Call for papers
4-5 July, 2008
Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London
A conference on the Uses of Frontier Efficiency Methodologies for Performance Measurement in the Financial Services Sector will be held at Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London, 4-5 July, 2008, in collaboration with the International Data Envelopment Analysis Society. Papers accepted for presentation at the conference will also be considered for publication in a special issue of Journal of Banking and Finance. The conference is designed to provide a forum for meaningful interaction between academicians and practitioners to explore solutions to critical practical problems in performance measurement.
Financial services firms are increasingly using benchmarking techniques to identify operations that need improvement by comparing their performance with other firms in the industry. An important new class of benchmarking methods has been developed called frontier efficiency methodologies. The frontier methodologies measure firm performance relative to ‘best practice’ frontiers derived from firms in the industry. Such measures are superior to traditional techniques such as financial ratio analysis because they summarise performance in a single statistic that controls for differences among firms using a sophisticated multidimensional framework. Frontier efficiency analysis can be used in a number of ways to assist a firm to evaluate whether it is performing better or worse than its peer group in terms of technology, scale, cost minimisation and revenue maximisation and thus direct management efforts to the areas that most need improvement, or to identify attractive targets for mergers and acquisitions. Conducting efficiency analysis over time also enables management to determine the performance effects of new procedures, strategies and projects. Frontier analysis can also be used within the firm to compare the performance of departments, divisions, branches and agencies. New applications of such analysis could include negotiations with regulators concerning mergers, acquisitions and related issues.
Topics that fall within the conference theme include the following:
Alternative parametric and non-parametric methods to study efficiency
Global or regional trends in consolidation
Mergers and acquisitions in the financial sector
Pension fund, hedge fund and/or mutual fund performance attribution
Banking, insurance applications including evaluation of branch performance
Mutual versus stock ownership of financial firms
Choice of distribution channels for selling retail financial services
International differences in performance
Performance evaluation and incentives for fund managers
The deadline for conference submissions is January 15, 2008 (5pm GMT). Authors will be informed of editorial decisions for the conference by March 1, 2008. All submissions should be made to the conference organisers by submitting the paper electronically (MS Word or pdf versions only) to Beatrix Vegh (b.vegh@imperial.ac.uk). All papers must be in English and must be accompanied by a 200 word abstract. The name of the file should be the surname of the submitting author.
The conference will also accommodate shorter presentations of ongoing research on management problems that are not considered for journal publication. Short abstracts not exceeding 2 pages should be submitted by January 15, 2008 (5pm GMT) to Beatrix Vegh (b.vegh@imperial.ac.uk).
Please contact any of the conference organisers for more information: Rajiv Banker (banker@temple.edu), David Cummins (Cummins@wharton.upenn.edu), or Paul Klumpes (p.klumpes@imperial.ac.uk).