TÉCNICA EN EL SISTEMA BANCARIO ESPAÑOL. Dimensión y rentabilidad.

In this work, we analyze the relationship between the size, financial profitability, and technical efficiency of banking institutions in Spain. The analysis is carried out by the use of multivariant techniques, factorial analysis, and cluster analysis to establish groups of banking institutions of homogeneous size. A non-parametric methodology, data envelopment analysis (DEA), is used to obtain the coefficient of technical efficiency of each banking institution. In addition, the influence of each institution found to be efficient in the previously conducted efficiency analyses is studied with the aim of determining if any financial institution (bank) affects the results in a particular way. Also, the bootstrap technique is used in order to obtain confidence intervals regarding the average efficiency and median efficiency of the banking system. Finally, the relationship between entity size, financial profitability, and estimations of technical efficiency are analyzed. Information on 82 Spanish banks (36 banks and 45 savings banks), representing nearly the entire Spanish commercial banking system, was used. [TRANSLATION]