Economic literature pays a great deal of attention to the performance of banks, expressed in terms of competition, concentration, efficiency, productivity and profitability. This book provides an all-embracing framework for the various existing theories in this area and illustrates these theories with practical applications.

Evaluating a broad field of research, the book describes a profit maximizing bank and demonstrates how several widely-used models can be fitted into this framework. The authors also present an overview of the current major trends in banking and relate them to the...