LOAN EFFICIENCY IN THE VISEGRAD COUNTRIES

Financial markets in the Visegrad countries have undergone several changes in lending business over the past decade. This study evaluates the efficiency of the largest commercial banks by focusing on their lending decisions using Data Envelopment Analysis. First, we define the concept of efficiency, then we analyse loan efficiency between 2007 and 2013. The results indicate that average efficiency declined. When we studied the loan efficiency in each country separately, we found that Hungarian banks had the lowest efficiency while the highest efficiency was achieved mainly by Czech banks. The results of the study also suggest that efficiency is positively related to profitability and capital adequacy, and negatively related to the share of non-performing loans, which confirms the bad management hypothesis.