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This study aims to investigate the impact of international diversification on the value and operating efficiency of European real estate firms.

The study is conducted using a panel fixed effects regression model to estimate the relationship of international diversification with firm value and operating efficiency. International diversification is mainly measured via the negative of the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) using property-level data. Firm value and operating efficiency are proxied by financial ratios observed annually from 2002 to 2021 at the firm level.

The results demonstrate that international diversification has a negative effect on firm value. Additionally, it lowers operating efficiency by weakening a firm's ability to generate operating earnings from its assets. By examining whether the reduction in operating efficiency is due to the rental income channel or the capital gains channel, the authors find strong statistical evidence that international diversification negatively impacts capital gains. International diversification is negatively associated with net gains from property valuations (unrealized capital gains) and net profits from property disposals (realized capital gains).

The empirical analysis is limited to Europe.

This paper extends the geographical diversification literature. While existing literature focuses on domestic diversification within the United States, this paper explores the effects of international diversification on European real estate firms. To the extent of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the impact of geographical diversification on capital gains.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the characteristics of statutory internal auditors on operating efficiency.

This study investigates three characteristics pertaining to statutory internal auditors, namely, compensation, activity and expertise, based on 1,340 firm observations from 2009 to 2010 using publicly available disclosure data for Korean listed firms.

The authors find no evidence that statutory internal auditors’ compensation is positively associated with operating efficiency. This implies that compensation data on statutory internal auditors in Korea may not directly reflect their competence and ability to enhance operating efficiency. On the other hand, the authors find evidence for a positive association between full-time status for statutory internal auditors and operating efficiency and a positive association between the attendance at board meetings for statutory internal auditors and operating efficiency. The results also show a decrease in operating efficiency when statutory internal auditors are newly appointed. Finally, expertise of statutory internal auditors in financial or legal matters provides no advantage in terms of operating efficiency.

This study contributes to the extant literature on internal audit by examining the advisory role of statutory internal auditors and its effect on operating efficiency, which is one of the objectives established by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission.

While most prior research on internal audit depends on survey data from statutory internal auditors or experimental data based on a limited sample of firms, this study is based on a large sample of publicly available data of the Korean market.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the operating efficiency of accounting firm partnerships.

An empirical analysis is performed with a three-stage research method: data envelopment analysis (DEA), univariate testing and regression analysis.

The results indicate that large firms are not necessarily the most efficient. Efficient accounting firms see an average 50 percent contribution from total practice revenues and a 50 percent contribution from the number of cases. The percentage of senior managers is higher for firms with poor operating efficiency than for firms with good operating efficiency. This implies that firms with poor operating efficiency have a higher expenditure in human capital. Both efficient and inefficient firms find intense market competition to be the main challenge, followed by the challenge of market recessions. Appropriate educational training should be provided to upgrade the professional expertise and competency of staff. Response to peer competition and assistance to local accountant practices are the main reasons for setting up practice in Mainland China. The main operating mode in Mainland China is bringing personnel from Taiwan.

Using DEA, univariate testing and regression analysis, this paper aims to help the operators of accounting firms in dealing with business difficulties, finding their own core competencies, and making up for their operating disadvantages. The findings can provide references to reviewing whether their human resource allocation is appropriate and which operational type should be adopted by the accounting firms. Hence, the accounting firms can formulate their future operational strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to present a holistic approach for measuring overall bank efficiency and its decomposition in intermediation and operating efficiencies.

Recently developed two-stage network data envelopment analysis model by Liang et al. (2008) has been used for obtaining intermediation and operational efficiencies along with overall bank efficiency. The bootstrapped truncated regression algorithm as proposed by Simar and Wilson (2007) has been employed to explore the influential determinants of intermediation and operating efficiencies.

The empirical results reveal that the operating inefficiency is the dominant source of overall bank inefficiency in Indian banking sector. Another interesting finding is that public sector banks are more efficient than private banks in the intermediation stage of production process, while private banks are more efficient in the operating stage of production process. Finally, the results of bootstrapped truncated regression show that variations in intermediation efficiency are explained by bank size, liquidity position, directed lending and intermediation cost, while inter-bank differences in operating efficiency are influenced by profitability and income diversification.

The most significant practical implication that has been derived from the research findings is that at the industry level, overall efficiency enhancement needs improvement both in terms of resource-utilization and income-generating abilities of the banks. However, the relatively easy way to achieve higher bank efficiency is to improve the efficiency of banks in generating incomes from interest and fee-based sources.

This paper is the first to provide a comprehensive assessment of performance of Indian banks by examining the efficiency of individual banks considering both the intermediation and operating approaches simultaneously.

The study attempts to examine the bias-adjusted financial and operational efficiency estimates of microfinance institutions (MFIs) operating in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region during the financial year 2017–2018. In addition, the study also identifies the responsible factors determining the financial and operational performances of MFIs operating in the ECA region.

The study employs two-stage bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA). In the first stage, the authors incorporate the bootstrap procedure in the DEA framework as suggested by Simar and Wilson (2000) to estimate the bias-corrected efficiency scores of 67 sample MFIs. In order to identify the drivers of efficiency level, the study deploys the bootstrap truncated regression model following the Simar and Wilson (2007) guidelines in the second stage of analysis.

The authors note from the empirical results that MFIs operating in the ECA region are relatively more financially efficient (0.588) than socially efficient (0.496). However, none of the MFIs were found to be operating at best-practice frontier while considering the bias-adjusted efficiency estimates. Further, the results of second stage of analysis confirm that corporate governance, that is, board size has positive and statistically significant impact on MFIs’ performances. In addition, the bad credit quality deteriorates both financial revenue and operational efficiency. Moreover, the MFIs’ size, profit status and debt-to-equity ratio were also found to be statistically significant to determine the operational and financial efficiency of MFIs in the ECA region.

The study provides the robust efficiency estimates and factors responsible to determine the financial and operational efficiency of MFIs operating in the ECA region. Further, the empirical results of the study provide the inputs and further direction to the policymakers, regulators, practitioners and managers in framing the policy and optimal operating strategies for ECA MFIs industry.

The study extends the DEA analysis by incorporating the bootstrap procedure in DEA model to estimate the bias-adjusted efficiency scores which are more reliable and robust. In addition, bootstrap truncated regression has been applied to identify the drivers of efficiency. Moreover, in the literature there is no single study which has deployed the double bootstrap DEA framework to examine the financial and operational efficiency estimates and its drivers.

The purpose of this paper is to: study the relative efficiency between hotels operating under a brand and hotels operating independently, on the island of Crete, Greece; identify the inefficiency causes; and suggest managerial implications to relevant business experts and managers in order to increase hotel efficiency in Crete and in other tourism destinations with similar characteristics.

The sample is constituted by 50 superior hotels (luxury and class A) operating in Crete in 2008: 25 hotels are operating as totally independent and 25 hotels are operating under a brand. The efficiency for the above hotels is estimated through the data envelopment analysis methodology.

First, nationally branded hotels are relatively the most efficient; internationally branded are the least efficient, while those operating under a local brand and the independent ones lie in between. This efficiency ranking can be explained by the interplay between operating under a brand and being flexible to changes in the local market's conditions. Second, the hotels' inefficiency cause is mainly due to the input/output configuration and not due to their management teams' performance to organize the inputs in the production process.

A direction for future research could be to enrich input and output variables. The paper could also be extended through a larger sample of hotels and an enriched data set covering more variables for more than one year, so as to study the dynamics of hotel efficiency. The larger sample could also contain hotels from other popular tourist destinations in Greece.

The inefficiency causes are identified and, moreover, suggestions are made to hotel owners and managers, at the level of strategic and operational management, so as to increase hotel efficiency.

This is the first study measuring hotel efficiency in Greece. Moreover, it identifies the inefficiency causes of hotels and offers suggestions, at the level of strategic and operational management, so as to increase hotel efficiency, which are applicable to Crete as well as to other tourism destinations with similar characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the sources of inefficiency in the Korean banking sector. The present study focuses on three different approaches: intermediation approach, value‐added approach, and operating approach, to differentiate how efficiency scores vary with changes in inputs and outputs.

The paper utilizes the non‐parametric data envelopment analysis methodology to measure the efficiency of banks operating in the Korean banking sector. The method allows for the decomposition of technical efficiency (TE) into its mutually exhaustive components of pure technical and scale efficiencies.

The empirical findings suggest that estimates of TE are consistently higher under an operating approach vis‐à‐vis the intermediation and value‐added approaches. On the other hand, banks are characterized by a relatively low level of TE under the intermediation approach.

Further analysis on the performance of the Korean banking sector performance will examine the efficiency changes over time by employing the parametric stochastic frontier analysis method. Investigations into productivity changes over time, as a result of a technical change or technological progress or regression by employing the Malmquist productivity index could yet be another extension to the paper.

The findings from this study are essential not only for the managers of the banks, but for numerous stakeholders such as the central banks, bankers associations, governments, and other financial authorities. Knowledge of these factors would also be helpful to the regulatory authorities and bank managers who formulate going forward policies for improved efficiency of the Korean banking sector.

Unlike the previous studies on the efficiency of the Korean banking sector, the paper focuses on three different approaches: intermediation approach, value‐added approach, and operating approach to differentiate how efficiency scores vary with changes in inputs and outputs.

This paper aims to present a study which uses an innovative two‐stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model that separates efficiency and effectiveness to evaluate the performance of 28 online stockbrokers in Taiwan from 2003 to 2005.

The approach is based on two‐stage DEA.

The results show that seven companies are CCR‐efficient in their operating efficiency; five companies are CCR‐efficient operating effectiveness and only two companies are CCR‐efficient both in operating efficiency and effectiveness. There is no apparent correlation between efficiency and effectiveness.

This paper presents a two‐stage DEA study to investigate the efficiency and effectiveness in the online stockbroking sector. The online stockbroking business is a development from the integration of the internet and the stock trading. As the stock brokerage industry is undergoing a rapid change due to the proliferation of the internet, analyzing the relative efficiency and effectiveness of online stockbrokers is important for management to understand, monitor and sustain performance.

The originality of this paper is in the use of a new conceptual framework to assess the performance of online stockbrokers in Taiwan. This study uses the two‐stage DEA in conjunction with return on assets ratio, which is widely used in financial analysis, to define and assess performance in the framework.

This paper sets out to explore the effects that the setting‐up of an independent director system has on the operating efficiency of information electronics companies in China.

This paper uses 87 Chinese listed electronics companies during the initial stages of the independent directors system from 1999 to 2002 as sample subjects, and employs a two‐stage procedure for empirical investigation.

The non‐parametric test results verify that there is no significant difference in the operating efficiency of Chinese electronics companies following the establishment of an independent director system. The Tobit regression results show that the establishment of an independent director system in the Chinese electronics industry does not influence overall technical efficiency (TE), pure technical efficiency (PE), or scale efficiency (SE).

Whether the related schemes of the current corporate governance structure practised in China can achieve their expected results, as well as the possible future development direction of the governance structure, is of the utmost importance, and is a research subject worth examining in greater depth.

It is of the utmost urgency for such corporate governance to improve the selection mechanism for independent directors, to establish incentives and responsibility‐taking mechanisms for independent directors, and to amend the company law and securities law to perfect the rules of an independent director system.

By using DEA and the Tobit regression model, this study attempts to investigate whether China, in addition to fraud prevention, has improved corporate operating efficiency by introducing a system of independent directors.

We adopt a super slack-based measurement (SBM) data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to estimate the efficiency of five biggest freight rail operators in Russia, which are included in the top 30 freight rail operators in terms of two dimensions – financial and operational efficiency during 2013–2017. The result shows that the private companies characterized by high financial and operational efficiency, while the Rossiiskye Zheleznye Dorogi (RZD) subsidiaries characterized by sufficiently low financial and operational efficiency scores. And the result also presents that operational efficiency score of operators handling universal rolling stock is higher than financial efficiency scores. In contrast, financial efficiency scores of operators handling special rolling stock is higher than operational efficiency scores. rail freight operators in addition to a special rolling stock park should have a universal rolling stock park for higher profitability. State-owned companies and its subsidiary operate inefficiently in the midst of a market economy in Russia. Rail freight operators for a higher level of financial efficiency should be transferred to the private sector.