The Efficiency of Banks and the Financial Crisis in a Developing Economy: The Case of Jordan.

This paper measures and evaluates the relative efficiency of the Jordanian banks over the period 2005-2010. The measurement of efficiency is estimated using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Sample data contains 12 banks; three of them are Islamic banks. Constant return to scale (CRS) and variable return to scale (VRS) were used in order to measure the relative efficiency of the Jordanian banks, using annual data from 2005 through 2010. The results show that, on the technical efficiency scale only a few Jordanian banks were efficient in managing their financial resources and generating profit. Furthermore, only few banks were found to be efficient on the scale of pure technical efficiency and only so in a few years. The financial crisis was found to have a significant impact on banks' efficiency. These findings can be used by the regulators, policy makers and banks management to further investigate the reasons behind the inefficient decision-making units (DMUs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]