Vladan Ivanović
Searching for an institutional structure which enables economic success is in the midst of the practical efforts of governments all around the world, as well as the academic studies endeavoring to understand the sources of success in the most prosperous national economies. The supremacy of the German economy in the European Union, as well as worldwide – from the level of the GDP per capita to high productivity, innovativeness and export performances – is the basic motivation this study rests on. Due to the fact that, unlike a failure, an economic success is always achieved in the long run, this study is aimed at revealing the (historical) institutional roots that have paved the way for the economic success of contemporary Germany. In that context, the model of the Social market economy, i.e. the competitive order (Wettbewerbsordnung), its meaning and importance in solving the allocative equation and reaching the high levels of economic efficiency are the subject matter of analysis in this paper. The key results refer to the identification of the diverse economic and social benefits that a competitive order brings into being, as well as the determination of and pointing to the essential institutional preconditions which such an order is feasible in.
Jacek Barburski
One of the modes of the measurement of banks’ and their branches’ economic efficiency is constituted by an econometric approach based on stochastic frontier functions. In this approach, the following three basic goal functions can be considered: the cost, revenue and profit functions. This paper aims to present alternative (relative to the standard formula) concepts of the measurement of revenue and profit efficiency constituting an important assessment criterion of banks’ operations. The paper also presents the results of the empirical studies of revenue and profit efficiency, as exemplified by the selected commercial bank. The theoretical part of the paper proceeds from an introduction to present the premises of an alternative efficiency assessment, then the formulas of the frontier functions of revenue and a profit. These are formulas that can exclusively be used under the conditions of imperfect competition between banks. The empirical part focuses on the application of the above models to assess the efficiency of a Polish bank’s branches. The calculations returned the indicators of revenue and profit efficiency and the rankings of the studied sample of branches in three different quarters. Due to the use of an excessively simple assessment method (Corrected Least Squares Method), the efficiency indicators obtained are understated and not accurate enough to lend themselves to further analysis. On the other hand, the rankings prepared on its basis are reliable and can be used for further assessments and comparisons, which should be considered as a meaningful research benefit.