Efficiency began to take on a greater relevance in Brazilian organizations when the country adopted an open market policy in the early 1990s. This paper analyzes the efficiency of commercial banks in Brazil based on data envelopment analysis (DEA), using the "Largest Banks" database of 2005, which is divulged periodically by Brazil's Central Bank. DEA is an operational research technique based on linear programming, whose objective is to analyze independent units comparatively. The technique was applied to the 12 largest commercial banks in order to ascertain if they are considered efficient in the use of their resources. Our findings indicated that bank size (a Central Bank criterion to classify banks) was not a determining factor in attributing efficiency to the banks, and that the use of inputs to achieve outputs was the most relevant criterion in the pursuit of a good performance and banking efficiency in this study.
Data envelopment analysis; Efficiency; Commercial banks
