Abstract
The major aim of this research is benchmarking top Arab banks using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique and to compare the results with that of published recently in Mostafa (2007a,b) [Mostafa, M, M. (2007a). Modeling the efficiency of top Arab banks: A DEA-neural network approach. Expert Systems with Applications, doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2007.09.001: Mostafa M. M. (2007b), Benchmarking top Arab banks' efficiency through efficient frontier analysis, Industrial Management & Data Systems, 107(6) 802-823]. Data for 85 Arab banks used to conduct the analysis of relative efficiency.
Our findings indicate that (1) the efficiency of Arab banks reported in Mostafa (2007a,b) is incorrect. hence, readers should take extra caution of using such results, (2) the corrected efficiency scores suggest that there is potential for significant improvements in Arab banks. In summary, this study overcomes with some data and methodology issues in measuring efficiency of Arab banks and highlights the importance of encouraging increased efficiency throughout the banking industry in the Arab world using the new results. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.