provides an introduction to logistics and supply chain management and the application of evolutionary computation, focusing on specific fields related to supply chain issues, from strategic sourcing decisions, and production planning and control to inventory to logistics and its application using evolutionary / heuristics techniques. Bridging the gap between management research, decision-making and computer analysis, this interdisciplinary book features state-of-the-art descriptions of the corresponding problems and advanced methods for solving them.

Banking market integration in the Asia Pacific has greatly accelerated in recent years, in an environment of many other rapid advances in banking and finance. This has increased competition between domestic and foreign banks, and made the measurement of bank efficiency, competition, and liquidity creation a critical issue for both policy makers and bank managers. This book investigates important policy-related issues in Asia Pacific banking. It analyses the link between competition and stability, examining the cases of fourteen Asia Pacific countries between 2003 and 2010, and goes on to discuss whether bank shareholder value is influenced by cost and profit efficiency changes over time. The authors explore the different ways in which banks in Asia-Pacific create liquidity, and whether this is linked to capital generation. This book provides valuable insight for researchers, policy makers and bank managers with an interest in financial rationalization, restructuring and consolidation.

As risk-taking is an essential part of the banking industry, banks must practise efficient risk management to ensure survival in uncertain financial climates. Banking operations are specifically affected by fluctuations in interest rates which cause financial imbalance; thus banks are now required to put in place an effective management structure that incorporates risk management efficiency measures that help mitigate the wide range of risks they face. In this book, the authors have developed a new modelling approach to determine banks’ financial risk management by offering detailed insights into the integrated approach of dollar-offset ratio and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), based on derivatives usage. It further analyses the efficiency measurement under stochastic DEA approaches, namely (i) Bootstrap DEA (BDEA), (ii) Sensitivity Analysis and (iii) Chance-Constrained DEA (CCDEA). As demonstrated in the modelling exercise, this integrated approach can be applied to other cases that require risk management efficiency measurement strategies. Additionally, this is the first book to comprehensively review the derivative markets of both the developed and developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region, by examining the differences of risk management efficiency of the banking institutions in these countries. Based on this measurement approach, strategies are provided for banks to improve their strategic risk management practices, as well as to reduce the impacts from external risks, such as changes in interest rates and exchange rates. Furthermore, this book will help banks to keep abreast of recent developments in the field of efficiency studies in management accounting, specifically in relation to hedge accounting, used by banks in the Asia-Pacific region.