Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze a variety of factors that can explain the differences in commercial bank efficiency among 17 countries in Latin America (LatAm). Design/methodology/approach In a first stage, data envelopment analysis (DEA) and conditional efficiency analysis techniques are used to assess the relative efficiency level of 409 banks for the 2014-2016 period. The conditional efficiency approach considers environmental variables (that are beyond the manager’s control), which could influence the shape and the level of the boundary of the attainable set. In the second stage, the resulting conditional efficiency scores are correlated with internal variables (those that are under the manager’s control), which might affect the distribution of the inefficiencies. For this purpose, an econometric approach developed by Simar and Wilson (2007) is used. Findings First stage scores reveal the heterogeneity of average efficiency within the region. Regarding the factors that may explain the differences in performance in the LatAm banking sector, the results allow us to state that certain internal variables such as bank size, the ratio of loans to total assets and the ratio of non-performing loans show the expected relationship to efficiency, in line with much of the previous literature. Originality/value This is the first time that conditional efficiency and Simar and Wilson (2007) approaches have been applied at the same time to analyse the LatAm banking industry.

Tourism seasonality generates negative environmental and economic impacts. This paper analyzes the effects of seasonality on the efficiency of the hotel industry in the Balearic Islands (Spain). To that end, a sample of hotel establishments is divided into two groups (those that close down during the off-season and those that do not). Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is applied to assess the radial efficiency of each of the selected hotels; then, directional distance functions (DDFs) are used to measure the degree of efficiency with which these hotels use each of the inputs that form part of their production process. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the said technique has been applied to the hospitality industry to examine the effects of seasonality. The results of this study suggest that those establishments that do not close down their operations are markedly more efficient than the ones that do. Moreover, they are more efficient in the use of each input. Therefore, a reduction in the levels of tourism seasonality would improve the economic sustainability of the hotels and reduce the environmental pressure at peak times. Finally, in line with the theoretical hypotheses formulated, the results regarding the specific efficiency levels for each input show that the greater the degree of flexibility with which these inputs are used, the higher the efficiency.

This paper assesses technical efficiency in the management of nonperforming loans (NPLs) in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) banking industry. To that end, Data Envelopment Analysis techniques are employed with data from the years 2013 to 2016 on a sample of 307 LAC cooperative and commercial banks.Our main contribution to existing literature is that differences of efficiency between cooperative banks and commercial banks are assessed as the result of the different capacities of their managers -managerial efficiency -and the so-called programme efficiency, which represents differences in the technology used by these two categories of entities. Our principal result suggests that the technology used by cooperative banks in the management of NPLs is more efficient than the technology of commercial banks. Andrés J Picazo-Tadeo and Francisco J Sáez-Fernández acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (project ECO2016-75237-R). Andrés J Picazo-Tadeo also thanks the Valencian Regional Government for its support (project PROMETEOII/2014/053). Moreover, we are thankful for useful comments and suggestions received from the referees.

This paper assesses the technical performance of Brazilian banks while accounting for risk, which is considered as an undesirable outcome of banking. To this end, frontier techniques based on Data Envelopment Analysis and directional distance functions are applied to a sample of 124 banks and data for the six-year period 2014–19. Our main finding is that the Brazilian banking industry could notably increase its production of conventional outputs without additional input usage and while maintaining the same levels of risk. Besides, investment banks are found to be more efficient than commercial banks mainly because of their superior managerial performance.