The short and long term performance persistence in the Central European banking industry

Abstract

This article investigates the scale of performance persistence in the Central European banking industry. Contrary to the existing literature, we test not only for the short-term performance persistence but we propose also a novel method of analyzing the long-term persistence. Using an extensive dataset, covering the 1992-2009 period, we establish that banks' results are strongly persistent in two-years sub-periods as well as in the long-run. Moreover, we find that the strength of studied phenomenon is not significantly influenced by the macroeconomic environment, banks size and capital base and country-specific factors.