COMPARATIVE EFFICIENCY BETWEEN COOPERATIVE, SAVINGS AND COMMERCIAL BANKS IN EUROPE USING THE FRONTIER APPROACH

We test competing hypotheses concerning the comparative behavior of shareholder-owned commercial banks and stakeholder-orientated cooperative and savings banks in European banking. One hypothesis is that the risk culture and business models of stakeholder and shareholder-owned banks have become more alike and so cost efficiency has converged between bank ownership structures. The alternative hypothesis suggests that institutional differences do...