The Luenberger indicator and productivity growth: a note on the European savings banks sector

We employ the Luenberger productivity indicator to estimate productivity growth and its decomposition into technical change and efficiency change components for savings banks sectors in 10 EU countries between 1996 and 2003. The Luenberger indicator requires less restrictive assumptions than standard nonparametric productivity indexes, and it allows the assumption of profit maximization to be made for sample firms. We estimate average productivity growth in the savings banks sector to be 2.78% per annum and driven almost entirely by technical change. Whilst the general results confirm earlier findings, this study is one of the earliest to identify cross-border differences in productivity growth in the savings banks sector.