Effi ciency in Islamic and Conventional Banks: A Comparative Analysis in the MENA Region

The present study investigates the efficiency of Islamic and conventional banks belonging to the MENA region around the last subprime crisis. The efficiency estimates of individual banks are first evaluated by using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach. The analysis further links the variation in calculated efficiencies to a set of explanatory variables, namely the bank profitability, liquidity, risk, size and corporate governance. The empirical findings clearly bring forth the high degree of inefficiency of both Islamic and conventional banks of the MENA region. But above all, Islamic ...