Developing foreign bank efficiency models for DEA grounded in finance theory

We develop foreign bank technical, cost and profit efficiency models for particular application with data envelopment analysis (DEA). Key motivations for the paper are (a) the often-observed practice of choosing inputs and outputs where the selection process is poorly explained and linkages to theory are unclear, and (b) foreign bank productivity analysis, which has been neglected in DEA banking literature. The main aim is to demonstrate a process grounded in finance and banking theories for developing bank efficiency models, which can bring comparability and direction to empirical productivity studies. We expect this paper to foster empirical bank productivity studies.

The price elasticity of the Euro to movements in foreign reserves through European Central Bank intevention

The Euro has been used as the largest weighting element in a basket of currencies for forex arrangements adopted by several Central European countries outside the European Union (EU). The paper uses a new time-series approach to examine the relationship between the Euro exchange rate and the level of foreign reserves. It employs Zero-no-zero (ZNZ) patterned vector error-correction (VECM) modelling to investigate Granger causal relations among foreign reserves, the European Monetary Union money supply and the Euro exchange rate. The findings confirm that foreign reserves may influence movements in the Euro's exchange rate. Further, ZNZ patterned VECM modelling with exogenous variables is used to estimate the amount of foreign reserves currently required in order to again achieve a targetted Euro exchange rate