Explaining Recent Connecticut Bank Failures

Significant numbers of U.S. commercial bank failures in the late 1980s and early 1990s raise important questions about bank performance. We develop a failure-prediction model for Connecticut banks to examine events in 1991 and 1992. We adopt data envelopment analysis to derive measures of managerial efficiency. Our findings can be briefly stated. Managerial inefficiency does not provide significant information to explain Connecticut bank failures. Portfolio variables do generally contain significant information.

Input Price Variation Across Locations and a Generalized Measure of Cost Efficiency

We propose a nonparametric model for global cost minimization as a framework for optimal allocation of a firm's output target across multiple locations, taking account of differences in input prices and technologies across locations. This should be useful for firms planning production sites within a country and for foreign direct investment decisions by multi-national firms. Two illustrative examples are included. The first example considers the production location decision of a manufacturing firm across a number of adjacent states of the US. In the other example, we consider the optimal allocation of US and Canadian automobile manufacturers across the two countries.