Do Islamic and conventional banks have the same technology?

Is there a technology gap between Islamic and conventional banks? Do Islamic and conventional banks have different cost efficiency levels? We show that conventional and Islamic banks have similar mean (aggregate) cost efficiency levels in the MENA area and there is no technology gap between the two types of banks. At the country level, Islamic banks are more cost efficient than conventional banks in Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and United Arab Emirates, and less efficient in Bangladesh, Kuwait, Malaysia and Tunisia. We analyse a very large sample of banks in twelve MENA and South East Asian countries between 2000 and 2006 and we use the meta-frontier approach to account for the sample heterogeneity

Banking efficiency and economic growth in the MENA region

This paper examines the nexus between cost efficiency and economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa region. We apply a causality analysis between cost efficiency and financial deepening using the Generalized Methods of Moments and our findings show a significant and positive causality and reverse relationship between financial deepening and banking productivity. We introduce a set of control variables associated with the long run growth and find an interesting interaction with banking productivity and financial deepening suggesting that efforts should be focusing on the investments’ efficiency and the increase of regulation to spur a more stable financial system and foster financial deepening in the future